Behaviorism And Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development

In Piaget’s cognitive stage, children from birth to the age of two go through this stage. In this stage, infants are developing the ability to coordinate their sensory input with there motor skills. An example would be, when kids are playing with toys and put the toys in their month and feel with their mouth. Infants also develop object Permanence. The object Permanence is when a child recognizes that objects continue to exist even when they are no longer visible. An example of this is when someone is plays peek-a-boo with a child

There is a misconception that children are like miniature versions of adults and that they think in the same way adults do. This misconception was debunked by a developmental biologist named Piaget who theorized that children reason quite differently. Piaget formulated a theory of cognitive development that explains how children create a mental model of the world. He did not support the idea that intellect is a fixed feature. Rather, he believed that cognitive development is more like a process which occurs due to biological maturation and interaction with the environment. Through his studies on cognition in children, a series of simple but clever tests revealed different cognitive abilities in children at different age stages. Children from birth understand their environment through cognitive development stages that are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

There are five different types of learning theories, behaviorism, cognitivism, humanism, social learning, or constructivism. All of them propose various ways through which learning is realized. However, there is no single set of learning theory, which if followed to the latter can grant a tutor a perfect outcome in the classroom. For many years, the study of learning has resulted in heated debates. It has been at the center of educational psychology. Even though psychologists agree on the significance of learning as a topic of study, they often fail to agree on the mechanics of how the process of learning occurs. Shunk et al. (2012), define learning as "the process of acquiring a relatively permanent change in understanding, attitude, knowledge, information, ability, and skill is

Piaget thinks that his theory of cognitive development is clear and that it’s the only perspective that should viewed as correct. He explains how children go through the four stages based on advancement and background and their development occurs in stages. He also believes that children’s physical and social environment is important in children’s cognitive development. He believes that children are active learners who gain knowledge from their surroundings. Children learn through taking in there surrounding and modifications, and multiple cognitive development occurs through collaboration. Piaget’s thinks that children and adolescent’s cognitive development explains the changes in logical thinking.

Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, studied cognitive development from a biological perspective. As part of his theory, he looked at organization and adaptation which were the two main principles in the human 's mind and development. He further explained that human beings dependably strive to acquire a state of balance. Adaptation occurs when children encounter cognitive disability, this is known as, the situation where children will see the world as it is, and what they’re experiencing. Therefore, children incorporate new information and combine it with the existing one. Piaget refers to this as accommodation. This process occurs when new information does not fit well in the structures that already exists. For example, a child sees an earthworm

On the Contrary, Erickson (…………….) believed that there were eight stages of human development, he emphasised his development in terms of social and emotional development with each stage associated with social conflict or crisis while Vogotsky (………………) explain the theory of human development using the sociocultural theory. Vygotsky argued that children build their knowledge through social and cultural experiences. One of major criticism of Piaget theory of cognitive development is the use of strict stage time scale for each stage of development. Many researchers in their own opinion agreed that many children abilities overlap. (………………………………….). Consequently, Piaget rigid age-related stages thereby make Piaget’s hypothesis inaccurate. Furthermore, in a study conducted by (Kuhn et al., 1977) suggested that only 30-35% of high school student could achieve Piaget’s (formal operations stage of cognitive development. This implies that Piaget’s idea of one cap fit all was inaccurate, therefore he was criticised for not considering and focusing on individual’s child, because children are individual they achieve intellectual ability at different stages in life. (Gardner…………………. supported this argument) and some may never achieve that cognitive development in the cases of children with learning

Jean Piaget, known for his interest in the Epistemology in children is seen as the pioneer of Developmental Psychology. Piaget 's Cognitive development theory led to a great deal of research work in the field of educational philosophy . But in the discipline of Psychology, every theory has been faced with a counter theory or an alternative. So is the case with Piaget 's theory. Lev Vygotsky, a soviet psychologist came up with the socio-cultural theory, which is another strong theory emphasizing child development and is seen as a major counter theory to Piaget 's work (Saul McLeod, 2004). Theories of these two cognitive psychologists have been compared and contrasted on different levels. This essay will look into the differences and similarities between their theories.

