Jean Piaget best described the stages from birth to two years in what he called the sensorimotor stage. It is a stage based on infants and toddlers cognitive development. An infant uses his or her senses and motor abilities to understand the world, beginning with reflexes and ending with complex combinations of sensorimotor skills (Boeree, G.C. (2009). During the first four months of life, according to Piaget, infants interact with the world through primary circular reactions.
EDU10002 Understanding Language and Literature Assessment 1 There are many theoretical perspectives explaining how children develop and acquire language. Two well recognised cognitive psychologists, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, developed theories that addressed cognitive development and learning among children. Both theorists explore the development of a child’s way of thinking and examine the processes in how these developmental stages occur and impact on a child’s acquisition of language. Whilst there are similarities between the two theories, there are also significant differences. Language acquisition is the cognitive process where humans acquire the ability to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate with one another (Friederici 2011).
By 8 months of age, object of permanence begin to emerge because infants begin to develop memory for objects that are not perceived (Myers, 2013). 1c. Piaget further explains that after object permanence emerged, children at 8 months start to develop stranger anxiety where they would often cry in front of strangers and reach for someone who is familiar to them (Myers, 2013). Both object permanence and stranger anxiety emerge around the same time because children are able to remember and build schemas. While Piaget’s cognitive theory consists of four stages (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational) that children go through as they grow, McCrink and Wynn proposed a different theory of cognitive development.
This led to many studies on the social world of the child. However it still relied on the outside influences surrounding a child rather than the child itself and its own capabilities and agency. Ethics in psychology in adults had been the focus of much thought and concern in the 1980’s leading to the development of ethical principles for conducting psychological research, however, these were not as important regarding children’s studies until much later on, prompted by such legislation as that of the United Nations Convention for the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). This put the focus on the protection of children and its implications are seen in our ethical conduct regarding children’s research today. In 1998, the same year of the UNCRC research moved into a more child centred approach and
Cognitive Development “Cognitive Development always takes place within a social and cultural context.” Vygotsky believed that cognitive development is strongly influenced by social and cultural factors. Vygotsky agreed with Piaget that children may be able to reach a particular cognitive level through their own efforts. However, Vygotsky (1978, 1987) argued that children are able to attain higher levels of cognitive development through the support and instruction that they receive from other people. Researchers have confirmed that social interaction, especially with older children and adults, play a significant role in a child’s cognitive development. One of Vygotsky’s important ideas was his notion of the Zone of proximal development (ZPD).
Piaget, Vygotsky, and Erikson offer different views of how a child’s mental abilities progress throughout their education. Piaget believed that children, at certain stages in their lives, regardless of intelligence, were not able to understand things in particular ways, simply because they were not old enough. He thought that development had to precede learning. Vygotsky, on the other hand, theorized that children acquire their level of intelligence by the culture they live in and that children learning different things helped them to develop intellectually. Erikson felt as if the environment played a major role in a child’s development and that every person goes through specific stages in their lives.
Some philosophers are empiricist-this is that they have a theory of having a posteriori knowledge (knowledge that is required through our sense experience) and that is of synthetic propositions (dependent on the world and our sense experience). A philosopher who claims that humans have innate knowledge of the physical world is Noam Chomsky, thus suggesting that he is a rationalist. Noam Chomsky argued that knowledge of language and grammar is innate. Chomsky believes that children learn language and grammar is learnt quite fast from children, so fast that it can’t be known through experience; this can be seen from Chomsky’s argument ‘the poverty of stimulus’. The argument states that as children are brought up from being taught language at a very slow pace with poor teaching children are not able to have a good grasp on language, therefore Chomsky claims that their linguistic grammatical skills are not known from experience, but it is innate knowledge which gets triggered through experience.
Piaget had a clear impact on developmental psychology. He believed that progressive changes in cognitive structures in stages of development was how children progress. Piaget believed that the creation of new schemas or the alteration of existing schema’s to cope with information developed through the stages of development he arrived at. In the article the students were in Primary 6 or 7 making the students about the ages of 10 or 11. These students according to Piaget’s theory were at the concrete operational stage where they were in the process of becoming more logical, objective and deductive.
Critically review the contribution and influence of psychological theories to early Childhood education and Care curriculum development and childcare practitioner working practices. Throughout this essay I am going to discuss the cognitive development theories of Piaget and Vygotsky. These two theorists were influential in forming a scientific approach to analysing the development process involved in cognition. Cognition is the procedure involved in thinking and mental activity, such as problem solving, memory and attention (Flanagan, 1999, p.72). Both theorists said that a child’s cognitive development took places in stages but the way in which these theorists described the way children go through these stages was completely different.
Erikson's approach differentiates the mastery of childhood issues from adult ones by stressing the different virtues necessary for each stage. Hope and will are the two major virtues in the early childhood stages of development, and these develop into industry and competence as the child grows. Unless basic childhood issues of trust, purpose and autonomy are mastered in the early stages of life, the proper foundation of personhood will not be laid out for the later, more complex issues of identity, vocation and fidelity. 3. For Vygotsky, the movement is from a teacher helping the child to the child helping himself.