Orbis Linguarum Vol. 13 (1999)
Legnica
Child Cognitive Development
It seems important to know how children think
in various learning experiences. Children are exposed to a variety of stimuli
in their environment. They have a need to understand the world and a natural curiosity about the stimuli
in the environment (Fisher, 1995:2). Cognition is the term to name the
constant process of going back and forth between the person and the environment
(Sprinthall, et.al., 1994:103). ‘Cognitive’ derives from the Latin word cognosco (to know) and refers to all
those psychological activities involved in the acquisition, processing, organisation
and use of knowledge (Birch and Malim, 1994:25). Cognitive development is
defined as the way in which the individual perceives the environment. It
depends on interaction between the child and the learning environment.
Any linguistic behaviour that young children
engage in will be confined by their limits of cognitive development. Cognitive
style describes an individual’s overall approach to learning independently of
the task, while cognitive strategy refers to the approach to specific types of
tasks (Dickinson, 1988:20).
Many researchers have investigated the ways in
which children think and learn. The following article looks at some aspects of
child cognitive development as seen by various psychologists and educators.
One of the most famous psychologists who
focused on child cognitive development was a Swiss – Jean Piaget. Piaget
states that ‘learning is subordinate to the subject’s level of development’
(Piaget, 1970:716). According to his theory of cognitive development, the child
adapts to the conditions of the environment. The self-regulation which he calls
the process of equilibration consists of accommodation
and assimilation. Assimilation is the
process in which ‘every newly established connection is integrated into an
existing schematism’ (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969:5) incorporating thus new
information into the existing concepts. Accommodation is ‘the modification of
internal schemes to fit reality’ (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969:6) and by means of
the process new concepts are built. Piaget’s equilibration in which an
individual attempts to resolve disequilibrium which the everyday life experiences
bring in order to achieve equilibrium occurs throughout our life.
According to Piaget, children pass through a
series of stages before they are ready to perceive, reason and understand. Therefore
Piaget claimed that there was no point in teaching a child new items unless she
achieved the level of readiness at which she was able to assimilate new
information. Piaget enlisted four main stages of child cognitive development.
The first sensori-motor stage (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969:3),
begins from the child’s birth and lasts till two years of age. The infant does
not reveal the symbolic function and she does not have representations. During
the period child assumes mental skills like establishing self-identity and
motor skills like the ability to walk and play. At this stage the child is in
touch with many objects. In the beginning, an object which is taken away from
the child, stops existing for him, but with time the child realizes that the
objects or people have only changed their place but they still exist. In the
second year the child develops so called object
permanence (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969:14), which means that objects are
permanent and the child can imagine them in their absence.
Second stage pre-operational from the
ages 2 to 7 is characterised by rapid development which is dependent on
superficial perception of the environment. The child’s thoughts become more
flexible as well as memory and imagination become evident. Piaget maintains
that pre-operational children are egocentric
and that between the age of 5 and 7 they prefer to work individually rather
than in groups even of two (Piaget, 1965:6).
Other fundamental cognitive structures pointed
by Piaget at that stage are centration and
irreversibility. Pre-operational
learners cannot concentrate on more than one feature of a situation, thus they
may ignore some relevant aspects. Children at this age do not understand the
phenomenon of conservation, which
means that they do not comprehend the fact that physical properties do not
change when their form of appearance changes. Learners at the pre-operational
stage do not see the reversibility of phenomena. They find it hard to go back
to the starting point and understand, for example that defrosted ice can be
frozen back to the previous stage.
Third stage concrete operations (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969:96) lasts from ages
7 to 11 and during this period the child achieves the level of operational
thinking. Piaget refers to operations as internalised actions, i.e. actions
which become part of children’s imagination. At this stage children learn by doing things. Through ‘hands on’
activities children get to know the environment, they experience, understand
and learn at the same time. ‘Concrete’ operations refer to objects and not to
verbally stated hypotheses (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969:100). The operations are reversible (the opposite of addition is
subtraction) and they reveal the child’s ability to conserve. The conservation
of substance develops at the age of 7-8, the conservation of weight at 9-10 and
the conservation of volume at the age 11-12 (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969:99). The
scheme of conservation means that displacement does not change the properties
of the object that is moved. The child in the operational stage is capable of seriation, i.e. arranging elements
according to size or classification,
i.e. grouping items according to certain criteria. 7-11 year old children can
distinguish between dreams and facts but they cannot yet separate a hypothesis
from a fact.
