Professional Documents
Culture Documents
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Name:
Saeid Ataei
1101600817
Introduction
Jean Piaget was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, on 9th August 1896. He is a pioneer of Swiss
Philosopher and Child Psychologist and one of the leading researchers in development
psychology in 20th century. Piaget started his career on psychology and education at the age of
22. While working with Alfred Binet, Piaget observes how children think and answer, react to
the environment, how they absorb the knowledge, and how they learn. That is how Piaget
extends his interest in children development. And Piaget make a conclusion that children are not
stupid but they are taught in different ways. Children need to interact with environment and learn
from mistakes in order to learn.
E.g.: Dog. The children saw a puddle as a dog, the schema will
be small, furry, four legs, a pair of eyes, ears, tail. When the
children started to known about the puddle, it will fit in as new
information such as golden fur or naughty dog.
Assimilation
It is a process where the information exists and fit into preexisting schema.
E.g.: The dog can bark. When the children saw the dog, it will
automatically tell them all the dogs barks.
Accommodation
Adaption
adaption;
the
process
of
assimilation
and
accommodation.
Equilibrium
Seeking
cognitive
stability
through
assimilation
and
accommodation.
-
The concept of assimilation and accommodation are vital for children to learn the activity by
questioning and exploring.
E.g.: If a toy placed in their palm, they will automatically grab it.
E.g.: A ball falls from the table. And the infant will not take action such as go
catch the ball but they watch the action which caught their attention.
At this stage, the child began to achieve in goal-directed behavior where they
develop cause-effect relationships.
Object permanence is an object that exist where the child cant identity them.
E.g.: The ball falls from the table. The child will crawl over to the ball and pick it
up.
The child at 12 18months tends to use their creativity and experiment it with
their previous behavior.
E.g.: The child learns how to use the ball instead of grabbing the ball.
Normally in the first few months, infant is unaware the existing of the object. For example, the
ball is hidden under the pillow. At this moment, the child will look for the ball. Then, the child
determines to find the hidden ball. They will give up if still couldnt find where is the ball hidden.
After a few months, they are able to find out where the ball is hidden under. This is to enable
child to learn that the object existence around them.
reasoning. At the age of 4years, the child has almost mastered his or her mother tongue. Now,
the child can build a sentence. For example, a child sticks their arms together at the back and
jump around, its symbolizing the movement of a frog. This shows that the child can form
between language, action, and object. Egocentrism is not a moral value, selfish. It is a view of
the world relate to yourself only. Most of the child struggle to understand the condition from the
other view. For example, below pictures are shown by Piaget and Inhelder (1956) to ask the
children what pictures they can get on 3D model.
During the examination, Piaget shows the 8cards of possible view of the mountain to the children
and the children having difficulties to pick the correct picture.
events but they have difficulty to understand abstract or hypothetical concepts. For example,
teacher asked the children who are the tallest among Ali, Abu and Ahmad. Ali is taller than Abu.
Ali is shorter than Ahmad. Children cannot provide a correct answer because the situation is
theoretical. If dolls are used to represent Ali, Abu and Ahmad, the children will be able to answer
it. This is because the situation is concrete with physical representations.
picture. If the scene replace by toys or animals, the children still can spot which are the correct
picture of the perspective. In another meaning, the child start to develop another persons of view.
Researcher also stated that Piaget devalue the social mechanism of cognitive development,
infants and young children are competent than Piaget found, childrens thinking is not as
consistent as Piagets theory and Piaget look down on childs abilities.
Conclusion
In a nut shell, children need to explore, manipulate, experiment, search, question and find out the
answer by themselves. Activity is vital. Parents and teachers need to find out the children
strengths and weakness. Parents and teachers must guide, give motivation, allow children to
learn from mistakes and prepare learning material which allow them to explore new learning.
Most importantly, parents and teachers should have confidence in the childs capability to learn
on their own and seek what their interest is in.
References
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