1

Lesson 1

 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

In this lesson, you will learn about cognitive development which is the
acquisition and expansion of knowledge, skills, problem solving ability,
dispositions and the use of language that help children to imagine, realize and
CHILD AND ADOLESCENT
understand the things around them. Cognitive development concerns with the
affective development, which is related to the emotions and the psychomotor

LEARNERS AND
development, the movement and activities that are associated with the mental
process (Elsayary, 2018). In education, cognitive development is widely
considered to be one of the most important aspects of students' learning.

LEARNING PRINCIPLES
Read and understand the discussions on how cognitive development is
achieved according to two prominent theorists in this domain of development,
Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, and then know the commonalities and

(EDUC 101)
differences in their perspectives and their educational relevance.

I. Jean Piaget‟s Theory of Cognitive Development

If logic itself is created rather than being inborn, it follows that the
first task of education is to form reasoning." - Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

Jean Piaget (Swiss psychologist) got an initial job in Paris which had
something to do with the standardizing of the Binet-Simon tests (the first
Intelligence tests that assessed IQ score). With this chance to work with Alfred
Binet (psychologist who introduced the measurement of intelligence), Piaget
found that a lot of children of the same ages provided the same kinds of
incorrect responses to particular questions. He speculated “what could be

studied from such a scenario”? He then got the interest to learn more deeply
about intellectual or cognitive development of children and decided to conduct
a research and after an interview with hundreds of children, he found that
those who are permitted to commit mistakes do find ways to learn their errors,
to correct them, and to find solutions thus, carry out their own learning. Out of
his observations, he inferred that “children were not less intelligent than
adults, they just think differently”. He develop his Cognitive Development
Theory, a discontinuous stage theory with the three basic principles: 1)All
children go through same stages in the same order, 2) One can only be in one
stage at one time, and 3) It is not possible to regress into a previous stage. He
believed that new learning happens as new experiences are being assimilated

EDUC 101 – The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles
Module I
 2
into an already existing knowledge. He introduced the basic concepts of
schema, assimilation, accomodation, and equilibration. His theory suggests that
children move across four distinct stages of mental development.

Basic Concepts

1. Schema refers to a set of interrelated mental representations of

various things that represent the world. It then indicates the way things are
sensed, interpreted and reflected on and in the end turns out to be the
beginning of human knowledge. For example, a young child has a schema of
a dog because there is a dog at home, he knows that it is an animal, a
friendly pet who looks at him eye to eye, has four legs, furry and is less
than 1.5 feet in height. Schema serves to organize and deposit information
in the brain.

2. Adaptation: Assimilation and Accomodation

Assimilation of knowledge is a part of adaptation which occurs when a
learner incorporates a newly perceived stimulus (can be a thing or a new idea)
into existing schema. This process may sometimes be subjective as we are
influenced to adapt information to fit in with our previous views. Relating it to
the example in schema, when the same child sees an animal in a movie or in a
children‟s book, he tags it “dog” because of his previous knowledge (existing
schema) about a dog.
Accommodation is a part of adaptation that occurs when the learner
adapts the old schema or constructs a new schema on the basis of the old one in
order to accept and accommodate the new object when it fails to conform
(match) to the subject's schema. In
a movie or in a book or even in a
park, when the child sees a small
dog of about less than a foot tall
and another one taller than 3 feet,
his schema about a dog changes
incorporating the information he
just learned that a dog can be
small, big or bigger.
Piaget emphasizes that
accommodation occurs only when a
new object can arouse the interest of the subject. Accommodation indicates the
process of how the subject under the influence of the object is modified and
transformed, whereas assimilation indicates the conservative process of how the
subject modifies and transforms the object. In short, assimilation and
accommodation represent the interactions between the subject and the object
(Lei, 1987, p. 110).

EDUC 101 – The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles
 3
Piaget believed that all children try to strike a balance linking
assimilation and accommodation via a process he called equilibration. This
process is about transforming and adapting one‟s thinking to new information
in order to move from one stage of thinking into the next. In the case of the
schema of the child of a dog, for instance, when he goes to a family friend ‟s
house and is approached by an angry dog who seems to like to bite him or her,
he or she experiences a disequilibrium (whether dogs are friendly pets or not)
and later will realize that dogs cannot be friendly at all times and in all
situations.

