Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget laid out the basic principles of cognitive development early in the 20^th century. Because of their natural curiosity, children constructed an understanding of the world with schemes. Then as new experiences are gained, they can be assimilated into existing schemes or used to accommodate a modification. Thus children are constantly losing and gaining equilibrium throughout the various stages of development.  According to Piaget, the only way to progress from the first to last stage was by effectively gaining all the skills necessary in the in between periods. Unfortunately his theory does not account for the unique progression each child actually experiences through these stages and lacks appropriate recognition of Sociocultural influences.

Lev Vygotsky proposed that collaboration with skilled partners provided children with the most important contributions to cognitive development. So called guided participation allows for a shared understanding of expert knowledge with a child. Depending on a child’s zone of proximal development, a parent can gauge the level of scaffolding that will foster the greatest learning for any occasion. Vygotsky recognized that private speech is children’s way of guiding themselves and is what will eventually develop into inner speech. His unfortunate early death prevented him from fully developing his theory, but nonetheless his contributions are very important.

The other main approach to how human thinking develops is based on considering the human mind to have both mental hardware and mental software. With the information processing view, children learn to accomplish specific tasks with a combination of these structures and programs. Essential to this argument is the ability to pay attention by orienting oneself to stimulus in the environment. Repetition leads to habituation, which helps reveal to infants what is significant when learning. With both classical and operant conditioning, children gain expectations and natural responses to stimuli in the environment. The information processing approach provides comprehensive accounts of cognitive change in specific domains and is best understood when used in combination with the other theories.