COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Cognition is a collection of mental tools that human beings use to understand the environment.
Cognition include; mental activities such as attending, remembering, symbolising,
categorizing, planning, reasoning and/or problem solving.
Jean Piaget, Swiss Psychologist and Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist are two of the most
recognised cognitive psychologists that developed theories that addressed cognitive
development and learning among children. While there are similarities between the two
theories, differences exist and those differences are critical to understanding and application of
the theories in education setting.
Piaget’s Ideas about cognitive development
Human beings have Schemata (plural Schema): These are cognitive structures in which
information is stored. These structures are organised. Schemata can be created to add new
information.
Equilibration/ Equilibrium: This is the process by which children seek a balance between
what they know and what they are experiencing.
Adaptation: these are changes or adjustments in an organism due to environmental demands.
Two processes of adaptation are; assimilation and accommodation.
1. Assimilation; the process of fitting the experience and perceptions into previously
established cognitive structures, which are schema.
2. Accommodation: The process, by which existing cognitive structures are modified,
altered or reorganised to deal with environmental demands or new information.
If an individual fails to adapt during the process of assimilation, this may lead to
disequilibrium.
Stages of cognitive development
Piaget came up with four stages of cognitive development: sensory-motor stage,
Preoperational stage, concrete operational stage and formal stage.
1. Sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years)
During this stage, infants think with their eyes, ears, hands and other senses. Children’s
cognitive system is limited to motor reflexes. The child later builds on these reflexes to develop
procedures that are more sophisticated.
✓ Children manipulate the world using senses and motor activities, hence the term
sensorimotor. Children learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking,
grasping, looking, and listening.
✓ During this stage, children develop object permanence. Object permanence is an
understanding that objects and people do not disappear or cease to existing when they
are out of sight.

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 2. Preoperational stage (2 to 6/7 years)
Children acquire representational skills in the area of mental imagery, especially language.
Children are self-oriented and have egocentric view, that is preoperational children can use the
representational skills to view the world only from their own perspective.
✓ Children at this stage are not yet capable of using logical thing or reasoning based on
concrete evidence.
✓ Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent
objects.
Characteristics of preoperational children
➢ Animism: children at this stage cannot distinguish between living and non-living objects.
Children believe animals and non-living objects are able to talk and capable of thinking.
➢ Egocentrism: a child sees things from one point of view and has no regards for others. The
child does not realise that other people may not share his or her point of view. Egocentrism
is the viewing things from one’s viewpoint and ignore other’s perspective.
➢ Reversibility: children have problem with reversing things to their point of origin. They
cannot reverse a situation mentally to the point of origin. The ability to change one’s
direction of thinking to enable one to return to a starting point. Children have problem with
performing a mental task and then reverse one’s thinking to the starting point.
➢ Egocentric speech (speaking to oneself): children engage in egocentric speech during play.
➢ Overgeneralisation: children have a tendency of generalising things. For example, all four
legged animals are dogs.
➢ Engage in symbolic play: during this stage, children may use objects such as a box, to
symbolise a car when playing.
➢ Centration: children at this stage exhibit the characteristic of centration. Centration is the
tendency of focusing on one aspect of a situation to the neglect of other important features.
➢ Conservation: children have the inability to conserve; conservation is the knowledge that
quantities remain the same despite changes in their appearance.
Children during this stage may also engage in isolated play.

3. Concrete operational stage (7 to 12 years)

Children overcome egocentrism during this stage. Children understand things using concrete
objects.
➢ Children at this stage begin to understand the concept of conservation.
➢ Children’s thinking begins to be logical and organized, but still very concrete.
➢ Children begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a
general principle.
➢ The egocentrism of the previous stage begins to disappear and children start considering
how other people might view a situation. During this stage, children begin to understand
that their thoughts are unique to them and that not everyone shares their thoughts,
feelings and opinions.
➢ Children at this stage engage in socialised play.
➢ At this stage, children face challenges with abstract information.
4. Formal operational stage(11/12 and above)

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 Children at this stage can handle abstract information.
✓ Begin to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific
information.
✓ At this point, people become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to
problems and think more scientifically about the world around them.
✓ The ability to systematically plan for the future and reason about hypothetical
situations are also critical abilities that emerge during this stage.
✓ Children can also handle figurative language and understand metaphobic
language.

IMPLICATIONS OF PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

TO TEACHERS
• Teachers should match teaching methods to the cognitive level of the pupils.
Teacher should observe learners during problem solving and note the kind of
logic they are using. Teachers should observe the kind of mistakes learners
make and determine the thinking of the learners.
• Teachers should ask learners to apply recently learnt principles in one situation
to another.
• Teachers should interact with learners in order to test their thinking, challenge
them, receive feedback and see how they work out problems.
• Teachers should use Piaget’s tasks to determine the intellectual levels of
learners.
• Teachers should remember that children’s thinking process is different from that
of adults, hence should exercise patience.
• Instructions should be sequenced carefully when teaching learners. For
instance, when teaching math, start with simple operations such as addition and
move on to subtraction.
TEACHING CHILDREN
- Teachers should use concrete objects and visual aids.

- Teachers should help children during the teaching and learning processes.

- Teachers should use familiar objects to explain more ideas and problems.

-
Teachers should present problems that require logical and analytical thinking.

- Teachers should continue to use concrete operational teaching strategies during

formal stage such as charts, encourage group discussions and teach broad concepts.

STRENGTH OF PIAGET’S VIEW

- Piaget’s theory contributed to the understanding of cognitive develops in children.

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 - The theory equally contributed to specifications of the developmental stages in
learning.

- Piaget’s theory contributed to the enhancement of teaching methods for children.

CRITICISMS
- Some psychologists criticised Piaget’s theory of cognitive development that
depicted four stages and argued that not all children follow the four stages as
claimed by Piaget.

- Piaget’s concept of egocentrism was disputed. To prove this, Flavell presented gifts
to children in preoperational for their parents and asked them to choose appropriate
gifts for their fathers, demonstrating that children are the views of others when they
had experiences.

- Other criticisms were that the nature of the task and the past learning experiences
of the child may be more important than Piaget realised.

- The theory is difficult to prove statistically. For instance, the theory talks about
egocentrism schemas that cannot be measured statistically.

- Some psychologists believed that cognitive development can be accelerated

through training, implying that Piaget overestimated the formal operation thinking
of adolescence and adulthood and underestimated the cognitive abilities of young
children.

- Piaget overlooked the looked the importance of the child’s cultural and social
groups. Culture and social groups are cardinal in enhancing cognitive development.

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