Cognitive Development

We have to remind ourselves that babies enter the world bare, and that it is the parent's job to nurture them. I say this often people forget babies are just babies and end up expecting a lot more from them than what they're actually capable off. Patience is key. They will interpret things very differently from the way we do and gradually become able to think logically or scientifically. Jean Piaget, through observations and experience, created a concept called "Schema (Scheme)". According to him schemas are the building blocks of knowledge that can be thought of as a mental file folder that is constantly modified and updated as we interact with the world.

He believed that learning began with assimilation (interpretation of new experiences in terms of existing schemas), accommodation (adapting our current understanding to incorporate new information and differentiate), Object Permanence (ability to recognize that an object still exists even after it is out of sight), Egocentrism (the lack of ability to infer other's mental state), Animism (belief that inanimate objects have human characteristics), and Reversibility (capability to know that numbers or objects can change and returned to their original state), short-term wisdoms but long-term development.

Let's focus on his long term development theories. Piaget concluded that the critical time of cognition was by stages from birth to adolescence, by stages, meaning a consistent pattern with four key aspects :

1. The stages always happen in the same order.

2. No stage is ever skipped.

3. Each stage is a significant transformation from the stage before it.

4. Each later stage incorporates earlier stages.

The following stages are :

1. Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to Age of 2)

   - Earliest stage of development when they use their sense and motor abilities to understand the world that surrounds them. Infants will continuously grasp, operate, look, listen to, and chew objects because it's the only way they know how to learn. You couldn't expect a mere infant to communicate or understand reasoning.

2. Preoperational Stage (2 to 6/7 years of age)

   - Using the ability of new found skills, they express themselves in a variety of ways but cannot yet fully comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic. Generally they use make-believe or imaginative play that presents mental representation.

3. Concrete Operational Stage (6/7 to 11 years of age)

   - From this age forwards, kids develop the mental operations that enables logical thinking about concrete events. They think of solutions logical to them and may follow the simplest rules that seem clearly right like : "If nothing is added or taken away, then the amount of something stays the same." Very simple compared to adult reasoning but this is the foundation kids need to grow and be able to understand and solve complex problems as they progress.

4. Formal Operational Stage (Normally around 12 years of age and beyond)

   - Kids at this stage begin to think beyond objectives and more abstract, subjective thinking. They go from purely concrete to cogitate assessments.