Piaget's Stages Of Development From Birth To Adulthood

Toddlerhood is the period between 12 to 36 month when children start to walk independently and run easily (Crisp & Taylor, 2009, p.177). In this life stage, there are many different changes in physical, cognitive and psychosocial behaviour due to them becoming more independent and active as they start to walk. This essay will describe the physical, cognitive and psychosocial characteristics and describe ^theory of Piaget and Vygotsky. It will also discuss two aspects of health behaviour of toddlerhood which are nutrition and safety. In the toddlerhood stage, height and weight growth is obvious and motor skills develop rapidly. According to Berk (2014, p.167), average height for two year old is 86 cm. Children grow about two to three inches
He was interested in intellectual development so he saw children as constantly constructing and re-constructing reality to achieve increased understanding by changing simple concepts to more complex ones at each stage of development (Pound Hughes, 2012, p.36). He argued that there was a natural sequence for the development of thought governed by what he termed ‘genetic epistemology (Pound Hughes, 2012, p.36). Piaget identified four stages of development which are the sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage and formal operations stage (Berger, 2011, p.45-46). The sensorimotor stage is the first stage and it occurs between births and age two. In this stage, he believes that infants try to understand the world by coordinating sensory experience such as hearing and seeing (Santrock, 2014, p.23). The Second stage is the preparation stage and it occurs between ages two and six. He states that in this stage children learn to describe the world or objects by word because they start to use their capacity of symbolic thought (Peterson, 2010, p.122). This can help them to improve language and problem solving. However their thinking is not logical yet and also they are still egocentric (Peterson, 2010, p.122). By aged seven to eleven which is the concrete operational stage, they become more logical and
However, Vygotsky emphasises that social interaction and culture are much more important for cognitive development than Pidget did. (Santrock, 2014, p.24) Vygotsky’s theory is a sociocultural cognitive theory which emphasises how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development (Santrock, 2014, p.24). He believed that children’s language is social in origin because it can help them to interact with another child (Pound& Hughes, 2012, p). Vygotsky believes while it is very important to clarify the main points, talking with others is far more important in learning about communication (Pound&Hughes, 2012, p.36). He states that children can solve problems with the help of speech as well as their body language (Pound Hughes, 2012, p.36). Children do not simply communicate with words. They also use facial expression and body language to understand meaning (Sigelman, 2013, p.52). Vygotsky also develop another theory called the ‘zone of proximal development’ (Pound&Hughes, 2012, p.36). This theory describe what children can do themselves and what they can do with someone’s help who has more experience and more skill (Pound&Hughes, 2012, p.36). He argues that the ability to learn by instruction is a basic feature of human intelligence (Pound&Hughes, 2012, p.36). When adult help childern to learn, it can encourage the development of knowledge and