Cognitive Development free essay sample

Process Essay Cognitive Development There have been many different areas of interest in the field of psychology. The most popular area is the cognitive development of children. Cognitive development is the growth in childrens ways of thinking about and interacting with their environment. Some of the famous theorists concerning in the development of cognitive human development are Freud, Erikson and Piaget. The most accurate theory is Piaget’s theory. His theory provided many fundamental concepts in the field of developmental psychology and concerned the growth of intelligence. Piaget divided the cognitive development into four stages period that children use to understand the world, roughly correlated with and becoming increasingly sophisticated with age: The first stage is the sensorimotor stage that begins from birth until two years of age. During this stage, the child is concerned with gaining motor control and learning about physical objects. Children are curious explorers and try to the think about the world by interacting with it. But as more experiment and large number of researches were conducted, those revealed that the mental organizing and processing information occupied critical position during learning process which refer to cognitive approach. Cognitive approach emphasizes the learners’ characteristics and mental work compared with earlier associationism and behaviorism. During learning process which under cognitive approach, the learner are assumed to be active information processor and the previous knowledge which existing learners mind interacting with new information leads to learning outcome. As educational instructors, more attention should be allocated to how to actively motivate learners such as using reward and instructional objects in order to improve the learning outcome. Secondly, under the situation of fully knowing the importance and procedure of how cognitive approach working, intervention the cognitive process in different age level is adopted which considered as a method to improve the learning outcome. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development establishes an example of it. Piaget’s theory describes four stages of cognitive development of children which are sensorimotor, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage and formal operational stage. At the first stage sensorimotor, which around from birth to age 2, (Educational Psychology (2013)) children are lack of languages and internal representation and behaviors are limited as well. According Piaget’s theory, object performance is the most achievement among this stage. Object performances represents the ability of infants to realize that an object is permanent exists even though cannot be seen. An example is peek-a-boo, an younger infant believe that the object is vanished and would laugh when the object shows up again, however, an older infant who aware the object performance would understanding the object is still there no matter is be seen or not. Second stage of Piaget’s work is called preoperational which approximately from age two to seven (Educational Psychology (2013)). At this stage, languages development is the most significant performance, other feature is egocentrism which means that children would only see the thing form their own perspectives and difficult to understand other’s point of views. A well-known Piaget’s experiment is â€Å"three mountain tasks†. A child sits in front of an mountain asked what view can be seen from this angle and then asked what view can others can see in a different angle while the child still on the original position. The answer is till the views that the child can see from his or her position. This task shows that children around this age are egocentrism. Irreversibility and conservation are also the characteristic among this age. The third stage is called concrete operational which around age seven to eleven (Educational Psychology (2013)). Among this age, children start to think things logically and more mental operation but still have difficult to understanding abstract and hypothetical concepts, loss of egocentrism, irreversibility and able to consider different perspectives are other accomplishment during this stage. The final stage from age eleven to adulthood is called formal operational (Educational Psychology (2013)). During this stage people begin to consider abstract concept, imply more logical thought and deductive reasoning. Finally, education implication is also important to cognitive development. Different stages requiring different teaching skills. At sensorimotor stage educational instructor can provide a rich stimulating environment and allow the child to play with toys. For children at preoperational stage, hands-on practice, props and visual aids should be encouraged, educational instructors don not expect the child to understand different perspectives, and instruction should be short and more using actions as well as words. Educational instructor for children on concrete operational stage should provide more chance to classify and group objects, give children the chance to manipulate objects and test out ideas, using familiar example to explain new ideas and presentation should be brief and organized. For people on formal operational stage, educational instructor should continue use strategies and materials used in former stage, provide opportunity to explore various hypothetical problems and teaching concepts not just facts. In conclusion, cognitive activities are related to process information through mental procedure. Although Piaget’s theory of cognitive development may not perfection, inspiring and encourage people to discover and explore the cognitive activities would continues. Schema Theory Schemas refer to mental process of understanding and knowing information. The schema theory suggests that existing schemas will influence cognitive process. If information is missing, the brain fills in blank based on existing schemas and creates memory alterations. For example, a kid has a schema about cats. If this kid’s own experience about cats is small cat, clean and four legs. And the child could think that all cats are small, clean and four legs. Assume the child saw a large cat, the child will then take the new information, altering the existing scheme about cat to including this new information. Schemata are actually do not exist, they are hypothesized data framework which indicated that information or knowledge store in memory. Schema can be assimilated and accommodated according to Piaget’s theory and those are also key concepts of Piaget’s theory (Educational Psychology (2013)). Assimilation refers to a process that takes new information to existing schema. The example above shows when a child seeing a cat and then mark it as a cat, is an example assimilating an animal to animal schema. Accommodation refers to a process that alerting existing schema in order to adopt the new information. References Bruning. H. , Schraw J. , amp; Norby. M. Cognitive Psychology and Instruction (Fifth Edition). 501 Boylston Street, Boston: Allyn amp; Bacon Educational Psychology (2013): Formal Operational Stage of Cognitive Development, from About. com Educational Psychology web site: http://psychology. about. com/od/piagetstheory/p/formaloperation. htm Educational Psychology (2013): Background and Key Concept of Piaget’s Theory, from About. com Educational Psychology web site: http://psychology. about. com/od/piagetstheory/a/keyconcepts. htm Cognitive Development. What is cognitive development 1-2. From Google Database.