Christian Colleges of Southeast Asia

Ma-a, Davao City

Cognitive Development in Children and Adolescence

Submitted by:

Torres, Astrid Zelma

Saludar, April Mae D.

Submitted to:
Mrs. Helen Ang
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Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………………………I

SUMMARY…………………………………………………………………………1

ANALYSIS………………………………………………………………………….3

REACTION…………………………………………………………………………11

REFERENCES…………………………………………………………….…….…15
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PART I

SUMMARY

The purpose of this research is to explore the cognitive development of a child and

adolescence as well as to discuss the theories and ideas regarding the development of the

child and adolescence’s mental process.

Cognitive is a mental process that involves conscious intellectual activities such as

knowing, thinking or remembering, reasoning, learning and understanding. This process

leads to changes in the individual’s thoughts, intelligence and language. Cognitive

development refers to the gradual progression of the individual’s entire lifetime ability to

think and reason logically in a concrete events. It is a systematic changes in which the

mental process of a person become more complex and improved as we grow old.

Basically, cognitive development is the development of thinking across the lifespan of a

person. Thinking is a complex thing to define and it involves the higher order thinking

skills (HOTS) such as: problem solving, reasoning, planning, analyzing, creating and so

on. All of these skills will be developed from birth to adulthood.

Babies are not only developing physically as they grow, but they also develop their

cognitive ability. Children in their early age develop the ability to think in concrete ways,

such as how to connect things, separate things, put things in orderly manner and

transform objects and actions. There are several of theories of child development: stage
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theories by Jean Piaget which is also known as Piaget’s Stage Theory, Sociocultural

Theories of Lev Vygotsky and Information Processing Theories of David Klahr. There
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are other theories of child development and theories that disagree with Piaget’s Stage

Theory. These will be discussed furthermore on the next pages.

Adolescence marks the beginning development of more complicated mental

processes including thinking about the possibilities, forming own and new ideas or

questions, being able to compare one’s ideas to another or debate ideas and opinions and

the ability to consider the process of thinking. There are three (3) main areas of cognitive

development that occur during adolescence. First, is that the adolescents developed more

advanced skills. Second, adolescents develop the ability to think abstractly and third, the

formal operational thinking characteristics of adolescence enables adolescents to think

about thinking or meta-cognition. The cognitive changes during adolescence are divided

into three (3): Early Adolescence, in which adolescents are more focused on personal

decision making. Middle Adolescence, the focus usually widen to grasp more

philosophical and futuristic concerns, and Late Adolescence, which it focuses on less

self-centered concepts. These will be presented and discussed furthermore on the next

page.
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PART II

ANALYSIS

The cognitive development is a gradual mental process that involves mental

activities such as analyzing, remembering, thinking and etc. Children do not only have a

rapid physical growth when maturing, they also shows the development of their cognitive

abilities. Children aged from 6 to 12 years old develop the ability to think in concrete

ways (concrete operations), such as how to combine (addition), separate (subtract or

divide), order (alphabetize and sort), and transform (5 pennies = 1 nickel) objects and

actions. These processes are called concrete because they are performed in the presence

of the objects and events being thought about.

According to Piaget, children’s ability to understand objects such as learning that a

rattle makes a noise when shaken was a mental or cognitive skill that develops through

interactions with the environment. However, some developmental psychologists disagree

with Piaget. According to Baillargeon (1987); Li et al., (2011), they have found that even

very young children understand objects and how they work long before they have

experience with those objects. For example, children aged 3 months old showed

knowledge of the properties of objects that they had only seen and did not have prior

experience with them at all. In one study, 3-month-old infants were shown a truck rolling

down a track and behind a screen. The box, which appeared solid but was actually hollow,

was placed next to the track. The truck rolled past the box as would be expected. Then
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the box was placed on the track to block the path of the truck. When the truck was rolled

down the track this time, it continued unimpeded. Baillargeon (1987) concluded that they

knew solid objects cannot pass through each other. Baillargeon’s findings suggest that

very young children have an understanding of objects and how they work, which Piaget

(1954) would have said is beyond their cognitive abilities due to their limited experiences

in the world. We can expect children to absorb the idea that objects continue to exist even

when they are not seen by around 8 months old. Because toddlers aged 12–24 months old

have mastered object permanence, they enjoy games like hide and seek, and they realize

that when someone leaves the room they will come back (Loop, 2013). Toddlers also

point to pictures in books and look in appropriate places when you ask them to find

objects.