One of the most well known theories in cognitive development is Piaget 's theory. The psychologist Jean Piaget theorized that as children 's minds development, they pass through distinct stages marked by transitions in understanding followed by stability. Piaget describes four different stages of development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operation, and formal operations. Each stage describes the thinking patterns of a child depending on his or her age. In order to compare the thinking processes of a three-year old and a nine-year old using Piaget 's theory, you must compare two sequential stages of cognitive development: preoperational and concrete operations.

Piaget asserts, children are born with inherited scripts, called schema, these schema are building blocks for cognitive development. As a child grows, he acquires more of these building blocks; moreover, these building blocks become more complex as the child progresses through different stages in development (Huitt, Hummel 2003). Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development are as follows. First, The sensorimotor stage where an infant has rudimentary motor skills, and can eventually

According to Piaget’s theory a three year old and nine year old such as reasoning, perception, thinking, and logic. During the seventh and eighth year of childhood a child switched from the preoperational stage to the concrete operations stage. This explains why a three year old and nine year old child would have largely varying thinking pattern.

Lev Vygotsky is known to be Mozart of Psychology. He was born in Orsha on November 17, 1896 and as he got older, he attended college at Moscow State University. The article What Was Lev Vygotsky 's Influence on Psychology? mentions that in 1917, Vygotsky had graduated with a degree in law an he also had studied a variety of topics while in university such as sociology, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. Though, Vygotsky’s real work in psychology didn’t begin until 1924 when he had attended the Institute of Psychology in Moscow. Vygotsky was a creative writer and had published six books on psychology topics. His attentions were centered on matters of child development and education as well as, exploring psychology of art and language development.

Cognition is a process where different aspects of the mind are working together that lead to knowledge. Piaget’s cognitive development theory is based on stages that children go through as they grow that lead them to actively learn new information. Cognitive change occurs with schemes that children and adults go through to make sense of what is happening around them. The change that occurs is activity based when the child is young and later in life correlates to mental thinking. Piaget’s stages of cognitive development start from birth to adulthood and it begins with the sensorimotor stage, a child from birth to the age of 2 years old learns and thinks by doing and figuring out how something works. The second stage is the preoperational stage and in this stage children from ages 2 through 7 years are developing their language and they do pretend play (Berk, 2005, p.20). Concrete operational is the third stage and children ages 7 to 11 years old lack abstract but have more logic than they did when they were younger. The last stage is formal

It stresses on learning through thinking. It studies how people treat, organize, and transform information to affect their behavior. The most representative theorist of cognitive theory is Jean Piaget (1896-1980). He was born in Switzerland, and he has three children. It is impressive that most of his research is based on observation and studying of his own children. Cognitive development stages are the central part of Piaget’s theory, which demonstrate the development stages of children’s ability to think from infancy to adolescence, how to gain knowledge, self-awareness, awareness of the others and the environment. These stages are respectively relative to 4 ranges of age. It consists of characteristics of each stage and phenomena of each. The first stage between birth to 2 years old, children learn the external through senses and action, instinctively. They sense object permanently and they usually show anxiety to strangers. The second stage is between age of 2 to 6 years old, children form ideas with words and images, which is tend to be over generalizing. Developmental phenomena of this stage include pretending play, egocentrism and language development. And then the third stage from 7 to 11 years old, children think logically about concrete events and understand similar events. In this period, abilities of conversation and mathematical transformation get to be developed. Last stage, 12

Piaget’s theory places an emphasis on how children actively “construct their own cognitive worlds” (Santrock, 2011, p. 172). The first stage in Piaget’s theory, known as the sensorimotor stage, starts from birth to about two years (Santrock, 2011). In this stage, infants use their senses in conjunction with their motoric actions (Santrock, 2011).

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development revolutionized the study of children’s cognitive development and it has undergone some revisions over the years. It also provides a set of basic principles to guide our understanding of cognitive development that are found in most recent theories.