Cognitive development

Cognitive development is the field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's developing in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, Linguistic communication learning, as well as other aspects of the developed person brain in addition to cognitive psychology. Qualitative differences between how a child processes their waking experience and how an person processes their waking experience are acknowledged such as object permanence, the apprehension of logical relations, and cause-effect reasoning in school-age children. Cognitive development is defined as the emergence of the ability to consciously cognize, understand, and articulate their understanding in adult terms. Cognitive development is how a person perceives, thinks, and gains understanding of their world through the relations of genetic and learning factors. There are four stages to cognitive information development. They are, reasoning, intelligence, language, and memory. These stages start when the baby is approximately 18 months old, they play with toys, listen to their parents speak, they watch tv, anything that catches their attention helps determining their cognitive development.

Jean Piaget was a major force establishing this field, forming his "theory of cognitive development". Piaget reported four stages of cognitive development: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational period. numerous of Piaget's theoretical claims cause since fallen out of favor. His representation of the near prominent vary in cognition with age, is generally still accepted today e.g., how early perception moves from being dependent on concrete, external actions. Later, abstract understanding of observable aspects of reality can be captured; main to the discovery of underlying abstract rules and principles, usually starting in adolescence

In recent years, however, choice models take been advanced, including information-processing theory, neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development, which goal to integrate Piaget's ideas with more recent models and image in developmental and cognitive science, theoretical cognitive neuroscience, and social-constructivist approaches. Another such model of cognitive development is Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory. A major controversy in cognitive development has been "nature versus nurture", i.e, the question whether cognitive development is mainly determined by an individual's innate atttributes "nature", or by their personal experiences "nurture". However, it is for now recognized by almost experts that this is a false dichotomy: there is overwhelming evidence from biological and behavioral sciences that from the earliest points in development, gene activity interacts with events and experiences in the environment.

Historical origins: The history and theory of cognitive development

Jean Piaget is inexorably linked to cognitive development as he was the number one to systematically explore developmental processes. Despite being the number one to imposing a systemic study of cognitive development, Piaget was not the first to theorize about cognitive development. A few that are worth mentioning are referenced in the coming after or as a calculation of. chart. It is specified to be a more inclusive list of researchers who have studied the processes of acquiring more complex ways of cognitive development across the lifespan:

Jean Piaget 1896–1980 believed that people come on through stages of development that allow them to think in new, more complex ways.

The first stage in Piaget's stages of cognitive development is the sensorimotor stage. This stage lasts from birth to two years old. During this stage, behaviors lack a sense of thought and logic. Behaviors gradually conduct from acting upon inherited reflexes to interacting with the environment with a purpose in mind and being excellent to live the outside world at the end.

The sensorimotor stage has been broken down into six sub stages that explain the slow development of infants from birth to age 2. once the child gains the ability to mentally symbolize reality, the child begins the transition to the preoperational stage of development.

Each child is born with inherited reflexes that they usage to gain cognition and understanding about their environment. Examples of these reflexes include grasping and sucking.

Children repeat behaviors that happen unexpectedly because of their reflexes. For example, a child's finger comes in contact with the mouth and the child starts sucking on it. if the sensation is pleasurable to the child, then the child will effort to recreate the behavior. Infants usage their initial reflexes grasping and sucking to explore their environment and create schemas. Schemas are groups of similar actions or thoughts that are used repeatedly in response to the environment. once a child begins to create schemas they use accommodation and assimilation to become progressively adapted to the world. Assimilation is when a child responds to a new event in a way that is consistent with an existing schema. For example, an infant may assimilate a new teddy bear into their putting matters in their mouth scheme and use their reflexes to make the teddy bear go into their mouth. Accommodation is when a child either modifies an existing schema or forms an entirely new schema to deal with a new object or event. For example, an infant may have to open his or her mouth wider than usual to accommodate the teddy bear's paw.