In the last stage identified by Piaget called formal operations, the preadolescent
children get involved in the non-present and the future. The subjects are able
to consider statements that are abstract. The thoughts are separated from
objects which results in considering relations and classifications in other
than concrete ways. A combinatorial system develops of classifications and
relations (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969:133). The adolescent is likely to
systematically investigate all the options in order to solve the problem. The
adolescent combines also the two forms of reversibility: inversion and
reciprocity. Inversion or negation (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969:136) is
characterised by the fact that the inverse operation together with the
corresponding direct observation cancels the whole procedure: +A-A=0. Reciprocity
means that the original operation together with the reciprocal one results in
equivalence. In the formal operations stage the adolescent develops the notion
of proportion (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969:140), the double system of reference,
the forms of probability (the concept of chance).
Though Piaget’s theory has been very popular it
is being questioned by modern psychologists. Margaret Donaldson (1978) claimed
that the child’s ability to solve problems may depend on the way they are
presented and the familiarity of the task itself. Piaget has been criticised
for underestimating the potential of a child and neglecting the role of
language in child’s development. Piaget gained strong opponents due to his
neglect of the influence of the environment on the child. Nevertheless Piaget’s
theory has contributed immensely to the understanding of child cognitive
development. The theory implemented in education resulted in creating a
child-centred approach catering for different cognitive levels.
Donaldson (1978) challenged Piaget’s theory and
tried to justify that Piaget may have undervalued child’s capabilities at
various stages of development. Donaldson questioned the egocentrism and the
inability to decentre which was postulated by her famous predecessor. By
quoting experiments in which the situation was meaningful for the child, she
proved that children between 3 and a half and 5 years of age were able to see
the situation from the point of view of another person and they were capable of
decentring (Donaldson, 1978:24). Donaldson claims that in Piaget’s experiments
children were not quite aware what they were supposed to do. Donaldson also
stated that children were capable of conservation much earlier than Piaget had
suggested. In Piaget’s experiments children were asked two questions about the
critical attribute before and after the transformation. By omitting the initial
question about the critical attribute, and asking only after some
transformation had occurred, the correct response rate in children aged 6 was
increased (Donaldson, 1978:62). The second question gives the child a hidden
message that he should change his response which is then incorrect.
Piaget believed that children were not able to
make inferences and that they could not answer the class-inclusion tasks. Donaldson
justified the failure of children on the tasks devised by Piaget by the fact
that although perceptual contrast on such task was present, it was only
represented by one question, but not the other. She also described experiments
in which children successfully managed to answer two questions both of which
referred to the perceptual contrast proving thus the ability to make inferences
(Donaldson, 1978:46).
Another studies conducted by Donaldson
investigated the ability of children to cope with a number of factors. The
failure to answer the questions correctly resulted from the interpretation of
the question the children were asked. The children answered the questions
according to what they thought the questions ought to refer to (Donaldson,
1978:66). Donaldson further suggests that the teachers of young learners should
be aware of how children represent and interpret their experiences.
Donaldson introduced the term disembedded thought (Donaldson, 1978:76)
which is equivalent to formal, abstract thinking. She also distinguishes
between disembedded tasks (abstract tasks not performed in realistic situation)
and embedded tasks which are in everyday situations. Donaldson discusses
research which proves that children do better on cognitive tasks if these tasks
appear in a context that makes ‘human sense’ to the child. She particularly
emphasises the ability of a child to place a task in a socially meaningful
context. If a situation is disembedded from a natural environment it will be
more difficult to solve by children. The children will understand things much
better if they are presented in a natural and familiar setting.
