Paper Topic:

Comparrison of Piaget and Vygotskys theory of Cognitive Development

Cognition refers to the inner processes and products of the mind that lead to knowing . It includes all mental activity attending remembering , symbolizing , planning , reasoning , problem solving and the likes . Cognitive development is how the intellectual capacities of infants change into the capacities of the child , adolescent and adult It is important to chart the typical course o\f cognitive development examine the individual differences involved and uncover the mechanisms of cognitive development , as to how do the genetic and environmental factors combine to yield a particular pattern of change

Swiss cognitive

theorist Jean Piaget propagated that human infants do not start as cognitive beings . Instead , out of their perceptual and motor activities , they build and refine psychological structures-organized ways of making sense of experience that permit children to adapt more effectively to the environment . Since Piaget viewed children as discovering , or constructing , virtually all knowledge about their world through their own activities , his theory is described as a constructivist approach to cognitive development

To appreciate Piaget 's view of how development takes place , one needs to consider some important concepts

According to Piaget , specific psychological structures- organized ways of making sense of experience called schemes- change with age . At first schemes are sensor motor action patterns . Soon , instead of just acting on objects , infants start showing evidence of thinking . This marks a change from a sensorimotor to a cognitive approach to the world- one based on mental representations , or internal depictions of information that the mind can manipulate . It is interesting to notice how children keep on repeating certain actions . Adaptation involves building schemes through direct interaction with the environment . It consists of two complimentary activities . During assimilation , we use our current schemes to interpret the external world . In accommodation , we create new schemes or adjust the old ones after noticing that our current way of thinking does not capture the environment completely . According to Piaget , the balance between assimilation and accommodation varies over time . When children are not changing much , they assimilate more that they accommodate . Piaget called this a state of cognitive equilibrium During times of rapid cognitive change , children are in a state of cognitive disequilibrium , when they shift from assimilation to accommodation . The next concept is that of organization , a process that takes place internally , apart from direct contact with environment . Once children form new schemes , they rearrange them , linking them with other schemes to create a strongly interconnected cognitive system . According to Piaget , children are not capable of operations- mental representations of actions that obey logical rules . Instead their thinking is rigid , limited to one aspect of a situation at a time , and strongly influenced by the way things appear at the moment

Piaget believed that children move through four stages- sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years of age , preoperational stage (2 to 7 years of age , concrete operational stage (7 to 11 years of age ) and formal operational stage (11 years of age and older )- during which the exploratory behaviour of infants transform...

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