Cognitive Development

Ever wonder why it seems that children see the world differently as each year goes by? That’s because children go through stages of cognitive development throughout their lives. It is important to understand each stage of cognitive development in order to understand our children better.

Piaget’s Four Stages of Cognitive Development

• Sensorimotor stage - Children in this stage are not capable of thinking of things that are not immediately in front of them. They mostly focus on what they see and what they are doing in the moment. In the first months, infants use their reflexes to survive. They begin to show goal directed behaviors. They also obtain object permanence, an understanding that physical objects still exist even when they are not seen.

• Preoperational stage - Children in this stage are now able to think and talk about things that are not in their immediate surroundings. They are able to represent objects and events mentally. They are, however, limited in their ability to view situations from another person’s perspective. This inability is termed egocentrism. In this stage, children demonstrate the capability of having conservation, the recognition that an amount must stay the same if nothing is added or taken away despite changes in shape or arrangement.

• Concrete Operations stage - Children in this stage seem to have adult like logic, but they are limited to concrete and real life situations. Children have trouble understanding and reasoning about abstract or hypothetical ideas.

• Formal Operations stage - Logical reasoning processes can no w be applied to abstract and concrete objects and situations. Many capabilities that are need for science and mathematical reasoning now appear.

Here is a chart to help organize these stages:

Here is a video to see these stages in action:

Vygotsky’s Theory

Vygotsky used the term Zone of proximal development to describe the range of tasks that children cannot yet perform independently but can perform with the help and guidance of others. A childs ZPD will change over time but sets a limit on what they are cognitively capable of learning. Children need to work in their ZPD, not in the tasks they can easily do independently, in order to promote cognitive development.

Here is a chart that shows a childs zone of proximal development: