Lev Vygotsky's Two Environmental Causes Of Cognitive Development?

In Vygotsky’s sociocultural development theory, social interaction plays an important role in the process of cognitive development, which is different then Piaget’s understanding of child development. Vygotsky believed children are active knowledge

Vygotsky may have overplayed importance on social influences because he suggests that child’s cognitive development occurs through social interactions, for example children do internalisation of problem solving via mutual interactions. However, if social learning is the essence of cognitive development then learning would be a lot faster than it is. Thus Vygotsky ignores the biological aspects that aid or restricts the cognitive development such as the development of brain and maturation. Therefore Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is different to

Lev Vygotsky developed a theory of cognitive development in children and young adults. His theory of cognitive development states that people’s mental structures are based on their interactions with OTHERS. Basically he says that other people create our thinking processes and cognitive structures as we interact with them, which begins particularly at a young age. Vygotsky supported sociocultural theory, “which states that the role of development in children happens through their community and interactions” (Woolfolk 59). This is referring to peoples ways of thinking and behaving in other words. Vygotsky notes three themes that explain how these social interactions dictate people thoughts. The three themes are co-constructed, cultural tools, and private speech. “Every function in a child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level and later on the individual level; first between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relations between human individuals” (Woolfolk 59). Higher mental processes and thinking through problems are first co-constructed during activities between children and another person. The child internalizes the process and it becomes part of their activities with other people. It means that together they figure something out, then later on the child can use that interaction to regulate their own behavior. This can be applied in a classroom for a lot of problem solving situations. For intense if I gave a math word problem, and asked the class a serious of questions as to help them figure out the problem, they would be able to answer the question. This would help them to answer this kind of math problem in the future, without my help. Vygotsky believed that children’s cognitive development happens through interactions with people who have a higher, more advanced thinking, people such as PARENTS or TEACHERS. This could be applied in the classroom, because children learn from their teachers, who have a more advanced thinking and they help their students solve problems, and questions, and

Unlike Piaget, Vygotsky alleged that adults play a fundamental role in the development of children as they nurtured their learning in a premeditated way (McDevitt et al, 2013), rather than entrusting it to natural processes. Vygotsky also believed that language played a primary responsibility in a child’s development, while Piaget excluded this from his theory (McDevitt et al, 2013). The social experiences a child encounter along with conversations they have with others and themselves (self-talk), greatly influences their capacity to grow and learn. One of the benefits of Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development is the Zone of Proximal development. Where children are frequently being pressed to the limit of their comfort zones within learning in order of forward progression (McDevitt et al, 2013).

Piaget asserts that, the instincts children have when they are born are inherited scripts, called schema, these schema are building blocks for cognitive development. As a child grows, he acquires more of these building blocks; moreover, these building blocks become more complex as the child progresses through different stages in development (Huitt, Hummel 2003). Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development are as follows. First, The sensorimotor stage where an infant has

At the centre of Piaget's theory is the principle that cognitive development occurs in a series of four distinct, universal stages, each characterized by increasingly sophisticated and

Piaget is one of the first people to look at developmental theory and through her theoretical developments, the foundation for modern day developmental theory was laid. The Key concepts of Piaget’s theory are vital in understanding many of the contemporary developmental theories today. One of the key theoretical concepts developed by Piaget is adaptation ‘adapting to the world through assimilation and accommodation (Atherton, 2010).’ adaptation is crucial to theoretical concepts of development, it states that each child passes through various stages of development in which a child has to adapt to individual changes in their social environment, psychological development and personal development. For example an example of accommodating is, a child learns to grasp a new object in a different way, or learns that the new object should not be

A key difference between Piagets approach in contrast to Vygotsky is the context that each of them viewed the relationship between the child and the environment or stimuli. Piaget took a more biological approach to his work stating that human cognition was a biological adaptation of a complex organism to a complex environment (Flavell, Miller, P. & Miller, 2002). He proposed that the child manipulated the environment around it by “actively constructing their own sense of the world” (Blades, Cowie & Smith, 2011). Vygotsky challenged this by stating that “learning must be viewed in the context of the person’s culture and the tools available in that culture” (Flavell, Miller, P. & Miller, 2002). He attributed learning to authority based relationships (Lourenco, 2012) and argued that,

