Cognitive Development

Table of Contents

ABSTRACT1

What is Cognitive Development?2

Theories of Cognitive Development2

Stages of Cognitive Development3

Sensorimotor stage3

Preoperational Stage6

Concrete Operational Stage11

Formal Operational Stage13

Issues with Cognitive Development and View of Cognitive Development14

Cognitive Learning Theories16

Cognitive Learning Model - Gerald Grow17

Cognitive Rehabilitation17

Summary18

References19

ABSTRACT

Cognitive development is an integral component of psychology and neuroscience and it mainly focuses on the development of the child in relation to conceptual resources, the child's ability to process information, the perceptual skills of the child and the ability to learn language. Apart from that, other aspects of cognitive development and psychology are also involved and compared to the point of view of adults. A lot of research has been done to analyze and study how a child imagines and understands the world around him. The theory of cognitive learning describes learning as a change of behavior that is based on the acquiring of information from the environment. Cognitive learning is linked with the acquiring of intelligence, conscious thinking and the ability to solve problems.

Cognitive Development

What is Cognitive Development?

Cognitive development is an essential component of psychology that refers to the thinking of a child and the processes that are involved with it. The field of cognitive development is based on the study of how children develop, gain and process the information they are exposed to at a given age and how that impacts their learning, changing and evolving the learning mechanisms over the course of time (Gray, 2006). The psychologists who work in the field of cognitive development study how a person perceives, thinks and gets understanding of the things and world around them by means of their interaction with the environment and the factors which are inherited by their genes or learned. The various areas which are covered by cognitive development studies include intelligence, processing of information, one's ability to reason, development of language and vocal skills, and most importantly, memory. There are many psychologists who contributed to the psychological theories and made it easier for people to understand how the brain of a child works and imagines the world around him/her. One of the most prominent persons in this field is Jean Piaget, who proved to be a vital force in discovering this area of study as he formulated the theory of cognitive development (Tuckman & Monetti, 2010).

Theories of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) was given employment at the Binet Institute during the 1920s, and his job there was to work on French versions of the questions which were given on intelligence tests held in the English language.

Before Piaget's came up with his work, the assumption which was common in people when it came to psychology was that compared to adults, children were less competent in terms of thinking. However, Piaget worked on the issues and developed the theory of cognitive development according to which, he stated that children are actually born having a very basic structure of the mind, which is inherited genetically but evolves with time, and all the subsequent knowledge and learning is based on ...