Cognition and Development
What is Cognitive development
Cognitive development is a general term describing the development of all mental processes, in
particular thinking, reasoning, and our understanding of the world.
What are psychologists who study cognitive development interested in?
Cognitive development continues throughout the lifespan but psychologists who study cognitive
development are interested in the ways in which thinking, and reasoning develops through childhood.
It is broadly agreed that there are two questions that need to be answered:
1. What develops? (How children think and reason at particular ages?)
2. How development takes place?
, Introduction and Overview
According to Meadows (1995) in studying cognition and development we are concerned with “the child
as a thinker”
However
Different theoretical accounts of how the child’s thinking develops rests on very different images of
what the child is like.
Piaget
Writing from the 1930s until 1970s, Swiss Biologist and Psychologist Jean Piaget produced an influential
theory of cognitive development.
Sees the child as an organism adapting to its own environment as well as a scientist constructing its own
understanding of the world.
For this reason, his views are sometimes known as constructivist.
Piaget's stage theory had a dramatic influence on teaching and education from the 1960’s onwards.
Vygotsky
In contrast sees the child as a participant in an interactive process by which socially and culturally
determined knowledge and understanding gradually become individualized.
The development of social cognition
Robert Selman studied the role of perspective taking in children’s development.
Theory of mind – what is going on in the mind of another person.
The role of mirror neurons in social cognition.
But
Some years ago, Piaget’s theory was regarded as the major framework within child development.
What is Cognitive development
Cognitive development is a general term describing the development of all mental processes, in
particular thinking, reasoning, and our understanding of the world.
What are psychologists who study cognitive development interested in?
Cognitive development continues throughout the lifespan but psychologists who study cognitive
development are interested in the ways in which thinking, and reasoning develops through childhood.
It is broadly agreed that there are two questions that need to be answered:
1. What develops? (How children think and reason at particular ages?)
2. How development takes place?
, Introduction and Overview
According to Meadows (1995) in studying cognition and development we are concerned with “the child
as a thinker”
However
Different theoretical accounts of how the child’s thinking develops rests on very different images of
what the child is like.
Piaget
Writing from the 1930s until 1970s, Swiss Biologist and Psychologist Jean Piaget produced an influential
theory of cognitive development.
Sees the child as an organism adapting to its own environment as well as a scientist constructing its own
understanding of the world.
For this reason, his views are sometimes known as constructivist.
Piaget's stage theory had a dramatic influence on teaching and education from the 1960’s onwards.
Vygotsky
In contrast sees the child as a participant in an interactive process by which socially and culturally
determined knowledge and understanding gradually become individualized.
The development of social cognition
Robert Selman studied the role of perspective taking in children’s development.
Theory of mind – what is going on in the mind of another person.
The role of mirror neurons in social cognition.
But
Some years ago, Piaget’s theory was regarded as the major framework within child development.
