Cognitive and language development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Cognitive and language development - Essay Example Like different species of this environment, animals rely on camouflage, feathers and fur coats, and speed may be some of the things that they use to adapt to the environment they live in. Human beings, on the other hand work upon adapting to their environment, with the help of thinking. Through this, they not only adapt to their environment but also transform it. Hence, we can say that among all the species that live in this environment, we as human beings stand apart because of our mental faculties. Children move from simple to complex tasks, while attaining their cognitive skills. They become more and more effective thinkers with their progressing age. It’s important to note that the mental faculties of a child are not incomplete or less effective than that of adults. But we can see that the child’s focus on a limited amount of information might be adaptive (Bjorklund and Blasi, 2011). Jean Piaget was a Swiss cognitive theorist who completed his education in zoology a nd gave a biological explanation to the things he saw happening in his environment in terms of cognitive development. He viewed cognitive development as an adaptive process in which thinking develops gradually from its less oriented form to something that is driven by logic. It slowly and steadily emerges out to be a fit with the external reality. Piaget’s had a constructivist approach towards the idea of cognitive development. He said that children develop their cognitive skills by progressing via four universal stages. The names of the stages are The Sensorimotor Stage, The Preoperational Stage, The Concrete Operational Stage and The Formal Operational stage (Ginsberg and Opper, 1979). All these constructs that he gave, came under the purview of the theory he gave which he named as the Cognitive Developmental Theory. Vygotsky gave the Sociocultural Theory. In it he devised, that language is a very important determinant of cognitive development and it broadens the purview of cognition of children with the help engagement in dialogues and conversations with people around them, who provide them with new knowledge and reinforce them to master socially relevant and culturally important tasks driven by the norms and values prescribed by the environment they are residing in. According to him the important determinant of cognitive development as it occurs in the life of a child are the social experiences he/she goes through. There are many differences that we come across while trying to decipher the basic nature of both these theories. The very nature of both these theories is different. Piaget devised the theory in terms of the four stages a child progresses through but Vygotsky based his theory on the foundation of developing the basic ideas which are required for the construction of knowledge wherein the concepts of learning play a huge role in the development. According to him development cannot be separated from social contexts a child has to live in, wh ich also involves effective conversations with the significant others with the help of language. This tells us that the most evident difference between the two theories is that Piaget’s theory is hierarchical in nature but on the other hand, we don’t come to see any kind of stagewise progression in Vygotsky’s theory. This tells us that each of the Piaget’s preceding stages must be accomplished before the child moves on to the