Both cognitive psychologists and philosophers have been interested in cognitive development. The aim of this paper is to examine the developmental theories of Piaget, Vygotsky and Burner as they contend with cognitive development. Also, these theories are quite different from each other.
John Piaget
Swiss development psychologist John Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the first people to examine cognitive development systematically. Piaget proposed that children are born with a fundamental mental structure on which all subsequent learning and knowledge is based. According to Piaget, children think in a different way than adults. Piaget proposed that children may pass through four stages of cognitive development.
The first stage proposed …show more content…
This stage occurs in children aged around 2 to 7. During this stage, children thought process are increasing, and children also become adept at using symbols. Also, role playing becomes important during this stage. Children often play the role of "mommy", "daddy".
The third stage, labeled concrete operational stage, stats around age 7 to 11. During this period, children begin thinking logically, but they are not able to think theoretically or hypothetically. They achieve a better understanding of mental operations.
The fourth and final stage of Piaget's theory of cognitive development is the formal operational stage. This stage starts at age twelve and lasts through adulthood. At this stage, people gain the ability to think about abstract concepts. Moreover, during this stage they will draw a conclusion based on a hypothesis. Lev …show more content…
According to Bruner “intelligent mind creates from experience generic coding systems that permit one to go beyond the data to new and possibly fruitful predictions” (Bruner, 1957, p. 234). Therefore, children as they grow must obtain ways of representing the "recurrent regularities" in their environment. According to the Bruner's theory, there are three modes of representation.
The first stage is Enactive representation (action-based). This stage starts at birth and lasts through 12 months of age. During this stage, children encoding action based information and storing it in their memory.
According to Burner's theory of cognitive development, the second stage is the Iconic representation (image-based) stage. This stage occurs in children aged around 1 to 6. This stage shows why, when we are learning a new subject, it is often helpful to have diagrams or illustrations to come with verbal information.
The third stage is Symbolic representation (language-based). This is where information is stored in the form of a symbol, for instance language.
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