Donaldson also stressed the importance of
reading in fostering the child’s development of thought processes. First
encounters with books help the child become aware of language. Donaldson
further points to the main factors in teaching reading, namely, sufficient
amount of time and meaningful context. Donaldson (1978:99) states that ‘reading
enhances the child’s reflective awareness not only of language as a symbolic
system, but also of the processes of his own mind’.
Donaldson designates the role of the teacher as
a person who should lead the children to tasks which they will be capable of
performing but not too easily (Donaldson, 1978:114). The children should also
be helped to build a self-image to be able to manage to cope with the
challenges. According to Donaldson (1978:122) young learners should be given
opportunities to learn based on their inborn curiosity.
One of the implications of Donalson’s theory is
that if a child has mental access to a context in which the language of the
classroom becomes meaningful then he has more chances of understanding the
logic of language. Donaldson uses the term imaginative
embedding to characterise the process in which the children fit the problem
in a real world context and she believes that this process is an important part
of making sense of logical problems. Margaret Donaldson has shown that it is
not enough to provide children with opportunities for experimentation, we need
to pay attention to the context of these experiments.
Vygotski, a Soviet psychologist, exerted great
influence on the views of child development. Vygotski’s theory was built on
the assumption that individual intellectual development cannot be understood
without reference to the social environment in which the child is embedded. Vygotski
contributed also to the understanding of language development. Language has
for him important influence for concept formation.Vygotski’s main interest was
in language and communication which facilitate intellectual and personal
growth. Vygotski claimed that in the beginning speech serves only the
communicative function. Children use egocentric speech for the functions of
planning and self-regulation. In interacting with children adults use speech to
define meaning. Children acquire this and can be heard speaking aloud but
directing their speech towards themselves, especially when performing
challenging tasks. Vygotski called this ‘inner speech’ (Vygotski, 1971:149)
which the child will gradually internalise and make it inner thought. In
Vygotskian terms speech represents higher mental processes like planning,
evaluating, memorising and reasoning. Thought development is determined by
language, i.e. by the linguistic tools of thought and by the sociocultural
experience of the child. The child’s intellectual growth depends on the mastery
of language.
Vygotski stressed the importance of society for
child development. The child acquires certain concepts from the culture that
surrounds him. Vygotski believed that learning came from the outside, mainly
through the use of language by older members of the community. The Russian
psychologist emphasised that cognitive development occurs in situations where
the child’s problem-solving is guided by an adult who structures and models the
proper solution to the problem. Vygotski (1978) describes how cognitive
functioning has its origins in the child’s social interactions. According to
Vygotski ‘learning awakens a variety of internal development processes that are
only able to operate when the child is interacting with people in his
environment, and in co-operation with his peers’ (1978:90).
Learning through
instruction was for
Vygotski ‘a fundamental feature of human intelligence’ (Wood, 1998:26). With
the help of adults, a child develops his knowledge and abilities. Vygotski
found out that a child’s performance of a task when working with adults or more
capable peers was a better indication of his cognitive development than his
performance independently. Zone of
Proximal Development (ZPD) is the term introduced by Vygotski to refer to
‘the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by
independent problem-solving and the level of potential development as
determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboation with
more capable peers’ (1978:86). According to this notion, readiness defined by Piaget as the state of the child’s existing
knowledge, is broadened by including the child’s potential to learn with the
help of others. Vygotski’s famous words ‘what a child can do with assistance
today, she will be able to do by herself tomorrow’ (1978:87) further explain
the concept of ZPD as defining the functions which have not yet matured, but
are in the process of maturation (the level of potential development) and the
functions that have already matured (actual developmental level). Vygotski
stressed the importance of the ripening structure of potential development
which requires the help of adults or other children. He sees good education as
the one which highlights what the child c a n do with sensitive appropriate
help. ZPD can be seen as complementary to the Interlanguage Theory and the
Input Hypothesis (Williams and Burden, 1997:66). The Interlanguage Theory
claims that each learner passes through a series of stages in developing a
second language. Selinker (1984:35) states ‘the existence of a separate
linguistic system based on the observable output which results from a
learner’s attempted production of a target language form’. According to the
Input Hypothesis (Krashen, 1986:21), learners acquire by understanding language
that contains structure a little above their current level of competence i+1 (i
– stands for the present stage of interlanguage).