Stages of Development

1. Sensorimotor Stage: Approximately Birth to 24 months

Infants gain their first understanding of the immediate world via their
senses and through their own actions which at first are reflexes such as looking,
sucking, listening and grasping. The goal of this period is object permanence,
the child's capability to understand that objects continue to exist even if it is
not seen by the child. Let's say, Erika, 16 month-old, insistently opens a box
where some of her toys are kept because she knows that her most-liked
“winnie the pooh” stuff toy is there even if she does not directly see it.
This stage is comprised of
six sub stages with specific
skills.1) Reflexes (0-1 month):
The child understands the
environment through reflexes. 2)
Primary circular
reactions (1-4
months): Consists
of organizing sensation and
new schemas. Say, a child may
put his/her thumb then sucks it
and since he/she finds pleasure
in it, he/she repeats the behavior. 3)
Secondary circular reactions (4-8 months): The child starts to purposefully
repeat an action to cause a response in the environment like persistently
picking up something then putting it in his or her mouth. 4) Coordination of
reactions (8-12 months): The child obviously shows purposeful actions and may
combine schemas to get the results that he or she wants. For example, a child
who wants to play with a favorite toy pushes other toys and other things out of
the way to reach that specific toy. 5) Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months):
This is the period of trial-and-error experimentation. When in the seashore, a
child digs a hole, builds a sand castle and then puts back the sand in the hole.
6) Early representational thought (18-24 months): Children start to acquire

EDUC 101 – The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles
 4
symbols to refer to events or objects and begin to understand them through
mental operations.
2. Preoperational Stage: Approximately 2 to 6 years
Language development is one hallmark of this stage where young children
are able to use symbols, numbers and words like mommy, puppy, doll and ball
to refer to a real person, animal and objects. Egocentrism is one attribute that
makes this stage distinct where young children experience difficulty to
understand the points of view of other people. Children become gradually
skilful at using symbols so there is an increased desire in pretend play. Before
the age of five, Piaget found few children manifested some comprehension of
conservation, a skill in logical thinking used to realize that some properties of
objects like number, length, mass, weight, volume, and quantity will remain
before and after any adjustment in the form, shape, or apparent size. In the
picture, the child knows that the volume of the liquid remains the same despite
of the properties of the containers. During this stage then, a specific realistic
factor like weight, volume, and quantity) remains an invariant in the child ‟s
mind. The main goal of this stage is symbolic thought (symbolic thinking).
3. Concrete Operations: Approximately 6 to 11years
School-age children can perform concrete mental operations with
symbols that utilize numbers and those with organizing objects by specific
qualities such as size or color. They acquire a better knowledge of mental
operations as they begin to think logically (inductive) about concrete events
but with difficulty in understanding abstract concepts. Inductive logic is
reasoning from a specific knowledge (or experience) to a general assumption.
The capability for reversibility prominently characterizes this stage. It is the
aptitude to know that numbers or objects can be returned (reversed) to their
original condition (example: 72 /9 = 8; 9 x 9 =72) thus, the probability to go
back to the starting point or beginning of a process.
4. Formal Operations: Approximately 11 to adulthood.
As adolescents enter this stage, they gain the ability to think in an
abstract manner by manipulating ideas in their head, without any dependence
on concrete manipulation (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). Abstract thinking,
deductive reasoning and systematic planning characterize this stage. Typically
developing early adolescents can think and reason abstractly, solve and answer
hypothetical problems. Deductive reasoning involves the ability to apply a
general principle to prove a specific outcome. This thinking skill is useful and
relevant in the sciences and mathematics. Children start to think abstractly to
reflect (and deliberate) possible consequences of actions thus, the capability of
long-term planning. While younger children use trial-and-error in
problemsolving, adolescents can systematically resolve a problem logically
because of the following attributes: 1) they can think better than children on
what is possible (instead of what is real). 2) they can think abstractly or

EDUC 101 – The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles
 5
hypothetically. 3) they begin to think metacognitively (metacognition is
awareness and understanding of one‟s thinking) thus, they show greater
introspection and self-consciousness. For instance, a student would think “I got
a failing grade in math so I must be poor in math” then after some reflections,
he or she would say ”may be not that I am not really good I in math, I just have
to exert more efforts”. 4) the thinking of adolescents can be multi-dimensional
that is why adolescents are able to talk or discuss more differentiated ideas
and can address issues based on several points of views.

