Introduction
Human development is an intriguing process that involves the integration of many factors. All these various factors are necessary to achieve full development. The factors involve interplay between, on the one hand, the genetic materials inherited from parents commonly referred to as nature and on the other hand, the environment a child is brought up in. Scholars argue that for full development a child must be able to pass every stage successfully. Otherwise, there is the chance that some developmental problems will be exhibited in the children. The successful passage leads to intelligence acquisition while dormancy in some stages can result in serious detrimental effects on behavior and learning (Fowler, 1981, p. 56). Various theories have been advanced by different scholars mostly in the field of psychology, all of them offering profound concepts that guide us in understanding the development of children through the various life stages, up to adulthood.
Pavlov, while conducting his experiments with dogs was able to demonstrate learning of a certain process through repeated action, a process that he termed conditioning. According to Pavlov and Anrep (2003, p.50), “any behavior is learned when an action is repeated several times.” Pavlov’s theory of classical conditioning can be applied in learning where a repetitive action enhances the learning of a certain skill and therefore new knowledge is acquired. Skinner, another behavioral psychologist, noted that certain behaviors can be encouraged through rewards which he called positive reinforcement while unwanted behaviors should be discouraged through punishments or negative reinforcement. Later on, Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, and philosopher postulated a theory known as the cognitive development theory. This theory explains the step-by-step development of a child into adulthood and how they acquire knowledge throughout these stages (Bjorklund, 2004, p.16). Despite this theory being important in understanding child psychology, it has also faced a lot of criticism. One of its critics was Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, who noted the vital role played by a culture that affects development. He criticized Piaget’s idea that learning development occurred in succession, observing that diverse cultures have different social interactions which affect learning development. This essay intends to review research carried out on student cognitive development.
Cognitive Development
It is the building of thought processes from what one observes, hears, or feels. In addition, cognitive development entails preserving the memory of these events and the acquisition of problem-solving skills and skills necessary for making decisions from infancy through the adolescence period and on to adulthood (Flavell, 1967, p.60). It involves a child learning to process information, construct concrete concepts from this information, develop perceptual skills and learn the language. According to Garton (2004, p.1), cognitive development is the umbrella term where perception, language, memory, reasoning, learning, and problem-solving are subsumed. Before much research was conducted on cognitive development, it was thought that children at the infancy stage did not think or form concrete ideas until they were able to learn language by speaking past the age of two years. After various researches, it is now clear that children are aware of their environment and they explore it learning different things each day. The acquired information is conceptualized and perception and thinking skills are developed.
One of the psychologists who proposed cognitive development is Piaget after a long period of observing children in the natural environment. He observed that children after experience were able to form basic units in their minds which helped them have an understanding of such experiences. He called these units schemas, a term still in use in the modern-day language. The schemas were in a state of continuous change through two processes that complemented one another. The first is assimilation which involves acquiring new knowledge into the schema and trying to establish any relations with information already in the schema. The second phase is accommodation where the child tries to get a balance between the old information and the new. This process of finding the equilibrium is where cognitive development occurs (Demetriou, 1998, p. 190).
Piaget developed four distinctive stages in an effort at explaining cognitive development in children. These stages happen in succession with each stage building on the other to improve the level of sophistication. The sensorimotor stage constitutes the first of Piaget’s cognitive development stages in children. This stage occurs in infants and involves the development of understanding of the environment by coordinating experience gained through senses like touching, seeing, and hearing with motor actions they perform (Santrock, 2008, p. 212). Most of their actions are reflexes reacting to certain stimuli. They can develop permanence or memory through the actions they engage in. By the end of this stage, a child develops the ability to use symbols like language. The second stage is the preoperational stage. This stage occurs between toddler stages to early childhood. In this stage cognitive development is demonstrated through the use of symbols. A child develops language through talking and being able to understand instructions presented symbolically. Although the pattern of thinking is illogical, the child develops memory and imagination. At this stage, the child still does not think of others and is still much egocentric (Santrock, 2007, p. 226). Following the pre-operational stage is the concrete operational stage that occurs from the age of seven years up to eleven years. At this stage, operational thinking develops demonstrating high intelligence through conservation of numbers, mass, weight among other quantities. A high state of logic is exhibited and egocentric thinking fades out. The fourth and final stage is the formal operational stage which takes place starting from adolescence and proceeds on into adulthood. According to Santrock (2007, p. 227), a person can move from concrete experiences and begin to think in an abstract form and can comprehend situations, and be able to conclude both from experience and in hypothetical situations. Adolescents can use deductive reasoning in problem-solving and begin thinking of the future and the careers they wish to be involved in. In addition, a sense of socialism is enhanced and issues like love and personal uniqueness are cultivated.