Play is, according to Vygotski, one of the most
important situations for the development of child self-initiated activity. It
also encourages the Zone of Proximal Development. In play a child always
behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behaviour – in play it is as
though he were older. Play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed
form and is in itself a major source of development (Vygotski, 1978:102).
For Vygotski metacognition is concerned with
the child’s conscious control of his learning, which Vygotski regarded as a
desirable goal (Sutherland, 1992:42). According to Vygotski the process of
learning how to think is carried out by internalising the external and social
activities and making them a part of the mental structures (Sutherland,
1992:45).
Vygotski’s theory led methodologists to the
concept of a teacher as a mediator
stimulating the students’ social and cognitive development.
Jerome Bruner a psychologist from Harvard
University strongly influenced by Vygotski, is also of the opinion that child
development depends on social interaction. The teacher should support the child
in performing certain activities. This may encourage the child to take the risk
and may help him feel more secure. Instruction should aid children in their
thinking. According to Bruner children can perform a task when they are given
instructions and assistance. The teacher is the supporter of child’s learning development by providing a
framework or scaffolding.
As Bruner says (1977:xiv):
(...) scaffolding the task in a way that assures that only those parts
of the task within the child’s reach are left unresolved and knowing what
elements of the solution the child will recognise though he cannot perform
them. So too with language acquisition, as in all forms of assisted learning,
it depends massively upon participation in a dialogue carefully stabilised by
the adult partner.
Bruner was a strong proponent of the education
which dealt with the whole person. He thought that the main role of education
is to help learners achieve excellence which can only be obtained through
challenging learners with new tasks. Bruner states that a good educator is ‘one
who can diagnose the incipient intention of the child and act accordingly’
(1977:20). The learner should be encouraged to discover things for himself (Bruner, 1966:96). He stressed the
importance of learning how to learn which he understood as the
ability to transfer the knowledge or skills from one situation to another. ‘Learning
should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more
easily’ (Bruner, 1977:17). One of his famous statements is ‘any subject could
be taught to any child at any age in some form that is honest’ (1977:ix). This
gives the background for the spiral
curriculum in which the teachers should introduce the basic topic and then
revisit it cyclically in order to build on it and expand. A spiral arrangement
of the subject matter allows an extension of each topic and a periodic revision
of what has already been taught (Bruner, 1977:52). Grasping the structure of
the subject matter is understanding it in a way that permits many other things
to be related to it meaningfully (Bruner, 1977:7). Bruner further explains that
the act of learning involves three processes (1977:48): acquisition of
information, transformation adjusting the knowledge to particular tasks and
evaluation checking whether adjustment of knowledge is appropriate for the task.
Bruner claims that adults need to arrange input in order to help the child
comprehend what is going on. These routines, familiar settings and formats
constitute a Language Acquisition Support System (Bruner, 1983:39).
Bruner offered his own stage theory: he divided
development of an individual into three modes of representation. Representation
is the way that we manage to keep hold of our past experiences in an orderly
way. In the enactive mode learning
takes place by manipulation of objects and things. In the iconic mode objects are represented by visual images. In the symbolic mode, symbols are used instead
of objects or mental images (Bruner, 1966:11). Children need experiences which
give opportunities for all three modes of representation. The main difference
between Piaget’s stages of cognitive development and Bruner’s stage theory is
that although individuals pass through the modes of representation in a
sequence during childhood, the adult uses these three throughout life. Bruner
also stressed that cognitive growth is influenced by culture and education. He
highlighted the importance of language to the child thinking processes.