Piaget and Vygotsky were both, looking into the same period of cognitive development in infants and children and sharing the same basic concerns. Piaget (1896-1980) developing his theory slightly earlier than Vygotsky (1896-1934) who worked to show that there were certain flaws in Piaget 's theory of genetic epistemology. Vogotsky and his social-cultural theory of cognitive development might be seen as the Soviet counterpart to Piaget 's western individualist perspective. Piaget focused on cognitive development as essentially egocentric, Vygotsky challenged this with the idea of the individual as being

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development explained how a child’s ability to think progresses through a series of distinct stages as they mature. Piaget believed that these stages were maturational. That is, development is genetic and largely unaffected by environmental factors.

Piaget's explanation of cognitive development is an important theory that is used by many, but by learning all of the other theories that are associated with the cognitive development we can see that even Piaget's theory has its own weaknesses. Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory for example emphasises the effects of rich social and cultural contexts of children’s thinking whereas Piaget’s theory looks at the biological side of cognitive development. Vygotsky who found a flaw in Piaget’s work believed that language helps children think about mental activities and children speak to themselves for self guidance he called this ‘private speech’. Piaget however had different ideas and come to the understanding that ‘egocentric speech’ which was the meaning he gave it, happens when the child is attempting to converse with others but was failing. Piaget also theorized that ‘egocentric speech disappeared with age because the child learned to consider the viewpoint of others while talking’ (Piaget, 1971). Many studies have been conducted and almost all have supported Vygotsky’s perspectives of language (Berk&Harris, 2003) Vygotsky and Jerome Bruner both emphasized that language is a lot more important than what Piaget’s theory implied. Piaget’s theory has also suffered from criticism for some of his case studies on whether all individuals automatically move to the next cognitive stage as they biologically mature. Psychologists believed that Piaget

Two infamous developmental psychologists, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, have shared their knowledge on children’s cognitive development. Both psychologists had their own vision of what stimulates and helps a child grow. Jean Piaget 's theory was shaped through the thinking and understanding of how knowledge is built through a series of four stages; preoperational, sensorimotor, formal operational and concrete operational. He believed that the development was with the child themselves. On the contrary, Lev Vygotsky 's theory is shaped through adult social interactions and cultural roles. He believed that a child 's development is met based on their social environment and interactions with adults. Though both Piaget and Vygotsky had their

Piaget’s theory also allowed us a way to accept and understand that children's cognitive behavior is intrinsically motivated. Social and other reinforcements do influence children's cognitive explorations but children learn because of the way they are built. In Piaget’s mind cognitive adapts to the environment through assimilation. Also accommodation is a type of biological adaptation (Flavell, 1996). According to Piaget in order to characterize cognitive development in humans we need to understand co-present in cognitive activity which is cognitive structure (Flavell, 1996). Piaget was the first psychologist to try explaining describing cognitive development. His argument is that intellectual advances are made through the equilibration process that has three steps: the first step is for the cognitive equilibrium to de at a low development level; then, cognitive disequilibrium has to be induced by discrepant or inassimilable phenomena and lastly cognitive equilibration has to be at a higher developmental level.

For this paper I will be exploring Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget, theorized that children progress through four key stages of cognitive development that change their understanding of the world. By observing his own children, Piaget came up with four different stages of intellectual development that included: the sensorimotor stage, which starts from birth to age two; the preoperational stage, starts from age two to about age seven; the concrete operational stage, starts from age seven to eleven; and final stage, the formal operational stage, which begins in adolescence and continues into adulthood. In this paper I will only be focusing on the

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of development suggested that to develop cognitively, children must have social interaction. He also “believed that this lifelong process of development was dependent of social interaction and that social learning actually leads to cognitive development” (Riddle, 1999). Vygotsky believed that children 's social learning must come before social development. Vygotsky also believed that "human activities take place in cultural settings and cannot be understood apart from these settings" (Woolfolk, 2004). Therefore, our culture helps shape our cognition.