Term paper on Cognitive Development in Children

Piaget identifies three major stages of intellectual development (Ault, 1977):

1. The stage of sensorimotor development (birth – 2 years)
2. The stage of concrete operations (2 – 11 or 12 years)
3. The stage of formal operations (12-13 years)

At the first stage a child masters his/her own sensory and motor skills (listens, screams, hits, crumples, drops, etc.). Piaget divides it into six substages:

1.1. Innate reflexes (0 – 1 month) – sucking, grasping, etc.
1.2. Motor skills (1 – 4 months) are formed as a result of conditioned reflexes in the child’s interactions with the environment (sucking movements when seeing a small bottle with a nipple, grasping of this bottle, etc.).
1.3. Circular reactions (4 – 8 months) are formed due to the development of coordination between perceptual systems and motor schemas (pulling the rope on which a beanbag hangs to make it rattle)
1.4. Coordination of means and goals (8 – 12 months). The child moves the hand of the experimenter away to get a toy hidden behind it.
1.5. Discovery of new means (12 – 18 months) happens by accident, but it causes in a child the formation of the relationship between his/her actions and their results (by pulling a carpet closer, one can get a doll lying on it).
1.6. Invention of new tools (18 – 24 months). The first manifestation of internalized thought like insight – it combines the existing tools for the original solving of the problem (how to get a candy out of a matchbox? – it is necessary to open it, etc.).

The stage of concrete operations contains a gradual internalization of actions and turning them into operations (comparing, evaluating, classifying, measuring, etc.). In other words, at this stage, the child learns that there are certain types of actions that are reversible and can be integrated into the overall structure; that is, he/she still unconsciously discovers the logical categories and begins to use them, but necessarily basing on a specific object (Schneider, 2006). However, the acquirement of these structures is a long process. Piaget distinguishes three substages (Ault, 1977):

2.1. Preoperational level (from 2 to 5 years). The first stage of the internalization of actions. It is characterized by the development of symbolic thinking, that is, the child begins to think of objects or stimuli through mental images and mark them with names or symbols, not with direct actions. Here starts a radical difference between the possibilities of man and all other living beings.
2.2. The first level of concrete operations (from 5-6 to 7-8 years). The child becomes able to understand that two features of the object do not depend on each other. The child acquires the ability to position objects in a row (for example, in size decreasing order) and classify them.
2.3. The second level of concrete operations (8-11 years). The gradual transition to logical thinking (the idea of time, speed, standard-based measurements, the location of objects in space, the problem of perspective, the simple physical tasks).

At the stage of formal operations thinking actions can occur without any specific support. In fact, it is an abstract thinking, which operates by means of hypotheses and deduction.

Generalizing Piaget’s approach, it is possible to notice that he does not consider the relationship between the cognition and affective sphere (the sphere of desires) of the child. For him, the child is an isolated being, which socializes after a long period of egocentrism only due to the need to somehow share with other people the objective means of knowing things, and describing the relationships between them (Pruitt & Aacap, 2000; Schneider, 2006).

Until recently, the theories of cognitive and social development have existed as two separate areas. However, the contemporary approach is trying to connect cognitive, motivational, and social and affective development directions into a single theoretical model (Gauvain, 2000).

Currently, there are ongoing attempts to integrate all the data on the ontogeny of the man in terms of the system approach. The development thus is interpreted as a process occurring at different levels and including both macro- and microgenetic changes. This approach will allow the scientists to explain the sources of the real contradictions, the grounds of qualitative change in the psychological development of man, and systemic nature of mental phenomena and their determinants, as well as to consider the mental in its dynamics.