Reuven Feuerstein, an Israeli psychologist and
educator, made an important contribution to the classroom instruction. According
to Feuerstein, anybody can become a successful learner. Feuerstein believed
that cognitive structures may be modified to develop their full potential (structural cognitive modifiability). Cognitive
modifiability (Feuerstein, 1980:9) refers to
(...) structural changes, or the changes of the state of the organism,
brought about by a deliberate program of intervention that will facilitate the
generation of continuous growth by rendering the organism receptive and
sensitive to internal and external sources of stimulation.
Significant adults by interacting with a child
foster his cognitive development. Teacher’s role is seen by Feuerstein as that
of a mediator who shapes the way the
child perceives the environment. Mediation is characterised by certain
features. It is related to empowering the learner to acquire knowledge, skills
or strategies, to become more autonomous and to develop as independent
thinkers. The learner is an active participant in the mediation process. He
reciprocates the intentions of the teacher. The teacher’s role is not
restricted to preparing self-access materials but he is also to help the
learners to interact with them. Feuerstein (1980:15-16) describes mediation as
(...) the way in which stimuli emitted by the environment are
transformed by a mediating agent,
usually a parent, sibling or other caregiver. This mediating agent, guided by
his intentions, culture and emotional investment, selects and organizes the
world of stimuli for the child. The mediator selects stimuli that are most
appropriate and then frames, filters and schedules them; he determines the
appearance of certain stimuli and ignores others.
Feuerstein identified certain ways in which
adults can facilitate child cognitive development. They may help the child to
focus attention and perception, to select the necessary information, to plan
his actions, to self-control impulsiveness, to develop care and precision. Feuerstein
(1980) devised a programme for teaching children how to learn which is called Instrumental Enrichment. It consists of
400 cognitive tasks which were constructed to teach the skills of thinking,
problem solving and learning how to learn. The programme teaches
categorisation, family relationships, temporal relations, numerical
progressions, following instructions, understanding illustrations, comparisons,
analytic perception, orientation in space, finding patterns (Feuerstein,
1980:344). Feuerstein points to twelve features of IE (1980:289-290): significance,
purpose beyond the here and now, a
sense of competence, control of own behaviour, goal-setting, challenge,
awareness of change, a belief in positive oucomes, sharing, individuality and a
sense of belonging. The learners should be aware of the significance of the
task and they ought to recognise the value of it in their future life. The
teacher and the children should share the intention in the presentation of the
task. Young learners ought to feel that they are capable of performing well on
a task and they should be able to control their own learning. Feuerstein famous
dictum which gives the learners time to consider problems for themselves is
(1980:127): Just a minute... Let me
think. Children ought to be gradually encouraged to set goals which are
within their reach and they should be willing to take new challenges. Young
learners should believe that they can solve the problem and they ought to be
invited to cooperate while, at the same time, their individuality should be
respected. Children need to have a sense of belonging to the class. Instrumental
Enrichment aimed at changing the cognitive structure of a learner by
transferring his passive and dependent cognitive style into an autonomous and
independent thinker.
Children think differently from adults and
there are substantial differences in the way children of different ages
understand the world around them. Even children of the same age may differ
significantly in their level of cognitive development. The child’s learning,
understanding and thinking is influenced by the environment, society and
culture. The individual abilities of children can be traced within the Zone of
Proximal Development. While there are certain universal stages of development,
all children are individuals who can with an adult’s assistance, achieve the
best possible understanding and performance for that child (Greig and Taylor,
1999:31).
The awareness of the cognitive development will
help teachers to avoid introducing tasks before the children are ready to deal
with them and also will prevent them from waiting too long until the child
passes the sensitive period to perceive the concepts. The notions of learning
through discovery, learning by doing, learning to learn, a spiral syllabus, the
teacher as a mediator providing scaffolding which are so popular in modern ELT
methodology find their origin in psychology.
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Malim. 1994. Developmental Psychology
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Children’s Minds. Glasgow: William
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· Feuerstein, R.
1980. Instrumental Enrichment:
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University Press.
· Fisher, R. 1995. Teaching Children to Think. Cheltenham:
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Taylor. 1999. Doing Research with
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· Sutherland, P.
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· Williams, M. and
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