Prepared by:

Rheasel S. Solamillo
Juvielyn Banagan
Lourilli De Guzman

Submitted to:
Mr. Roger Colisao
Instructor
 The Study of Cognitive Development in Understanding Child Development

I- Introduction

Cognitive development is a major domain of early childhood development. The

term cognition refers to how the mind operates and the study of cognitive development

focuses on how the mind thinks and learns during the early years of life 1. Examples of

cognitive development in childhood include children learning to distinguish between

behaviors that will be rewarded, versus those that will be punished by their parents -- and

then making decisions (e.g., to follow directions) based on this reasoning.

What is the nature of children's knowledge? How does their knowledge change

with development? In pursuing these fundamental questions in the study of cognitive

development, researchers often expand their focus to include a range of children's

behaviors extending far beyond the standard meaning of knowledge.

In the two primary cognitive-developmental traditions, the questions typically take

different forms. In the structuralist tradition, influenced strongly by the work of Jean

Piaget, Heinz Werner, and others, the questions are: How is behavior organized, and how

does the organization change with development? In the functionalist tradition, influenced

strongly by behaviorism and information processing, the question is: What are the

processes that produce or underlie behavioral change?

Why has the study of cognitive development repeatedly fallen back on approaches

that focus primarily on either the child or the environment? Why have develop mentalists

failed to build approaches based on the collaboration of child with environment?

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move

through four different stages of mental development. His theory focuses not only on

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

intelligence.1 Piaget's stages are: 1. Sensorimotor stage: birth to 2 years; 2.

Preoperational stage: ages 2 to 7; 3. Concrete operational stage: ages 7 to 11; 4. Formal

operational stage: ages 12 and up. Piaget believed that children take an active role in

the learning process, acting much like little scientists as they perform experiments, make

observations, and learn about the world.

Historically, developmental psychology has been plagued by repeated failures to

accept what should be one of its central tasks: to explain the emergence of new

organization or structure. These failures have most commonly taken either of two

complementary forms. In one form, nativism, the structures evident in the adult are seen

as already preformed in the infant. These structures need only be expressed when they

are somehow stimulated or nourished at the appropriate time in development. In the

second form, environmentalism, the structures in the adult are treated as already

preformed in the environment. These structures need only be internalized by some

acquisition process, such as conditioning or imitation. Typically, structuralist approaches

environmentalism. Although it is common to focus on the difference between nativism

and environmentalism, there is a fundamental similarity, a common preformism.

Both approaches reduce the phenomena of development to the realization of

preformed structures. The mechanisms by which the structures are realized are clearly

different, but in both cases the structures are present somewhere from the start—either

in the child or in the world (Feffer, 1982; Fischer, 1980; Sameroff, 1975; Silvern, 1984;

Westerman, 1980).

The general orientations or investigations of cognitive development are similar for

all age groups—infancy, childhood, and adulthood. The vast majority of investigations,

however, involve children of school age and for those children a number of specific issues

arise, including in particular the relationship between schooling and cognitive

development.

One of the central focuses in the controversies between structuralist and

functionalist approaches has been whether children develop through stages. Much of this

controversy has been obscured by fuzzy criteria for what counts as a stage, but significant

advances have been made in pinning down criteria (e.g., Fischer and Bullock, 1981;

Flavell, 1971; McCall, 1983; Wohlwill, 1973).

Not just Piaget; not just Vygotsky, and certainly not Vygotsky as alternative to

Piaget. There have been many interpretations published on the relative importance of the

work of both Vygotsky and Piaget: often to the detriment of the latter. This article

represents an attempt to discover the meaning and intention of the former by going back

to the specifics of what he said and wrote. By reference to what they said of each other it

is argued that by the early 30s they had reached almost identical positions regarding child

development, and that the work of each is complementary to that of the other. The

implications of this position for a theory of intervention for cognitive acceleration are then

discussed.

As we know from investigations of the process of concept formation, a concept is

more than the sum of certain associative bonds formed by memory, more than a mere

mental habit; it is a complex and genuine act of thought that cannot be taught by drilling,

but can be accomplished only when the child’s mental development has itself reached

the requisite level.