Preschool-age children aged 3 to 5 years old also make steady progress in cognitive

development. Not only can they count, name colors, and tell you their name and age, but

they can also make some decisions on their own such as choosing an outfit to wear.

Preschool-age children understand basic time concepts and sequencing and they can

predict what will happen next in a story. They also begin to enjoy the use of humor in

stories. Because they can think symbolically, they enjoy pretend play and inventing

elaborate characters and scenarios. One of the most common examples of their cognitive

growth is their blossoming curiosity. Preschool-age children love to ask “Why?”

An important cognitive change occurs in children this age. Recall that Piaget

described 2 to 3 year old as egocentric, meaning that they do not have an awareness of

others’ points of view. Between 3 and 5 years old, children come to understand that

people have thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that are different from their own. This is
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known as theory-of-mind (TOM). Children can use this skill to tease others, persuade

their parents to purchase a candy bar, or understand why a sibling might be angry. When

children develop TOM, they can recognize that others have false beliefs (Dennett, 1987;

Callaghan et al., 2005).

Cognitive skills continue to expand in middle and late childhood, aged from 6 to 11

years old. Thought processes become more logical and organized when dealing with

concrete information. Children at this age understand concepts such as the past, present,

and future, giving them the ability to plan and work toward goals. Additionally, they can

process complex ideas such as addition and subtraction and cause-and-effect relationships.

However, children’s attention spans tend to be very limited until they are around 11 years

old. After that point, it begins to improve through adulthood.

As the name suggests, cognitive development is about change. Children’s thinking

changes in dramatic and surprising ways. Consider DeVries’s (1969) study of whether

young children understand the difference between appearance and reality. To find out,

she brought a cat named Maynard to a psychology laboratory and allowed the 3- to

6-year-old participants in the study to pet and play with him. DeVries then put a mask of

a fierce dog on Maynard’s head, and asked the children what Maynard was. Most

3-year-olds said that he was a dog and claimed that he had a dog’s bones and a dog’s

stomach. In contrast, the 6-year-olds weren’t fooled; they had no doubt that Maynard

remained a cat. Understanding how children’s thinking changes so dramatically in just a

few years is one of the fascinating challenges in studying cognitive development.

There are several main types of theories of child development. Stage theories, such as

Piaget’s stage theory which focuses on whether children progress through qualitatively
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different stages of development. Sociocultural theories by Lev Vygotsky, emphasize how

other people and the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the surrounding culture, influence

children’s development. Information processing theories of David Klahr, examine the

mental processes that produce thinking at any one time and the transition processes that

lead to growth in that thinking.

Psychologist Jean Piaget proposed that children’s thinking progresses through a

series of four discrete stages. By “stages,” he meant periods during which children

reasoned similarly about many superficially different problems, with the stages occurring

in a fixed order and the thinking within different stages differing in fundamental ways.

During the sensorimotor stage, children’s thinking is largely realized through their

perceptions of the world and their physical interactions with it. If an infant younger than

9 months of age is playing with a favorite toy, and another person removes the toy from

view, for example by putting it under an opaque cover and not letting the infant

immediately reach for it, the infant is very likely to make no effort to retrieve it and to

show no emotional distress (Piaget, 1954). This is not due to their being uninterested in

the toy or unable to reach for it; if the same toy is put under a clear cover, infants below 9

months readily retrieve it Munakata et al., (1997). Instead, Piaget claimed that infants less

than 9 months do not understand that objects continue to exist even when out of sight.

During the preoperational stage, according to Piaget, children can solve not only

this simple problem (which they actually can solve after 9 months) but show a wide

variety of other symbolic-representation capabilities, such as those involved in drawing

and using language. However, such 2- to 7-year-olds tend to focus on a single dimension,

even when solving problems would require them to consider multiple dimensions.

