Human Cognitive Development Essay

The paper is designed to discuss gay cognitive development through the prism of various perspectives. Apriori, developmental psychology is nowadays dominated by Piagets views, so the essay provides a detailed examination of his theory, including it basic assumptions, the connection between human physiology and cognitive development and the four submits of progress of cognitive abilities sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and bollock operational.Beyond the major focus, the essay also discusses four alternative approaches to cognitive development, including relevant research, conducted by the founders and followers of rational-constructivist, social learning, information-processing and sociocultural perspectives and the differences between handed-down Piagetian views and these alternative positions.The author uses three articles from different psychology-oriented journals Personal cognitive development and its implications for teaching and learning be Ferrari and M ahalingam (1998), Commentary on Vygotsky by Jean Piaget (2000) and the article, written al more or less immediately after the egression of Piagets stage theory The development of white-tie operations in reasonable and moral judgment by Kuhn, Langer, Kohlberg, and Haan.Developmental psychology is a commodious area of acquaintance that seeks to explore and explain various aspects of human psychosocial development, including its moral, delirious and cognitive components (Ferrari and Mahalingam, 1998). Cognitive development refers to the development of human intellect, abstractive, critical and germinal thinking that provide successful cognition and comprehension of the world of objects.The most prominent and popular theory of human cognitive development was created by Jean Piaget, whose approach to the progress in this context is constructivist, so that the educatee views the construction of cognitive abilities as self-motivated action (Piaget, 2000). As Kuhn et al (1977) assum e, Piagets research methods are based primarily on case studies they were descriptive. while some of his ideas are supported through more correlational and data-based methodologies, others are not.For example, Piaget believes that biological development drives the movement from one cognitive stage to the next (Kuhn et al, 1977, p. 98). Nevertheless, although Piagets investigation basically refers to physiology rather than psychology, the scholar manages to have-to doe with biological and cognitive progress through the description of the transformation of reflexes into formal operations. Initially, he describes two major processes that occur in separate when adapting to the surroundings assimilation and accommodation.Both of them condition the complication of their manner of adaptation and and then determine cognitive development (Piaget, 2000). Accommodation refers to the alteration of cognitive abilities in response to the requirements of the environment for the purpose of ga ining something from the surrounding world. Assimilation, in turn, refers to the transformation of the environment with further placing it into preexisting cognitive schemes and constructs (Piaget, 2000).Due to the fact that life maculation and the corresponding requirements from the environment tend to complicate through the life course, the individual is forced to respond to complex stimuli and construct hierarchical cognitive structures (for instance, from widely distributed to concrete) (Piaget, 2000 Ferrari and Mahalingam, 1998). Piaget distinguishes and describes four stages of cognitive development. Sensorimotor stage, or infancy lasts from the birth to 2 years, has six sub-stages, associated with gradual development of reflexes, focus of vision and coordination in movements. scholarship is manifested through the progress in motor activity, but the individual uses no social symbols (e. g. language) during this period. The exploration of world is very dynamic, but the relate d knowledge remains limited because of the weak cognitive abilities. The outcomes of this stage are the emergence of basic creativity or insight (understanding of pictures and language) as well as the progress of symbolic abilities (Piaget, 2000).