Process Of Cognitive Development

As a biologist, Piaget was interested in how an organism adapts to its environment (Piaget described this ability as intelligence.) Behavior is controlled through mental organizations called schemes that the individual uses to represent the world and designate action.

This adaptation is driven by a biological drive to obtain balance between schemes and the environment (equilibration). Piaget hypothesized that infants are born with schemes operating at birth that he called "reflexes." In other animals, these reflexes control behavior throughout life. However, in human beings as the infant uses these reflexes to adapt to the environment, these reflexes are quickly replaced with constructed schemes.

Piaget described two processes used by the individual in its attempt to adapt:
• assimilation and
• accomodation.

Both of these processes are used thoughout life as the person increasingly adapts to the environment in a more complex manner.

Assimilation
The process of using or transforming the environment so that it can be placed in preexisting cognitive structures. Example: an infant uses a sucking schema that was developed by sucking on a small bottle when attempting to suck on a larger bottle.

Accomodation
The process of changing cognitive structures in order to accept something from the environment. Example: the infant modifies a sucking schema developed by sucking on a pacifier to one that would be successful for sucking on a bottle.

As schemes become increasingly more complex (i.e., responsible for more complex behaviors) they are termed structures. As one's structures become more complex, they are organized in a hierarchical manner (i.e., from general to specific).

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the 20th centuries most influential researchers in the area of developmental psychology. He was a child prodigy who published his first article in a refereed journal at the age of 11. Piaget originally trained in the areas of biology and philosophy and considered himself a “genetic epistimologist.” He was mainly interested in the biological influences on “how we come to know.”

Piaget believed that what distinguishes human beings from other animals is our ability to do “abstract symbolic reasoning.” Piaget's views are often compared with those of Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934), who looked more to social interaction as the primary source of cognition and behavior. This is somewhat similar to the distinctions made between Freud and Erikson in terms of the development of personality.

While working in Binet’s test lab in Paris, Piaget became interested in how children think. He noticed that young children's answers were qualitatively different than older children. This suggested to him that the younger children were not less knowledgeable but, instead, answered the questions differently than their older peers because they thought differently.

This implies that human development is qualitative (changes in kind) rather than quantitative (changes in amount).

There are two major aspects to his theory:• the process of coming to know and
• the stages we move through as we gradually acquire this ability.
• Piaget’s training as a biologist influenced both aspects of his theory.

Different Ways To Classify Learning Styles

There are many different ways to classify learning styles. These fall into general categories: perceptual modality, information processing, and personality patterns. The categories represent ways to focus on the learner.

Perceptual modalities define biologically based reactions to our physical environment and represent the way we most efficiently adopt data. We should learn our perception style so we can seek out information in the format that we process most directly. Educators should pay attention to modalities to ensure programs strike all physiologic levels.

Information processing distinguishes between the way we sense, think, solve problems, and remember information. Each of us has a preferred, consistent, distinct way of perceiving, organizing, and retaining information.

Personality patterns focus on attention, emotion, and values. Studying these differences allows us to predict the way we will react and feel about different situations. We will spend our time here on perceptual modalities because it has the most implications in education.