The theory of cognitive development has however faced criticisms from various scholars due to its pre-supposition of a smooth and sequential transition from one stage to the other. Scientists have argued that at times, there are often unpredictable gaps in the development process. Modern-day psychologists have postulated several theories like the Ecological Systems Theory that continue to disapprove of Piaget’s theory. This theory thinks that our immediate surroundings like schools, the immediate family, society, and the world have much influence on the development of children. Some have even gone further to state that each child takes a different, unique, and exceptional path of development and only very few are near to similarity (Greenberg, 1987, p. 92).
Before the development of this theory, Piaget did a lot of studies and observations of children as they grew, including his children. Mostly, his research methods were based on case studies and were usually descriptive. This involved studying groups of children as they matured and noting their associative behavior. He requested the children to give answers to some standardized questions and depending on the answers they gave, he would subject them to a series of questions that were not standardized. After this, he grouped them into years according to their abilities and developed his four stages. Some of his findings concur with modern correlational and experimental methodologies while others do not. For instance, there had been a perception that biological development was the main driver for moving from one cognitive stage to the next. Renner and colleagues (1976) carried out cross-sectional studies in children of western origin and supports the assertion for cognitive development stages. On the assertion that every person goes through the cognitive development stages step by step as they mature, some cross-sectional studies done on adolescents do not concur with this idea. Kuhn et al assert that only 30 to 35% of some adolescents attain the formal operations of the cognitive stage of development.
Various other researches have been carried out to try and expound on this concept of cognitive development and its learning application. Harriet Over and Meredeth Gattis from Cardiff University, school of psychology researched to find out if verbal imitation is based on intention understanding. The purpose of the research was to replicate previous research which showed that young children usually correct sentences with grammatical errors. The researchers then chose to compare how children imitated grammatically correct sentences and how they imitated those which were incorrect. The respondents were 20 children, 10 of who were female between the ages of three years and eleven. Two children were excluded due to failure of the equipment and another two for failing to complete the practice trials. Five ungrammatical sentences were selected and five control sentences were set. The first three sentences had one word, followed by two words in the other three sentences, and three words in the final three sentences. The children were presented with sentences randomly and the accuracy of utterance reproduction was analyzed. The researchers found out that the children were more likely to copy the grammatical sentences as opposed to the grammatically incorrect sentences. In a second related experiment, the researchers found out that the children exactly copied sentences that were grammatically correct as opposed to those which had grammatical errors. The authors were able to finally conclude that children of this age were able to generally correct ungrammatical sentences. Previous research studies have been able to demonstrate the same findings. This implies that the study methods used were able to document the research question putting it into focus and developing similar results. Consequently, the methodologies used are highly recommendable in carrying out similar or related studies.
These findings can be applied in a classroom setting to teach the children relevant knowledge. At the school-going age, the children are either in the preoperational stage or the concrete operational for those in higher elementary classes. In this stage, the children can use imagination and memory to acquire basic knowledge. They are conditioned to learning and use of memory and they have a self-centered view of the world. It is in this stage that the children learn to do structured routines like helping in the household chores. This research is applied in teachers’ understanding of the learning process of children and helps them get innovations in the teaching methodologies. By so doing children can understand and memorize learned skills as the learning process is made more and more simple.
