KEL5100: CHILD DEVELOPMENT THEORY
Student
Ayda Azharkamandi
GS35985
History of cognitive approach
Cognition is the mental activity and behavior that allows us to understand the world. It includes the functions of learning, perception, memory, and thinking; and it is influenced by biological, environmental, experimental, social, and motivational factors. Varieties of theories have been proposed to explain the pattern of cognitive development observed in children. However, the psychological study of cognition is a relatively new area of study with its origins in the 1950's. The study of metacognition is even newer, much of the work in this area originated in the 1970's.
Cognitive theory maintains that how one thinks largely determines how one feels and behaves. This relates to and incorporates to all forms of knowing, including memory, psycholinguistics, thinking, comprehension, motivation, and perception.
Before Piaget revolutionized our understanding of children’s development, psychology was dominated by the influence of the two diametrically opposed theoretical views of behaviorism and psychoanalysis. They share one essential feature, which is that the child is seen as the passive recipient of his or her upbringing – development results from such things as the severity of toilet training and of rewards and punishments. Neither approach gives much credit to the child in shaping his or her own course of development. With Piaget, all this changed.
History of Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) was employed at the Binet Institute in the 1920s, where his job was to develop French versions of questions on English intelligence tests. He became intrigued with the reasons children gave for their wrong answers on the questions that required logical thinking. He believed that these incorrect answers revealed important differences between the thinking of adults and children. Piaget was the first psychologist to make a