During the concrete operations stage refers to children think logically in most

situations. However, according to Piaget, they still cannot think in systematic scientific

ways, even when such thinking would be useful. Thus, if asked to find out which

variables influence the period that a pendulum takes to complete its arc, and given

weights that they can attach to strings in order to do experiments with the pendulum to

find out, most children younger than age 12, perform biased experiments from which no

conclusion can be drawn, and then conclude that whatever they originally believed is

correct. For example, if a boy believed that weight was the only variable that mattered, he

might put the heaviest weight on the shortest string and push it the hardest, and then

conclude that just as he thought, weight is the only variable that matters (Inhelder &

Piaget, 1958).

Finally, in the formal operations period, children attain the reasoning power of

mature adults, which allows them to solve the pendulum problem and a wide range of

other problems. However, this formal operations stage tends not to occur without

exposure to formal education in scientific reasoning, and appears to be largely or

completely absent from some societies that do not provide this type of education.

Although Piaget’s theory has been very influential, it has not gone unchallenged.

Many more recent researchers have obtained findings indicating that cognitive

development is considerably more continuous than Piaget claimed. For example,

Diamond (1985) found that on the object permanence task described above, infants show

earlier knowledge if the waiting period is shorter. At age 6 months, they retrieve the

hidden object if the wait is no longer than 2 seconds; at 7 months, they retrieve it if the

wait is no longer than 4 seconds; and so on. Even earlier, at 3 or 4 months, infants show

surprise in the form of longer looking times if objects suddenly appear to vanish with no

obvious cause (Baillargeon, 1987). Similarly, children’s specific experiences can greatly

influence when developmental changes occur. Children of pottery makers in Mexican

villages, for example, know that reshaping clay does not change the amount of clay at

much younger ages than children who do not have similar experiences Price-Williams et

al., (1969).

Adolescence is the period of life when a child develops into adult. As child grow

and gets mature they became explorer in a way that they exploring their self and

exploring other abstract concepts. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development under formal

operational stage adolescence develop capacity of abstract and scientific thinking. Teens

have hypothetico-deductive reasoning in which adolescence are capable of doing

scientific method and hypothesis. (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). He/she can do mathematical

calculations, think creatively, use abstract reasoning, and imagine the outcome of

particular actions.
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Cognitive development in adolescence is more on about thinking logic,

reasoning, thinking abstractly and making a choice. The ability of adolescent is formed

on the level that they may possess. The thinking ability of an adolescent is much more

complex than in any other. Teens learn to use concrete skills to develop more their

critical thinking skills. According to Piaget, the adolescent years are remarkable because

youth move beyond the limitations of concrete mental operations and develop the ability

to think in a more abstract manner. Piaget used the term "formal operations" to describe

this new ability.

PART III

REACTION

The cognitive development of children is about change. From infant to adolescence

a young person’s mind changes gradually and dramatically. Cognitive development refers

to our ability to think expands as we grow. The brain begins to lateralize soon after birth

and basically have specific functions to carry out. As we grow we develop physically,

socially and also cognitively. We believe that life is a process therefore we go through

changes. This process is called development. Cognitive development is exciting and more

develop especially as we go on a preschool stage. During the preschool stage children’s

brain are developing at great speed. Well in fact preschooler’s brain is more active than at

any other time in our life. Children get to view and understand the world, they learn what

it is like to reason, to think symbolically, to solve problems and tend to use logic. All of

these thinking are skills that can be developed those children during their preschool stage.

This paper talks about cognitive development however Jean Piaget’s presented four

learning stages as he observed from different age of children and each stage. This theory

is called Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. His theory focuses not only an

understanding on how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature

of intelligence. So the first is the sensorimotor stage. The children at this stage are usually

from birth to 2 years of age. As we remember from our past lessons the most is
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significant things occur at this stage is that: infant involves in new sensations. For

instance, a child suck his/her thumbs and later repeat the action. As we observed a child

repeatedly do it because they find it pleasurable. The pre-operational stage is the second

stage of Piaget’s theory is age 2 to 7years old. This stage child begin to think

symbolically and begin to learn use words and other form of cognitive activities. At this

stage children are getting better with language and thinking. They think about things in

very concrete ways. The third stage is the concrete operational stage from 7 to 11 years

old. A child begin to think logically about concrete events and they also begin using

inductive logic or reasoning. And lastly, the fourth stage is formal operational from 12

and up. At this stage adolescent begin to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical

problems, they begin to think more about moral, social and political view and they also

begin to use deductive logic or reasoning. As we go along to this topic we learn more

about on how we develop our cognitive during infancy to adulthood. We can learn

something that is very essential for us to understand our cognitive development.