The child has an experience with an external stimulus that they find pleasurable, so they attempt to recreate that experience. For example, a child accidentally hits the mobile above the crib and likes to watch it spin. When it stops the child begins to grab at the object to make it spin again. In this stage, habits are formed from general schemas that the infant has created but there is non yet, from the child's constituent of view, all differentiation between means and ends. Children cannot also focus on companies tasks at once, and only focus on the task at hand. The child may create a habit of spinning the mobile in its crib, but they are still trying to find out methods tothe mobile in grouping to get it to spin in the way that they find pleasurable. Once there is another distraction say the parent walks in the room the baby will no longer focus on the mobile. Toys should be assumption to infants thatto a child's actions to support foster their investigative instincts. For example, a toy plays a song when you push one button, and then a picture pops up if you push another button.

Behaviors will be displayed for a reason rather than by chance. They begin to understand that one action can cause a reaction. They also begin to understand object permanence, which is the realization that objects continue to exist when removed from view. For example: The baby wants a rattle but the blanket is in the way. The baby moves the blanket to get the rattle. Now that the infant can understand that the object still exists, they can differentiate between the object, and the experience of the object. According to psychologist David Elkind, "An internal representation of the absent object is the earliest manifestation of the symbolic function which develops gradually during theyear of life whose activities dominate the next stage of mental growth."

Actions occur deliberately with some variation. For example, a baby drums on a pot with a wooden spoon, then drums on the floor, then on the table.

Children begin to build mental symbols and start to participate in pretend play. For example, a child is mixing ingredients together but does not have a spoon so they pretend to use one or use another object to replace the spoon. Symbolic thought is a representation of objects and events as mental entities or symbols which gives foster cognitive development and the layout of imagination. According to Piaget, the infant begins to act upon intelligence rather than habit at this point. The end product is established after the infant has pursued for the appropriate means. The means are formed from the schemas that are call by the child. The child is starting to learn how to use what it has learned in the first two years to develop and further explore their environment.

Lasts from 2 years of age until 6 or 7. It can be characterized in two somewhat different ways. In his early work, before he had developed his structuralist theory of cognition, Piaget described the child's thoughts during this period as being governed by principles such as egocentrism, animism, and other similar constructs. Egocentrism is when a child can only see asituation his or her own way. One cannot comprehend that other people have other views and perceptions of scenarios. Animism is when an individual permits a lifeless object human-like qualities. An individual usually believes that this object has human emotions, thoughts, and intentions. Once he had filed his structuralist theory, Piaget characterized the preoperational child as lacking the cognitive frameworks possessed by the concrete operational child. The absence of these settings explains, in part, the behaviors Piaget had before described as egocentric and animistic, for example, an inability to comprehend that another individual may have different emotional responses to similar experiences. During this stage children also become increasingly adept at using symbols as evidenced by the increase in playing and pretending.

Lasts from 6 or 7 years until about 12 or 13. During this stage, the child's cognitive structures can be characterized by reality. Piaget argues that the same general principles can be discerned in a wide range of behaviors. One of the best-known achievements of this stage is conservation. In a typical conservation experiment a child is call to judge whether or not two quantities are the same – such as two equal quantities of liquid in a short and tall glass. A preoperational child will typically judge the taller, thinner glass to contain more, while a concrete operational child will judge the amounts still to be the same. The ability to reason in this way reflects the development of a principle of conservation.

This stage lasts from 12 or 13 until adulthood, when people are advancing from logical reasoning with concrete examples to abstract examples. The need for concrete examples is no longer fundamental because abstract thinking can be used instead. In this stage adolescents are also professionals such as lawyers and surveyors to view themselves in the future and can picture the ideal life they would like to pursue. Some theorists believe the formal operational stage can be dual-lane up into two sub-categories: early formal operational and unhurried formal operation thought. Early formal operational thoughts may be just fantasies, but as adolescents advance to late formal operational thought the life experiences they have encountered restyle those fantasy thoughts to realistic thoughts.

Many of Piaget's claims have fallen out of favor. For example, he claimed that young children cannot conserve numbers. However, further experiments showed that children did not really understand what was being asked of them. When the experiment is done with candies, and the children are asked which brand they want rather than having to tell an adult which is more, they show no confusion about which combine has more items. Piaget argues that the child cannot conserve numbers if they do not understand one-to-one correspondence. There needs to be more information and experiments on whether children understand numbers and quantities the way we do.

Piaget's theory of cognitive development ends at the formal operational stage that is usually developed in early adulthood. It does not take into account later stages of adult cognitive development as described by, for example, Harvard University professor Robert Kegan.