Piaget, Vygotsky, and Gelman have all made substantial contributions to the area of research involving cognitive development during early childhood despite their somewhat contrasting viewpoints. Piaget’s research focused on what he termed the preoperational stage of cognitive development that occurs in children between the ages of 2 and 7 years. He believed that children at this age are not able to think through things without first acting them out. (Santrock, 2006) According to Piaget, this marks the beginning of a child’s ability to transition from simple to more complex uses of symbols and can be broken down into two substages: symbolic function and intuitive thought. Symbolic function occurs between the ages of 2 and 4 years and relates to a child’s ability to identify objects that are not currently present. For example, when my daughter Emily was around 3 years of age, one of the things we used to do together was draw and tell stories. Emily would scribble a series of images (most unidentifiable to me) using different colors of crayons. When she finished, she would then tell me the story she’d created in her mind and point to different parts of her drawing that depicted each part of her story. It was always amazing to me just how detailed she could be when telling her story and pointing to her paper. According to Piaget’s theory, my daughter was learning to think symbolically. Later, when my daughter was in kindergarten, she exhibited a great deal of confidence in her abilities and knowledge. Always quick to speak up and tell you the way something worked or an interesting fact about something. This parallel’s the other part of Piaget’s theory where children in these later years of early childhood (ages 4 to 7 years) begin to develop their intuitive side, showing a great deal of confidence in their knowledge without being fully cognizant of how they’ve come to know what they think they know. This stage is also characterized by children asking many questions that begin with “why.” (Santrock) Rochel Gelman, another developmental psychologist, also shared some of Piaget’s views. Gelman’s research was able to prove that as a child’s attention to certain relevant aspects of a conversations improved, the probably of the child conserving is also increased. (Santrock, 2006) Gelman’s research however also showed that conservation begins earlier in a child’s life the Piaget had previously thought. (Santrock)
Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development is described by what he has labeled the zone of proximal development (ZPD). (Santrock, 2006) According to Vygotsky, these different zones of development consist of the tasks that the child is unable to do alone but is capable of learning with the assistance of an adult or more knowledgeable child. The lower limit of the zone contains the tasks the child can do without assistance and the upper limit consists of what the child can master with the help of a more knowledgeable individual. (Santrock) Vygotsky’s theory uses the term scaffolding which involves the person who is teaching the child to give varied levels of support enabling the child to use their full problem solving abilities to solve a problem or complete a task. I think this becomes very important in a classroom setting where children are at different levels of learning. A good teacher will be able to help the slow learners’ progress forward but also ensure that the more advanced students are challenged as well. Last, Vygotsky believed that language played an important role in developing cognition and encouraged teachers to support and encourage young children to use private speech. (Santrock)
Today, two important aspects of information processing in young children are being studied: attention and memory. (Santrock, 2006) Thus far, research shows that a child’s attention changes (or evolves) in three ways during their preschool years. First, they begin to control their attention. Meaning, instead of wondering through a room quickly looking at one thing after another, the preschool age child will tend to focus on one object for up to 30 minutes at a time. (Santrock) Second, preschoolers become more salient. They’re able to sort out and focus their attention on things that are relevant to solving a problem or performing a given task well. Last, developmentalists identify what they term the planfulness of attention, meaning the child’s ability to differentiate between two complex objects that might at first glance appear to be the same. Last developmentalists focus on memory and how memory is retained over time. This can be simple short-term memory that’s retained for under 30 seconds, or long term memory that can be recalled over longer periods of time. (Santrock)
The viewpoints of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Gelman were in some cases sharply contrasted. For example, Piaget’s preoperational stage of cognitive development places little emphasis on sociocultural context, whereas Vygotsky’s theory is a sociocultural model. (Santrock, 2006) Although both were conducting research at about the same time, most of today’s research has focused on studying Piaget’s theories leaving many of Vygotsky’s theories unchallenged. (Hong, 2004) Hence, much of the criticisms voiced, challenge Piaget’s viewpoints and fail to address the relevance of Vygotsky’s. Eventually new findings that disproved Piaget’s theories (specifically those regarding infancy) led to a new revolutionary shift in developmental psychology. (Meltzoff, 1999) Piaget’s theories met with further challenges in regards to his idea that moral reasoning is beyond the cognitive capability of young children and as a result children’s morality develops later as their cognitive abilities mature and develop through social experience. Recent studies have disproved this concept by showing that children under age 5 understand human actions in terms that are necessary for moral reasoning. (Hong) For me personally, I find aspects of each person’s research somewhat accurate but view their work as attempts to piece together a bigger puzzle which has not yet been completely solved.
Hong, Y. (2004). Cultural meaning of group discussions on problematic moral situations in korean kindergarten classrooms. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, vol. 18.
Meltzoff, A.N., (1999). Origins of theory of mind, cognition and communication. Journal of Communication Disorders. Elseyier Science Inc. New York, NY.
Santrock, John W. (2006). Life-Span Development (10th ed.) McGraw-Hill Publishing Company.