As humans, we are not only developing our physical self: body size and other

physical abilities, but we are also developing our emotions and intellectual abilities:

thinking skills and other cognitive abilities, as we are maturing. This developmental

period is a process in which it will begin from birth until we grow older. In other words

or to put it simply, it is a continuous process. The quote, “Change is the only constant.”

by an ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, will perfectly fit if we would describe

human developments on quotes. The development of an individual is constant. When a

person keeps on developing or improving day after day until they grow old, the
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improvement will change a person. For example: yesterday, a person was illiterate but

today, that person now knows how to write and read. Though it won’t work that way

because change may be constant, it is still gradual. Change will take the entire lifetime of

a person.

The cognitive development refers to a mental process which develops one’s mental

consciousness such as thinking, remembering, analyzing, etc. Just as what I said, it is

gradual. The development of a person could take the entire lifetime. The brain will not

wait for you to fill it with knowledge every time you want it to, it will grasp every

experiences you go through every day as you grow old instead.

The cognitive development in children would be a very crucial stage because what

they are in the future will reflect on what they have learned from the parents or guardians.

Cognitive development in childhood is a time of a dramatic brain development. The great

Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget proposed that children’s thinking progresses through a

series of four stages: Sensorimotor stage, aged from birth to 2 years old is where a child’s

perception and mental representations are limited. For example: an infant is playing with

its favorite toy and if someone would take it away, the infant would not make any effort

to retrieve it or would not show emotional distress. This is not because the infant is

interested, it is because infants did not know that objects continue to exist even when it is

not seen. Preoperational stage, aged from 2 to 6 or 7 years old is where a child shows

capabilities such as drawing and using language. Concrete Operational Reasoning Stage,

aged from 7 to 11 or 12 years old is where a child starts to think logically in most

situations and Formal Operational stage, aged from 12 to throughout the rest of life is

where a child attain reasoning which allows them to solve problem. I thought that the
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theory of Piaget is considered fact but as I searched more about this topic, I learned that

there are philosophers who disagree with his theory and presented more factual

research/ideas/theories.

The cognitive development in adolescence marks the beginning development of a

complex thinking processes. Adolescence is a period of life when a child develops into an

adult and at this stage or period of life, it is expected that the mental capabilities of an

adolescent would be improved more than before. Furthermore, an adolescent will not

only develop their thinking skills but they will also develop their emotional self and

relationships with others as they will be interacting more with other people. The journey

of their life will continue as for their experiences that could help them develop their

mental capabilities more. During adolescence , aged 12 and 18 years old is where the

teenager attain the ability to think systematically about all logical relationships within a

problem. In its early adolescence, aged from 19 to 29 years old, the development of a

teenager is more focused on decision making. For example: Which kind of people are

better to interact with, etc. In middle adolescence, an adolescent starts to think and

question more, analyzes things extensively, began to form own/ self discipline, etc.

During late adolescence, where adolescents starts to think about what careers are they

going to pursue,their thoughts about politics and other social issues increased, etc.

But of course, despite of growing physically and mentally, it also depends on a

person on how to use their experiences, knowledge, developed skills and capabilities that

they acquire. A person can only grow truly when they have the right reaction on such

situations.
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PART IV

REFERENCES

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(2001). The development of cognitive and academic abilities: Growth curves

from an early childhood educational experiment

Baillargeon, R., & DeVos, J. (1991). Object permanence in young infants: Further

evidence. Child development, 1227-1246.

Inhelder, B., & Piaget, J. (1958). The growth of logical thinking from childhood to

adolescence. New York: Basic Books.

McLeod, S. A. (2018, June 06). Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Retrieved

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Keating, D. (1979). Adolescent thinking. In J. Adelson (Ed.), Handbook of adolescent

psychology (pp. 211-246). New York: Wiley.

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Foundations of constructivism. New York: Longman.

Siegler, R. S., DeLoache, J. S., & Eisenberg, N. (2003). How children develop. New

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