Cognitive Development

The topic I chose to focus my research simulation on was cognitive development. I have always had a huge fascination with how children preceive the world vs how adults perceive the world and so this topic truly elaborates more on this idea. I was inspired by Jean Piaget’s work in my undergraduate studies, so much so that I wanted to utilize this as a research topic and expand further on the information. I often times find myself conducting observations with my 5 year old daugther and the children I work with to see where their cognitive development levels are and if they are developmentally on track. During my undergraduate studies, I was required to conduct observations in the classroom setting in 4 diferent centers to see how cognitive development varied amongst age groups and populations of children.

There was a very common theme among the infants and young toddlers, and that was they were all, with the exception of a few, operating within the sensorimotor stage. During this stage an infant’s knowledge of the world is limited to his or her sensory perceptions and motor activities. Behaviors are limited to simple motor responses caused by sensory stimuli. As the hildren get older, they move through the other stages fairly quickly. My 5 year old should be operating in the preoperational stage, which states that a child learns to use language. During this stage, children do not yet understand concrete logic, cannot mentally manipulate information and are unable to take the point of view of other people. She is actually functioning within the concrete operational stage, which states that children gain a better understanding of mental operations. Children begin thinking logically about concrete events, but have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts.