The Development Of The Cognition - 1013 Words

The development of the cognition in the early years of life (2-6 year olds) is the assembly of the thought processes. The thought processes are comprised of memory, problem solving, and decision-making (Encyclopedia of Children’s Health). Universally all children’s thought processes consist of these three abilities; however, there are cases where the child doesn’t have the ability or can be impaired in one or more of these abilities. Several theories of how a child in the early years thinks have been developed over the years. The motor skills, brain development, and impulse control that advances every year of a child’s life affect the cognition or ability to think (book). Two theorists that first described this were Jean Piaget and Lev†¦show more content†¦According to Kathleen Stassen Berger, the Preoperational stage is where children don’t use the reasoning process and is different than the Sensorimotor stage because they can now think sy mbolically. Until the child reaches around the age of six there are 4 limitations of logic, including: Centration, the focus on appearance, static reasoning, and irreversibility. Centration is to focus on only part of the situation rather than the situation as a whole. A major type of centration is egocentrism which means â€Å"self-centeredness†. This means the child understand the world only from their perspective. The focus of appearance is the idea that an object is what it appears to be. Static reasoning is that the child believes the world is exactly how it is now and won’t change. Lastly, irreversibility is child belief that once something happens it can’t be changed (Berger, 2014, p.182-183). Piaget proved this in an experiment done on conservation and how no matter if the object has the same amount of something in it, if one is narrower and so the substance is higher, the child believes that there is more substance in it. This chart from the book shows conservation. Kathleen Stassen Berger explains the outcome of the experiment when she says, â€Å"Young children fail to understand conservation because they focus (center) on what they see (appearance), noticing only the immediate (static) condition. It does not occur to them that they can