Essay on Cognitive Development Theory in Human Development

This essay examines the cognitive development theory, focusing on Jean Piaget's and Jerome Bruner's perspectives. The essay begins by introducing cognitive development as the process of brain development through experiences, thoughts, and language understanding. It highlights Piaget's stage theory, detailing the sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages. The essay explains how children construct knowledge through interaction with their environment. It then explores Bruner's theory, which emphasizes the role of experience and representation through enactive, iconic, and symbolic stages, applicable to both children and adults. The essay concludes by comparing and contrasting the two theories, emphasizing Piaget's focus on developmental stages and Bruner's emphasis on learning through various modes of representation. The essay utilizes multiple scholarly references to support its analysis and conclusions, providing a comprehensive overview of the topic.

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

DEVELOPMENT THEORY 1
“Cognitive developmental theory”
When a human being is born, the world stands new to him. The human being is unaware
of the environment, surroundings, languages, and way of expressing things. These
understandings are based on the development that gradually takes place. The infant is born with a
basic structure of brain which comes genetically and then the brain development takes place
through experiences, understanding of thoughts, understanding of language, the process of brain
development that takes place in the human beings is known as the cognitive development.
Various psychologists have given their opinions on the theory of cognitive development (Saxe,
2015). In the following essay the concept of cognitive development, various aspects to it are
analyzed in details with the support of different theories. Since child development to the adult is
a complex process, no one theory can describe the whole process of development of human
intelligence. Perhaps theory by Jean Piaget is the most comprehensive theory.
He was the foremost psychologists who explained how human intelligence develops from a
child to the adult; the theory is named as development stage theory. It explained how human
beings acquire; constructs and use the knowledge acquired. He opposed the idea that the child’s
brain, his abilities to understand and make perceptions are a trait that is fixed rather he explained
that the cognitive development is a two way process i.e. through biological maturation & through
the environmental exposure to the child. He was of the view that children develop understanding
of the world themselves by experiencing the deviations between what they have been taught and
what they actually discover in the environment & then based on these deviations they create their
own perception and thinking (Patric,G & Victoria, L. 2011).

DEVELOPMENT THEORY 2
Before Piaget theory came, the world worked on the assumption that adults can think in a
much better way than the children, whereas his theory ruled out this perception by showing that
the children can think in much more advanced & innovative ways in comparison to adults. This
theory is basically concerned with
 Children and not the adults.
 Development and not learning.
 Explains different stages of development (Leod, 2018).
Sensorimotor
This stage explains the development from the day the baby is born till he turns 2 years of
age. In this age span the baby starts using all of his six senses. He gets know that even if any
object for example his mother is not around him, she still exists, i.e. in this age group the child
starts understanding the concept called object permanence (Guell, Gabrieli, & Schmahmann,
2018).
Pre-operational
This is the second stage of development which explains the processes that takes place in
the age span of 2 to 7 years (Neisser, 2014). At this age, the child starts expressing his attained
knowledge through language, pointing out things and pictures. At this stage following three
aspects happens.
 Egocentrism: It talks about the scenario where the child can only express
his feelings and cannot understand what others want to say.

DEVELOPMENT THEORY 3
 Animism: according to this term, the child thinks that his toys are alive
and can touch, feel and talk like human beings.
 Centration: according to this the child can focus only on any one aspect of
the situation howsoever relevant the other situation might be.
Concrete operational
This happens at the age span of 7 to 12 years, at this stage the child starts to think
logically about the events and objects. At this age the child also learns that if the form of the
object is changed, the amount or the volume of the thing will not change, this phenomena is
called as conservation (Carey, , Zaitchik, & Bascandziev, 2015).
Formal operational
This is the final stage which occurs at the age of 12 years and onwards. At this age the
child starts to think in depth about any event or object and can reason in their thoughts even
without having any physical existence of the event or object (Powell& Kalina, 2009).
Bruner Theory.
This is the other theory on the cognitive development, Bruner theory do not support that
the cognitive development takes place as per the stages based on the age groups of an individual.
He explains that the cognitive development takes place from the experiences that a person gets
from his environment, he supports that a human mind prepares a code in his brain about any
experience and through that code, the person can go deeper in a situation and analyze the data
and then finally predict the situation similar to the one he experienced. Thus he says that children

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must acquire how to represent the recurring events in the environment in which they stay
(Pavlov, 2012).
This theory suggests that cognitive development takes place with the interaction of human being
of his innate capabilities with the technologies such as language, images along with the obvious
electronic media like computers and televisions. Bruner theory explains the following three
stages of development.
Enactive stage
In this stage of learning, knowledge and response to the situation is backed up in the
brain through motor skills for example in case of an adult while operating a lawn mower, we
know which direction to go first so that the grass is cut quickly and systematically.
Iconic stage
In this stage, the human being develops the understanding with the help of the images.
When we start learning some new subject, it can be learnt or understood better with the help of
diagrams, charts along with the verbal information (Bruner, & Haste, 2010).
Symbolic Stage:
At this stage, the understanding develops by the use of various symbols, words to identify
any object matter.
At the time of the birth of a human being, only the basic structure of the brain is
developed, rest of the development of the brain takes place with the experiences and learning
there from. To study the cognitive development, two theories have been analyzed in details
above. Jean Piaget theory only emphasized on to the development of the child, he has explained

DEVELOPMENT THEORY 5
different stages through which the development of the child intelligence takes place. He explains
that the child must be made ready to learn a specific subject matter. While that of Bruner theory
he explains that the child can be taught anything at any point of development through the use of
motor skills then through images and then with the symbols. Bruner theory applied to adults also
along with the children. Hence to conclude, the cognitive development takes place from the birth
of a human being till he stays alive, by getting across various experiences and information, and
various theories have been evolved to support such developments.

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References
Bruner, J. S., & Haste, H. (Eds.). (2010). Making Sense (Routledge Revivals): The Child's
Construction of the World. Routledge.
Carey, S., Zaitchik, D., & Bascandziev, I. (2015). Theories of development: In dialog with Jean
Piaget. Developmental Review, 38, 36-54.
Guell, X., Gabrieli, J. D., & Schmahmann, J. D. (2018). Embodied cognition and the cerebellum:
Perspectives from the Dysmetria of Thought and the Universal Cerebellar Transform
theories. Cortex, 100, 140-148.
Leod, S. M. (2018). Jean Piaget’s Theory of cognitive development Retrieved from
https://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html
Neisser, U. (2014). Cognitive psychology: Classic edition. Psychology Press.
Patric,G & Victoria, L. (2011). Understanding and applying cognitive Development
Theory.,Jossey Bass : sanfrancisco.
Pavlov, I (2012). Bruner-Learning theory in education Retrieved from:
https://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html
Powell, K. C., & Kalina, C. J. (2009). Cognitive and social constructivism: developing tools for
an i effective classroom. Education, 130(2).
Saxe, G. B. (2015). Culture and cognitive development: Studies in mathematical understanding.
Psychology Press.

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