II. Lev Vygotsky‟s Theory of Cognitive Development

Vygostky emphasizes that each child is born with the mental operations of
attention, sensation, perception and memory which are further developed in
his or her social and cultural environment. He stresses that social learning
precedes cognitive development and children can actively construct
knowledge. This insinuates that socialization, community and language play a
great role in the development of cognition.

Major Themes of the Theory

1. Social interaction plays a vital role in cognitive development.

Vygotsky (1978) states that “every function in the child ‟s cultural development
appears twice: first, on the social level (interpsychological), and later, on the
individual level (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary
attention, logical memory, and formation of concepts. All the higher functions
originate as actual relationships between individual”.
2. More Knowledgeable Other
(MKO). Vygotsky asserts that the most
fruitful experience in a child's education is
his or her collaboration with more skilled
partners. He explains that the more
experienced partner provides help in the
way of an intellectual scaffold, which allows
the less experienced learner to accomplish
more complex tasks than he may be possible
alone (Stone, 1995; McClellan, 1994). The
more experienced partner is the MKO which
can be anyone (a teacher, a parent, a coach,
or older adult, a peer) who has a better
understanding or higher ability level than the learner about a specific task.
3. Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD is the distance
between a learner‟s ability to perform tasks (like solving the problem)

EDUC 101 – The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles
 6
independently and under the guidance of MKO and/or with peer collaboration.
First, there is what a child can accomplish on his or her own (actual
competence), then there is the ZPD which represents what we can do with the
help of MKO (potential development). ZPD is based on the idea that mental
functions of children are still in the course of maturation and it implies that
learning can accelerate cognitive development.
4. Scaffolding. Vygotsky defined scaffolding in instruction as the “role
of teachers and others in supporting the learner‟s development and providing
support structures to get to that next stage or level” (Raymond, 2000). The
zone of proximal development stresses the constructive role of the social
partner (a teacher or a more skilled peer) of the learner. Thus, teacher
becomes a supportive tool (scaffold) for the student in the ZPD and allows the
learner to accomplish a task who was seemingly impossible. Learning is
interactive and is an interpersonal activity in which the teacher and the learner
co-construct the answer to a problem. Authority between the teacher and the
learner is shared where inequality between them resides in their respective
levels of understanding. Scaffolding then is temporary and is removed when the
learner does not need it anymore. You just have to know what to scaffold,
when to scaffold and when to end the scaffolding.
5. Mediations happen when people intentionally introduce tools and
signs between themselves and their environment in order to get specific
outcomes or benefits. Language as a cultural form of mediation points out the
use of different types of language (symbols) as mediators between the minds
and the environment. Vygotsky states that by using activity mediators, the
human being is able to modify the environment, and this is his or her way of
interacting with the nature. These mediations include “language; various
systems of counting; mnemonic techniques; algebraic symbol systems; works of
art; writing; schemes, diagrams, maps and mechanical drawings; all sorts of
conventional signs and so on” (Vygotsky, 1981, p. 137). Today, additional
mediations add computers, gadgets, technologies to paint brushes, machineries
and the like.

Piagetian and Vygostkian Concepts Compared

Vygotsky Piaget
Social learning precedes Self-development precedes learning
cognitive development
Cognitive development is propelled by
Cognitive development is propelled by the child‟s innate tendency to fit (adapt)
social interaction and cultural to new experiences
experiences
A child learns due to of instruction and A child learns due to active selfdiscovery
guidance

EDUC 101 – The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles

Cognivite development can be forced or
accelerated
The key to cognitive development is skill
to use language. Outside monologues
guide thinking and then be internalized by
the child
7
Cognitive development happens naturally
as they are explore and are ready to learn
Language develops as a result of cognitive
development. Outside monolgues are
insignificant and egocentric speech is
supplementary to thought.

EDUC 101 – The Child and Adolescent Learners and Learning Principles