Developmental Psychology For Biology And Cognition

Child Development Theories

Discuss about the term for Developmental Psychology for Biology and Cognition.

Developmental psychology involves the scientific approach that aims to elucidate the changes in adults and children overtime. Within this discipline, different theories focus upon childhood development, as this period concerns most of the changes in the lifespan of an individual. This essay aims to focus how the different perspectives are concerned to explain the development of morals and intelligence. In addition, it will analyze and evaluate the different studies of research concerning the intellectual and moral development of children. The development of children occurring from birth to gaining maturity has been ignored in the past. They were simply observed as a smaller version of grown-up individuals. The children received a little attention with respect to several advances in the usage of language, physical growth and cognitive abilities that are associated with childhood and teenage years

A number of psychologists and other researchers have given the proposition of different theories of child development in order to provide a description regarding the stages and processes that children undergo during their development. The theory of Cognitive Development by famous psychologist Jean Piaget explains the development of intelligence as one matures. Intellectual development occurs as a result of many transformations in a child. The cognitive development takes place by means of an interaction with the actions of the environment and continues through different stages (Carey and Gelman 2014). It involves four stages of life. The sensory motor stage (0-2 years old) is the phase starting from birth to the time when children acquire new language. In this phase children reacts to sensory experience like what he sees or hears. They catch reflexes like grasping, stepping, etc and by the end of this phase, they develop the understanding of permanency of objects (Inhelder et al. 2014). This stage is followed by preoperational stage (2-7 years old) in which child express things through the use of words, drawing and pictures. The children acquire mental reasoning skills in this stage and they conserve the knowledge acquired in this phase. In the concrete operational stage (7-11 years old), child learns to use all logic appropriately and they can classify and sort objects according to its variations. The age above 11 years and beyond is the formal operational stage when children learn abstract thinking skills and they rationalize things hypothetically. They can now analyze problems as well as test different solutions to the problem. (Sigelman and Rider 2014). 

Cognitive Development Theory by Piaget

Piaget had a belief that the developmental process occurs by the removal of restrictions from the thinking of children. Therefore, he has utilized the word, Schema. A schema refers to the cognitive or mental structures with the help of which individuals are able to adapt and organize with their surroundings or environments (O’Donnell and King 2014). Piaget’s theory also included the concept of accommodation and assimilation. His view was that there are pre-existing cognitive schemas in each individual. It is because of the process of assimilation that persons try to take the new information that is known to them and they try to assimilate it within their cognitive patterns. On the other hand, process of accommodation occurs when individuals change their cognitive patterns according to the information they collect from the environment and in this way they fit the information into their schemas (Cohen & Salapatek 2013).

According to Wads worth (1996), during the birth of children, they have a small number of schemata, they develop it gradually, and in the later stages, it becomes differentiated and generalized. However, he has argued that schema do not possess physical counterparts, are not evident and are hypothetical. It has been speculated by Piaget that children are born with simple schemas such reflexes like sucking which is activated only when they come in association with certain things (Edelstein et al. 2014).

On the other hand, Kohlberg came with the theory of moral development in children. He modified Piaget’s two-stage theory of moral development and explained how children develop moral reasoning as they grow.  Kohlberg theory suggested moral development occurs thorough out one lifespan. In the preconventional morality stage, children see obedience as a means to escape punishment and then they move to individualism approach. This means they now judge actions on the basis of how it is useful for an individual (Kurtines et al. 2014). The second level in moral development is conventional morality involving stages like interpersonal relationship and maintaining social order. In this morality means living up to social expectations and the focus is on marinating interpersonal relationship. When person’s morality develops further, the focus is on welfare of society as a whole when making judgments. So people tend to follow rules and regulations. As one advance further in morality, Kohlberg proposed the stage of social contract and universal principle in post-conventional morality. In this stage people began to consider different values and opinions of people. His final level of moral reasoning depicts following universal ethical principles and abstract reasoning (Gibbs 2013).

Moral Development Theory by Kohlberg

Another input regarding social development theory was given by Lev Vygotsky in 1978. He stressed the importance of social interaction in the development of cognitive skill. While Piaget stated that children’s development must precede learning, but Vygotsky argues that social learning comes before development (Hala 2013). He gave more emphasis on culture having an impact of on cognitive development. Piaget’s cognitive development was universal for all cultures, but Vygotsky regarded that cognitive development varies across cultures (Crain 2015). Piaget has been criticized for underestimating the role of social factors in cognitive development. Vygotsky stated that cognitive development in children occurs from guided learning through social interaction and gaining knowledge from different groups in society. Piaget had just stated that development arise from independent exploration in which they children develop their own knowledge without any impact from society. But it cannot be denied that the environment in which children grows has a lot of influence on their thinking and learning pattern. He also emphasized an important role of language in cognitive development which Piaget had not explained in his theory (Doise et al. 2013). According to Vygotsky, cognitive development arises from adaptation of language. Children thought and language is separate systems in their life which merges at the age of 2-3 years leading to verbal thought and inner speech. He also stressed that adults are also an important source of cognitive development in children as they transmit their cultural values and intellectual thinking to children as they grow up. On the other hand Piaget thought that peer to peer interaction lead to intellectual development (Velasquez et al. 2013).

