CHAPTER 4: COGNITIVE

DEVELOPMENT
Psychology of Adolescence

Mrs. Aprilyn D. Ditablan

Game PIN:
www.kahoot.it
279642
Two of the most recognized
cognitive psychologists,
Jean Piaget and Lev
Vygotsky, developed
theories that addressed
cognitive development
and learning among
children and adolescents.
JEAN PIAGET’S
THEORY
Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development described and
explained the changes in logical thinking of children and adolescents. Piaget
proposed that children proceed through four stages based on maturation and
experience.
Piaget's theory is guided by assumptions of how learners interact with their
environment and how they integrate new knowledge and information into
existing knowledge. Briefly, he proposed that:
1. Children are active learners who construct knowledge from their
environments
2. They learn through assimilation and accommodation, and complex
cognitive development occurs through equilibration
3. The interaction with physical and social environments is key for cognitive
development
4. Development occurs in stages
According to Piaget, human beings inherit two essential intellectual
functions which he called organization and adaptation.
1. ORGANIZATION is inborn and automatic, and it refers to the child’s tendency to
arrange available schemata into coherent systems or body of knowledge.
Children are constantly rearranging their existing knowledge to produce new
and more complex cognitive structures (Gines, et al.,1998).
2. ADAPTATION is the child’s tendency to adjust to the demands of the
environment. This occurs in two ways:

a. ASSIMILATION is interpreting or understanding environment events in

terms of
one’s existing cognitive structures and ways of thinking.
b. ACCOMODATION is changing one’s existing cognitive structures and
ways of thinking to apprehend environment events.
According to Piaget, changes in
thinking are a result of Piaget’s Stages of
developmental processes that Cognitive Development
occur naturally as our
brains develop. All children, he
said, go through four stages:

 Sensorimotor Stage
 Preoperational Stage
 Concreate Operational
Stage
SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
 From birth to approximately age two.
 Children’s early cognitive development is largely
controlled by their senses and their ability to
move – hence the label
 OBJECT PERMANENCE - involves the knowledge that objects continue to
exist even when they can no longer be seen or acted on. Children gradually
develop the ability to form mental representations of sensory objects
(mother’s face, doll, pet dog) that they can carry in their developing
memory and can access as needed. This new cognitive function is known as
REPRESENTATIONAL THINKING.
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE
Approximately age two to seven
Piaget described an operation as an action
carried out through logical thinking. The ability to think about
objects, events, or people in their absence marks the beginning of
the preoperational stage.
Stage where children can use symbols as a tool to think about
their environment.
This stage is marked by irreversible thinking, that is, the ability
to think in one only direction (they cannot reverse an operation)
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE
 Pre-operational children are also highly egocentric in that
they have a hard time taking another person’s point of
view. They still see the world only in terms of themselves.
A major learning task that occurs near the end of this stage
is conservation.
 Metacognition is “thinking about thinking,” and it plays a
very important role in children’s cognitive development
during the middle childhood and adolescent years.
CONCREATE OPERATIONAL STAGE
 Approximately age seven to eleven
 This stage is marked by the start of logical thinking. For example,
irreversible thinking begins to give way to reversible thinking.
Thinking appears to be less rigid.

The child understands that operations can

be mentally reversed or negated.
 This is the very beginning of their system of
logical thinking. A particular type of thinking
that develops at this stage is
CLASSIFICATION.
FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE
 Approximately age eleven to eighteen years of age
 At this stage children begin to acquire the ability to think
abstractly, that is, to develop and manipulate symbols and to
generalize to similar situations. This is the “create abstract
metaphors”
 Children also develop the ability to use more advanced deductive
thinking (Sherlock Holmes thinking) and inductive thinking
(looking at a field and inducing order on it by categorizing or
creating groups), and hypothetical (if-then) thinking.
 Learning these types of formal operational thinking can
be enhanced through the use of thinking skill lessons
(Johnson,2000). A THINKING SKILL is a cognitive
process broken down into steps and taught explicitly.

 Figure 3.2 shows examples of three cognitive processes

broken down into their subsequent steps
VYGOTSKY’S
THEORY
Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory states that thinking
develops from outside in. As children interact with others, as
they hear the words around them, and as they observe the
interactions of others they INTERNALIZE language patterns.

According to Vygotsky, children are born with elementary

mental abilities such as perception, attention, and memory.
He defined cognitive development in terms of qualitative
changes in children’s thinking processes.
Vygotsky believed language was an important
psychological tool which influenced children’s cognitive
development.
Vygotsky identified three stages in children’s use of
language:
• social • egocentric • inner speech
Compared with Piaget, Vygotsky also placed a stronger
emphasis on culture in shaping children’s cognitive
development.
Lev S. Vygotsky’s theory emphasizes that social interaction
plays a vital role in cognitive development. His theory
basically means that development depends on interaction
with people and the tools that the culture provides to help
form their own view of the world (Gallagher , 1999).
These cultural tools can be transmitted to three ways. These
are:
1. Imitative Learning
2. Instructed Learning
3. Collaborative Learning
1. Imitative Learning- a person tries to imitate or copy another
person.
2. Instructed Learning- a person remembers the instructions of
the teacher and then uses them to self-regulate.
3. Collaborative Learning- a group of person who strive to
understand each other and they work together to learn a specific
skills.

He believed that children are born with elementary mental

abilities such as perception, attention and memory. These innate
abilities transforms into higher mental functions as children
interact with their culture and society (Meece, 2002).
His Socio-Cultural Theory also refers to the
difference between what a learner can do
independently and what can be done with other’s
guidance. He called this as Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD). He assumed that
interactions with adults or peers in the zone of
proximal development help children move to
higher levels of mental functioning within the
classroom. ZPD is associated with scaffolding.
 Cognitive development is defined as development of the
ability to think and reason
 Both Piaget and Vygotsky were regarded as
constructivists
 Constructivists believe that learning is affected by the
context in which an idea is taught as well as by students'
beliefs and attitudes. One other similarity between
Piaget and Vygotsky is that they both believe that the
boundaries of cognitive growth were established by
societal influences. Unfortunately, this is where the
similarities between Piaget and Vygotsky end.
The key ideas of Piaget's and Vygotsky's theory differ.
Piaget believed that Alternatively, Vygotsky felt that
intelligence came from learning happens before
action. He held that development can occur and that
children learn through children learn because of history
interacting with their and symbolism (Slavin, 2003, p.30,
surroundings and that 43). Vygotsky also believed that
learning takes place after children value input from their
development. surroundings and from others.
Piaget did not place importance
on the input of others.
Piaget and Vygotsky's theories on
cognitive development also have
differing opinions. While Piaget's
theory has four clear stages,
Vygotsky alleged that there are no
set stages at all.
Piaget's theory – Vygotsky's theory –
A. Sensorimotor Stage A. Private speech, or
B. Preoperational stage essentially talking to
C. Concrete Operational oneself.
Stage B. The Idea of a Zone of
D.Formal Operational Proximal Development
Stage (ZPD)
C. Scaffolding
Similarities and Comparisons
APRILYN D. DITABLAN
MAED-GC
Psychology of
Adolescence
REFERENCES:
a. Cognitive Development: Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s Theories (Published by Cory
Nichols)
https://slideplayer.com/slide/6843128/

b. Cognitive Development: Piaget and Vygotsky (Andrew Johnson)

http://www.academia.edu/8307017/COGNITIVE_DEVELOPMENT_PIAGET_AND_VYG
OTSKY