Assignment No 2

Q no 1: Write a detailed note on Cognitive development in all areas of life. 9 marks

Answer: Cognition is a mental process of getting knowledge and understanding through

experiences, senses and thoughts.

Jean Piaget’s Cognitive development Theory;

Schemas: These are the concepts that organize and interpret information.
Assimilations; It occurs when children incorporate new information into their existing
knowledge.
Accommodation: It happens when children adjust schemas to fit in new information.
Organization: It means grouping or arranging items into categories.
Equilibrium: Piaget used this concept to explain how children move from one stage to other.
This occurs as children experience cognitive conflict or disequilibrium in understanding the but
they somehow solve the conflict and achieve balance or equilibrium.

Jean Piaget introduced four stage of cognitive development in a child.

 Sensorimotor Thought
 Preoperational Thought
 Concrete Thought
 Formal Operational Thought

1. Sensorimotor Thought (0-2) : It lasts from birth to two years and infant
understands the world by coordinating sensory experiences and movements.
Reflexes: In this stage actions and sensations are coordinated by reflexes. It includes
sucking, looking, listening and holding. The child would suck when a bottle or nipple is
nearby.

2. Preoperational Thought(2-7): Operations: these ae reversible mental actions

 represented by worlds, images and drawings.
This second stage of cognitive development starts from 2years and ends at 7 years. Child
learns to represent the world with images, worlds and drawings.
This stage is divided into 2 substages:
-Symbolic Stage
-Intuitive Stage

Symbolic Stage: It is the first substage, which occurs between the years of 2 to 4 years of age. In
this stage, the child learns the ability to represent mentally an object that is not present.
There are two limitations to this stage:
Egocentrism: The inability to distinguish between own and someone else’s perspectives. The
baby thinks what he is saying is right. Ego is the center
Animism: It is a belief that inanimate objects have life in them are capable to perform actions.

The intuitive stage: It is the second substage and occurs between the 4 to 7 years of age. In this
substage the child wants to learn answers to all sorts of questions and uses primitive reasoning.

3. Concrete operational Stage: It is the third cognitive development stag and lasts from 7
to 11 years of age. Child can perform actions and replaces intuitive reasoning with logical
reasoning.

Conservation; Child understands length, mass, weight, area and volume of objects do not
change by just altering their appearance.
Classification: child now has the ability to classify or divide things into sets or subsets and to
consider relationship between them.
Seriation: Child begins to organize their things accordingly.
Transitivity: Child learns transitions. How to change and shuffle. Child learns that if there is
relationship between first and second object and second object have relationship with third object
then there’s likely to be a relationship between first and third subject.
4. Formal Operational Thought: It is the fourth and last stage of cognitive development.
It lasts from 11 to 15 years. The individual now thinks in abstract and logical ways. Acquires
Hypothetical Reasoning: Specific to general and general to specific.
Hypothetic Deductive reasoning: Adolescence have the ability to form hypothesis to solve
problems and can deduce which is best to follow to solve problems.
Adolescent Egocentrism: The individual thinks that he has his own views and they are right just
like have their own views about themselves.
Imaginary Audience: It involves attention seeking behavior motivated by desire to get noticed
and visible. They think that they have their own ego, respect and value.

Instructions: write all assignments in your own words.

Plagiarized and copy paste material will not accepted.