In yet another research on cognitive development, Goksun, Kathy, and Golinkoff of Temple University tries to find out how children in pre-schooling age express cause in gesture and speech. Before the attainment of one year, children can perceive causal events as being different from those that are non-causal. The causal understanding of children undergoes major development changes in the first three years of life (Bullock, 1985 p. 220). The participants of the research were sixty-four children who were monolingual English speakers. They were balanced by gender and divided evenly into four age groups. The age groups were chosen to represent the complete developmental trajectory for causal expression. The majority of those participants were from middle-class families and were white with very few being Hispanic, Asian American, or African. An experimental task was performed that involved the experimenter pushing a ball across a pool of water and asking the children to explain what had happened. The expressions of the children were noted in terms of their verbal and gestural expressions in explaining these simple causal events. A repeated analysis of variance showed no main effects of gender or any interactions with gender differences. The mean number of words used in events description was shown to differ by age while the five-year-olds were observed to produce two times as many words as the other age groups. In the total expressions of the events coded, only events in speech without gestures did not differ by age. Their first hypothesis was confirmed partially where younger children were found to use more gestures to preview what they would later express in their speech. In particular, older children were observed to use representational gestures about the instruments and the direction of the causal events they observed. These researchers concluded that children move from non-causal to causal expressions. Gestures were found to reinforce speech at all ages and supplemented directly causal language by referring to proximal causes. In summary, children used gestures to reinforce their ideas before they could form fully-fledged sentences to pass their causal understanding.
This research can find out the use of gestures in reinforcing language development. Before a child can be able to comprehend some complex words which to describe events, he/she uses gestures. It is important in explaining how pre-scholars can express a cause in gestures and speech. The methodologies used by these researchers are quite fulfilling in being able to research a conclusive end. There are some cases in calculations that various statistical variables are used thus increasing the credibility of the research in meeting its hypothesis.
These research findings have been used in the classroom in understanding children during the learning process. The teacher can understand why children behave in certain ways and why some gestures are made. The teacher can associate a certain gesture with a certain understanding which could otherwise have been communicated by speech. This understanding creates a good relationship between the teachers and their students as there is communication taking place which could have otherwise been quite difficult. The findings of this research can also be applied in teaching children with disabilities, especially those whose speech development is compromised. In the teaching of deaf children, a lot relies on the gestures they make either using their hands or their facial expressions. By so doing they pass a certain message which is then interpreted by their teachers or their close associates. If such researches were not done learning would be difficult to some extent as communication would be hindered. Every person must learn to adapt to this form of understanding of gestures to enable communication to take place both in a classroom setting and in real-life situations.
Conclusion
Learning is a continuous process that happens every day in our lives. Understanding through the passing of messages is of paramount importance in learning. Teachers have been faced with major handles in the classroom when carrying out their job. Various researches have been carried out in trying to develop the best way to conduct this process of learning. Various scholars have also advanced theories that outline concepts involved in the learning process. Pavlov in his experiments with dogs explained the process of conditioning where he explained how behavior is learned through a process of repetitive actions. Others like Freud and Erikson did a lot of research and came up with theories explaining the development of personality and how a person passes through the various stages of failure to which development or behavioral malfunctioning will occur. One of the renowned psychologists in developmental psychology to explain learning was Jean Piaget who advanced a theory known as the theory of cognitive development. As a psychologist, he was highly interested in how people adapt to the changing environment. In this theory, he explains how children acquire various life skills like language, mathematical skills, poetry, and art among many others. He divided his theory into four stages are; the sensorimotor which happens during the stage of infancy where the intelligence is shown through the use of reflexes and motor activities. The second stage is the preoperational stage between toddler and early childhood where the use of symbols is developed as language and memory mature. The third is the concrete operational stage between elementary and early childhood where there is the logical and systematic manipulation of symbols related to concrete objects. The last stage is the formal operational stage which takes place between adolescence and adulthood and where symbols are used logically about abstract concepts. Various other researches are being carried out in the modern world to improve on these theories and fill the gaps that may have been left by former researchers. The methodologies applied have been effective in conducting the researches thereby producing relevant knowledge to the present-day scientific world. Finally, it is worth noting that cognitive development concepts have brought much understanding to the process of learning and improved results.
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