Cognitive Development

According to Woolfolk( 2010),”Cognitive development gradual orderly changes by which mental processes become more complex and sophisticated”. Psychologist and philosopher Jean Piaget is known as an significant figure in studies of cognition with children”. According to Piaget, “there are four stages of cognitive development an individual passes through, each stage is marked by shifts in how children understand and interact with the world around them, (1) sensor motor stage, (2) Preoperational stage, (3) Concrete operational, (4) Formal operational stage” (Lee & Gupta, 1995).
Sensorimotor stage-during this stage, infants are developing their sensory motor skills and cognition. This is the earliest in Piaget's theory of cognitive development.
Concrete operational stage- The concrete operational stage is the third in Piaget's theory of cognitive development. This period spans the time of middle childhood and is characterized by the development of logical thought. While kids at this age become more logical about concrete and specific things, they still struggle with abstract ideas. Formal operational stage-during this stage, children from the age of eleven to approximately fifteen-twenty is starting to think logically and to comprehend abstract propositions. In contrast to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, a Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky developed a theory of “cognitive development called the sociocultural theory” (Lee & Gupta, 1995). He studied the mental development of children, including how they play and speak. Vygotsky’s theory includes three crucial concepts connected
Vygotsky does not refer to stages in the way that Piaget does. Hence Vygotsky assumes cognitive development varies across cultures, whereas Piaget states cognitive development is mostly universal across cultures. Vygotsky places considerably more emphasis on social factors contributing to cognitive development (Piaget is criticized for underestimating this). Vygotsky states “cognitive development stems from social interactions from guided learning within the zone of proximal development as children and their partners co-construct knowledge” (Lee & Gupta, 1995). In contrast Piaget maintains that cognitive development stems largely from independent explorations in which children construct knowledge of their own. For Vygotsky, the environment in which children grow up will influence how they think and what they think about. Vygotsky places more emphasis on the role of language in cognitive development (again Piaget is criticized for lack of emphasis on this), (Lee & Gupta, 1995). For Vygotsky, cognitive development results from an internalization of language. According to Piaget, “language depends on thought for its development” (Carlson, 2013). For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three years of age, producing