Infants are born with basic skills for intellectual development. Piaget focuses on motor reflexes and sensory abilities, but Lev Vygotskyy referred to elementary mental function in child development such as attention, sensation, perception and memory. For example memory in young children is dependent on biological factors, but children’s culture determines what type of strategy they adopt for building memory. In some culture there is emphasis on taking notes to aid memory, while in some societies, people tie knots or carry pebbles to remember. Other examples of intellectual adaptation tools are memory mnemonics and mind maps (Carr, 2015).

Another important principle of cognitive development is the zone of proximal development. It implies that difference between what a child can achieve on their own  and what they can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a learned adult (Saxe2015).For example if a child of 3-4 years is given to solve a jigsaw puzzle, he cannot do it himself, but he is able to do following instructions from his father. So in this the father has developed the skills of his child so that he can apply these skills in future jigsaw puzzles. Lantolf et al. (2015) conducted a study in which children had to place furniture in a doll house. At the same time the researcher also studied another group of children who performed the same activity but with the help of their mothers. The zone of proximal development is when they did the task with their mothers, while Piaget developmental learning was seen in those children who tried to do the task themselves. It was found that children who place furniture in the dolls with the help of their mothers showed great improved in their task compared to their first attempt in completing the task. Thus, the study finally concluded that guided learning with the zone of proximal development lead to improvement in performance or an activity (Smith et al., 2015).

Social Learning and Cognitive Development Theory by Vygotsky

From the overall study on moral and intellectual development in chidren, one concluded that development of children occurring from birth to gaining maturity has been ignored in the past. Later in the future various theories have been illustrated and studies have been made on child development. Different psychologists have given various theories based on child psychology such as Piaget, Wads, Kohlberg, etc. Analysis of these theories has shown that moral and intellectual development is influenced by many factors in society. As a child grows up and matures, they acquire different level of cognitive skills. Comparison of Piaget’s and Vygstksy ‘s theory also gave an idea that social interaction is also an important part of moral and intellectual development in child. Therefore children cognitive development is dependent not only on their own thinking and learning pattern but also on interaction with other members of society.

References

Carey, S. and Gelman, R., 2014. The epigenesis of mind: Essays on biology and cognition. Psychology Press.

Carr, A., 2015. The handbook of child and adolescent clinical psychology: A contextual approach. Routledge.

Cohen, L. B., & Salapatek, P. (Eds.). (2013). Infant perception: From sensation to cognition: Basic visual processes (Vol. 1). Academic Press.

Crain, W., 2015. Theories of development: Concepts and applications. Psychology Press.

Doise, W., Mugny, G., James, A.S., Emler, N. and Mackie, D., 2013. The social development of the intellect (Vol. 10). Elsevier.

Edelstein, W., Keller, M. and Schröder, E., 2014. Child development and social structure: A longitudinal study of individual differences. Paul B. Baltes/David L. Featherman/Richard M. Lerner: Life-span development and behavior. Bd, 10, pp.151-185.

Gibbs, J.C., 2013. Moral development and reality: Beyond the theories of Kohlberg, Hoffman, and Haidt. Oxford University Press.

Hala, S., 2013. The development of social cognition. Psychology Press.

Inhelder, B., Sinclair, H. and Bovet, M., 2014. Learning and the Development of Cognition (Psychology Revivals). Psychology Press.

Kurtines, W.M., Gewirtz, J. and Lamb, J.L., 2014. Handbook of Moral Behavior and Development: Volume 1: Theory. Psychology Press.

Lantolf, J.P., Thorne, S.L. and Poehner, M.E., 2015. Sociocultural theory and second language development. Theories in second language acquisition: An introduction, pp.207-226.

O’Donnell, A.M. and King, A. eds., 2014. Cognitive perspectives on peer learning. Routledge.

Saxe, G.B., 2015. Culture and cognitive development: Studies in mathematical understanding. Psychology Press.

Sigelman, C.K. and Rider, E.A., 2014. Life-span human development. Cengage Learning.

Smith, P.K., Cowie, H. and Blades, M., 2015. Understanding children’s development. John Wiley & Sons.

Velasquez, A., West, R., Graham, C. and Osguthorpe, R., 2013. Developing caring relationships in schools: a review of the research on caring and nurturing pedagogies. Review of education, 1(2), pp.162-190.