COGNITIVE

Cognitive

Cognitive

Cognitive development is incredibly important when dealing with children because understanding their mental progress and growth is an essential when working with them. Cognitive development is the construction of thought processes, including remembering, problem solving, and decision making from childhood to adolescent (Theory of cognitive development, 2009). Being that a child's thought process is completely different from an adult, many child psychologists have developed their own personal theories on how this procedure occurs.

Cognitive development refers to the way an infant perceives, thinks, and gains an understanding of his/her world through the interaction of genetic and learned factors like processing, reasoning, language development, and memory (Theory of development, 2009). This has been studied by many theorists (Erickson, Piaget, Vygotsky, etc) in various ways that all contribute to our understanding of how children develop. One example of an issue debated within this theory was the emergence of the intelligence quotient, or IQ test, brought on by Lewis Terman. These tests are used to determine were a child is mentally by obtaining scores that place them in a particular category. IQ tests however are often criticized for being too narrow as well as too biased in regards to race and gender (Cognitive development, 2009). Another example debated within this issue is how behaviorist B.F. Skinner argued that all children are easily influenced and they gain intelligence through positive reinforcement.

Two of the most influential developmental theorist are Jean Piaget and Lev Semionovich Vygotsky who both have very distinct yet some of the same opinions about this topic. Some similarities between the two theories are that both Piaget and Vygotsky's view on the nature or development of intelligence has to do with the acquisition of sign systems which happens in an invariant sequence of steps that is the same for all children (Slavin, 2009). In other words, children learn by remembering certain object by the way they interact with them. They were also both referred to as constructivist because of the idea of mental construction. To them children learn by putting together new information with information that they already know (Theory of cognitive development, 2009).

Jean Piaget's own personal view on the nature or development of intelligence differs from Vygotsky's because Piaget believes children need to develop first before they can learn and that knowledge comes from action (Slavin, 2009). In other words they learn by interacting with their surroundings, he did not believe it was by the input from others. He provides many examples to support his theory, one of which is schemes. Schemes play an important role when describing his theory because whenever a child exhibits a certain pattern of behavior or thinking, they are demonstrating schemes (Slavin, 2009). An example of this is how babies will often grab items to shake or to put them into their mouth. These schemes enable them to become more familiar with that object.

Assimilation and accommodation also plays an important role in Piaget's theory. When a child shows assimilation, they are showing that they understand it because of a ...