Cognitive Development

Most humans are able to make sense of the world around them. We can make plans, solve problems, recall events from the past, and understand the behaviour of other humans. We tend to take such abilities for granted, but they have to be acquired. They do not appear to be present in newborn humans (neonates). As far as we can tell, babies are not born with knowledge or understanding. Babies do not appear to think. Of course it is impossible to be certain about the cognitive abilities of human neonates - they do not have language, so we cannot ask them.

A child's cognitive development is not just about acquiring knowledge. The child has to develop or construct a mental model of the world. For example, a family of two parents and four children usually eat their evening meal together. One day the eldest boy is absent on a school trip. The youngest child notices that his elder brother is missing. To be able to do this, the child must have a stored representation of the family which includes all its members. This is just part of the mental model of his world that the child has constructed. During the meal, a parent asks the little boy what he would like for Christmas. To deal with this question, the boy has to have some idea of what Christmas is, and some ability to predict what will please him. His mental model of the world includes the idea of Christmas, but also an idea of himself.

Another way of understanding this cognitive ability is to imagine what it would be like if you did not have a mental model of your world. It would mean that you would not be able to make so much use of information from your past experience, or to plan future actions. You would simply respond to events and stimuli which affected you at the moment. As a result your behaviour would be much more like the behaviour of many non-human animals - you would spend most of your time seeking to meet your present needs and avoiding present threats.

Piaget researched and wrote on the subject of cognitive development from 1929 to 1980. Unlike previous psychologists, Piaget suggested that the way children think is not merely less sophisticated than adults, because it is based on less knowledge, but that it is also qualitatively different – i.e. children simply do not think in the same way as adults.

This idea was extremely radical at the time, but it was now become generally accepted in cognitive developmental psychology. In fact, you may regard this as common sense. Piaget was interested both in how children learnt and in how they thought. Piaget belived that children progress through four stages of cognitive development.

Howver, because Piaget concentrated on the individual child, he failed to consider the effect that the social setting may have on cognitive development. Vygotsky (1896 - 1934) belived the way that adults use language and gestures and the child's experience through social interactions are very influential on cognitive development . Vygotsky's work remained little known because it was banned by Stalin after Vygotsky’s death. Vygotsky is credited with developing the concept of Social Cognition (aka Social Development Theory of Learning), which proposes that social interaction and culture has a dramatic impact on cognitive development. Vygotsky centred much of his research on a phenomenon he coined as "the Zone of Proximal Development," or ZPD.

Bruner's theory of socio-cognitive stages assumes, like Piaget, that knowing is a form of cognitive construction, with the individual taking an active role rather than being a passive receiver of information. Bruner views cognitive growth as dependent upon the development of two processes. He calls these Representation and Integration.

Representation: This involves being competent in the ability to represent cognitively, the “recurrent regularities” of the environment.

Integration: This involves being competent in the ability to link past, present and future.

Cognitive Approach Audio Broadcasts:

Listen to a BBC radio broadcast: Claudia Hammond asks how far we should rely on Piaget's findings today.

Listen to a MIT Lecture on Cognitive Development: How Do Children Think?

All broadcasts require Real Audio Player.