Piagets and Vygotsky theories

Piagets four stages of cognative developement

Piagets four stages of cognative developement

1. Sensorimotor( birth to 2)

2. Pre-operational(2-7)

3. Concrete operational(7-11)

4. Formal operational(11-16)

Sensory motor stage

Children interact with the world with their hands and senses. Don’t understand object permanence and are egocentric

What is egocentric

belied that the world revolves around you and cant see the point of views of others

What is Object permanence

understanding that objects exist even if you cannot see them

Pre-operational stage

Children’s behavior has incorporated lots of playing and pretending. Like imagining a stick is a sword.

• centration

• irreversibility

• conservation

what is Centration

children seem to focus all their attention on one aspect of a situation while ignoring all of the other aspects

what is conservation

the realization that an object can be the same even if its appearance changes

what is irreversibility

unable to mentally reverse a sequence of events

Concrete operational stage

no longer egocentric, understand conservation and reversibility. children start solving problems logistically, however, inductive reasoning is developed systematically while deductive reasoning is still difficult.

Formal operational stage

developed abstract thought, as well as, children develop metacognition or the ability to “think about thinking“.

Strengths of Piagets theory

• Research consistently supports the progression of cognitive development as outlined by Piaget

• Piaget has had a major effect on education

• first theory of its kind

• theory is driven by biological maturation is widely accepted and supported

Limitations of Piagets theory

• The original study used language too developed and was not age-appropriate

• not observing the cognitive development of individual children over time, but comparing performance on cognitive tasks at different levels

• The ages at which the stages happen to begin to be criticized

• Theory depicts rather then explanatory

Vygotskys Theory

learning that emphasizes the role of social interaction and cultural context in cognitive development

Lower cognitive functions

are not voluntary and are biological in nature, such as instincts

Higher cognitive function

are subject to voluntary control and culture is the primary factor of their development

Zone of proximal development

abilities that a child cannot perform independently but can with the aid of assistant (adult)

Pre intellectual speech

language as a social contract. this includes crying, babbling, laughing and gesturing. (Before 12 months)

Autonomous speach

the child begins to invent words for objects in an effort to communicate with adult (12 months)

Naive psychology

• The child begins to use adult words

• connections between words and objects

• expression in a simple word to convey a greater meaning

• Begins at 18-24 months

Egocentric

• speech is often done out loud and during play

• speech is limited to use in obvious ways and lacks sophistication

• 3-7 years

inner speech

when speech has moved to the “inner voice“, in which children can rehearse what they will say and reflect on it

Vygotskis theories limitation

• died prematurely, leaving many of his theories incomplete

• theories are often translated or reformulated, which can lead to inconsistent application

• Concepts like inner speech are difficult to measure, which can make research less scientific

strengths of Vygotskis

• highlights the importance of social interaction and cultural tools in shaping how children learn and develop

• Vygotsky's theory has helped us understand how children's thinking is shaped by social interaction and cultural tools