Cognitive Theory Paper

Importance of Cognitive Development 1. Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget together came up with a theory of child development known as the Cognitive Theory. This theory has to do with the development of a young child’s brain. Specifically it has to do with the development in a child’s ideas, beliefs, and assumptions ( 47). These beliefs can be altered based on everyday experiences and understandings. As a child grows and develops their cognitive development changes in a child’s schema allows a child to go through assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium. Schema is a belief or assumption of a young child and it involves both mental and physical actions involved in understanding a piece of information. As a child learns new information they must be able to take that new information and apply it to old information. Young children do this all the time as it is apart of their cognitive development. One stage is called assimilation which is known as taking new information and labeling it based on previous information. For example anything with four legs, is small, and barks is known as a dog. However, when a child sees an animal with four legs, barks and is large is also called a dog, the child then has to go through accommodation. When a child takes old information and adapts it to fit in with the new information the child will have gone through a process call accommodation. This is all part of the way a child’s mind develops cognitively. Eventually as more and more new information is added into a child’s old information the child will eventually reach a stage of equilibrium. Equilibrium is the final stage in a child’s cognitive development process of his/her schemas. This stage is when the child finds a balance between all the information learned. For example the child now might define a dog as anything that barks, walks, does tricks and obeys his/her owner. The child may define a dog this way because the child may have seen a dog with three legs