Throughout the history of the child’s development runs a ‘warfare’ between

spontaneous and non-spontaneous, systematically learned, concepts. (cf. the Alternative

Conceptions movement).

Young children are capable of understanding and actively building knowledge, and

they are highly inclined to do so. While there are developmental constraints on children’s

competence, those constraints serve as a ceiling below which there is enormous room
for variation in growth, skill acquisition, and understanding. Cognitive, social-emotional

(mental health), and physical development are complementary, mutually supportive

areas of growth all requiring active attention in the preschool years. Social skills and

physical dexterity influence cognitive development, just as cognition plays a role in

children’s social understanding and motor competence. All are therefore related to early

learning and later academic achievement and are necessary domains of early childhood

pedagogy.

While no single curriculum or pedagogical approach can be identified as best,

children who attend well-planned, high- quality early childhood programs in which

curriculum aims are specified and integrated across domains tend to learn more and are

better prepared to master the complex demands of formal schooling.

If the foregoing diagnosis is accurate, any remedy must explicitly counteract the

tendency to drift toward attributing cognitive structures to either the child or the

environment. What is needed seems to be a framework providing constructs and

methods that force researchers to explicitly deal with both child and environment when

they characterize how new structures emerge in development.

Many would recommend general systems theory, because it views the child as an

active component in a larger-scale dynamic system that includes the environment. To

date, however, systems theory does not seem to have been successful in promoting

research explicating the interaction between child and environment in development.

Many investigators appear simply to have learned the vocabulary of the approach without

changing the way they study development. Apparently, the concepts of systems theory

lack the definiteness needed to guide empirical research in cognitive development toward

a new interactional paradigm. A few provocative approaches based on general systems

concepts have begun to appear in the developmental literature (e.g., Sameroff, 1983;

Silvern, 1984), but they seem to bring to bear additional tools that specifically promote

interactional analyses.

It is in such practical tools that the proposed remedy lies. To promote interactional

analyses, a framework needs to affect the actual practice of cognitive-developmental

research. We would like to suggest that the concept of collaboration may provide the

basis for such a framework.

performance, but the effect varied as a function of the developmental level of the child's

best performance.
V- RECOMMENDATIONS

We therefore recommend that children to possess a good cognitive development

they must be encouraged to start from birth in the exploration of their environments. They

need to have tangible, hands-on experiences in order to discover how things work, what

they are, what they are not, and to be able to compare, contrast and classify. It is also

important for children to be able to reason, develop logic, and engage in a reflective

process. These aspects of development form a sound basis for future creativity and the

thinking ability to analyse, predict, and formulate new thoughts and ideas.

Much of the program research has focused on economically disadvantaged

children because they were the targets of early childhood intervention efforts. But as child

care becomes more widespread, it becomes more important to understand the

components of early childhood education that have developmental benefits for all

children.

With respect to disadvantaged children, we know that quality intervention

programs are effective, but better understanding the features that make them effective

will facilitate replication on a large scale.

So the way we raise our children today will directly impact who they

become as adults. Somehow, whatever we do, they are right behind us and without us

realizing it, and they copy everything that we do. They're learning from us all the time,

whether or not we realize we are teaching them. So, if we fall into a pattern of being
critical-- of complaining about them, others, or the world around us -- we are teaching

them to see what's wrong with the world, rather than what's right.

As parents, you should help set the stage for who our children may become. They

model our examples… from our attitudes, dispositions, words, and behaviors. How we

attend and nurture our children’s needs is fundamental to their growth & development into

healthy emotional beings. The time and attention we give to them in a loving & respectful

manner can help them to assimilate, relate & integrate their experiences with a more

stable & balanced perspective.

REFERENCES:
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK216774/
2. https://www.nap.edu/read/9745/chapter/11#319
3. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222301983_Not_just_Piaget_not_just_
Vygotsky_and_certainly_not_Vygotsky_as_alternative_to_Piaget