Republic of the Philippines

CENTRAL BICOL STATE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE

Impig, Sipocot, Camarines Sur 4408
www.cbsua.edu.ph

COLLLEGE OF EDUCATION

Lesson 8: Cognitive Development

Introduction:
School-age children's thinking skills become increasingly sophisticated as they encounter new people, places, and ideas.
They develop the ability to learn in abstract ways from books, art, movies, and experiences. As you may have already learned in the
previous topics, milestones provide a guide for when to expect certain skills or behaviors to emerge. These milestones serve as
guidelines to help us understand and identify typical patterns of growth and development, to help us know when and what to look
for as children mature physically and cognitively. Reading, writing, measuring, calculating, problem-solving, hypothesis testing,
comprehending, and recalling facts all are essential for many of the tasks you accomplish every day. You started developing those
skills as a child, and they continue to develop as you encounter new situations as an adult. This topic will help you understand how
the development of thinking skills progress in children and adolescent.

Pre-competency questions
In a typical day, do you ever have to…

o pay attention to something (even if it’s totally boring)?

o ignore the things that distract you from the thing you have to pay attention to?
o hold several pieces of information in your head at the same time?
o stifle impulses to say or do things that could get you in trouble?
o change what you’re doing in response to a change in circumstances?

If you’re a typical human, you might be thinking that pretty much describes your entire day!

There’s actually a fancy term that psychologists have for all of these processes: executive functioning. Together, these
processes are the foundation for self-regulation.
Learning Resources
https://www.verywellmind.com/piagets-stages-of-cognitive-development-2795457
https://www.virtuallabschool.org/school-age/cognitive/lesson-2
https://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/develop.pdf
https://leftbrainbuddha.com/10-fun-activities-that-teach-executive-functioning-kids-teens/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhcgYgx7aAA

EXPLORE
Do a little experiment with children and ask them what do they want 20 peso bill or a 10 peso coins. ask them why.
Ask them which is heavier, a kilo of nails or a kilo of cotton. Ask them why.
You will be amazed by their answers!

What is cognitive Development?

Cognitive development is all about learning. When a school-age child solves a math problem, that's cognitive development;
when a school-age child questions something she has read, that's cognitive development; and when a school-age child makes a
snack or learns to knit, that's cognitive development. Cognitive development happens all the time and is influenced by both our
genes and our experiences. According to Dodge, Colker, and Heroman (2002), "Cognitive development refers to the mind and how
it works. It involves how children think, how they see their world, and how they use what they learn." Who children become has
everything to do with the experiences they have early in their lives. Brains are built over time, and each experience affects growth

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 Republic of the Philippines
CENTRAL BICOL STATE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE
Impig, Sipocot, Camarines Sur 4408
www.cbsua.edu.ph

COLLLEGE OF EDUCATION
and development. While genetics are important, the interplay between genes and experiences is the focus of research today.

The Importance of Brain Development in Childhood and Early Adolescence

Brains are built over time, and each experience affects growth and development. Outside of their families and their
teachers at school might be the person they spend the most time with during these critical years of development. As future
educator, it is your job to make sure that they are healthy by keeping a clean environment and promoting healthy habits.
Remember that while you are helping settle an argument over a basketball game, preheating the oven for a cooking activity,
building a model airplane, and performing all of the other tasks you do on a daily basis; you are also influencing a developing brain.

Cognitive Learning Theories

Cognitive learning derives its meaning from the word cognition which is defined as. “Mental action or process of acquiring
knowledge and understanding through experience and the senses.”
Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory [Jean Piaget [ pee-uh-zhey, py-ah-; French pya-zhe] Theory of cognitive development
suggests that children move through four different stages of mental development. His theory focuses not only on understanding

how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.

In his theory of cognitive development, Jean Piaget argued that children’s cognitive development is influenced by biological
maturation and their interaction with the environment. Children undergo a similar order and stages of development. Owing to
varied circumstances that children are exposed to, the rate at which children go through differ.

The Sensorimotor Stage (Ages: Birth to 2 Years )

The infant knows the world through their reflexes, movements and sensations. Children learn about the world through
basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and listening. Infants learn that things continue to exist even though they cannot be
seen (object permanence).They realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them.
During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences
and manipulating objects. A child's entire experience at the earliest period of this stage occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and
motor responses. It is during the sensorimotor stage that children go through a period of dramatic growth and learning. As kids
interact with their environment, they are continually making new discoveries about how the world works. The cognitive
development that occurs during this period takes place over a relatively short period of time and involves a great deal of growth.
Children not only learn how to perform physical actions such as crawling and walking; they also learn a great deal about language
from the people with whom they interact. Piaget believed that developing object permanence or object constancy, the
understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, was an important element at this point of
development. By learning that objects are separate and distinct entities and that they have an existence of their own outside of
individual perception, children are then able to begin to attach names and words to objects.

The Preoperational Stage (Ages: 2 to 7 Years)

Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects. Children at this stage tend to
be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of others. While they are getting better with language and thinking,
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 Republic of the Philippines
CENTRAL BICOL STATE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE
Impig, Sipocot, Camarines Sur 4408
www.cbsua.edu.ph

COLLLEGE OF EDUCATION
they still tend to think about things in very concrete terms. The foundations of language development may have been laid during
the previous stage, but it is the emergence of language that is one of the major hallmarks of the preoperational stage of
development. Children become much more skilled at pretend play during this stage of development, yet continue to think very
concretely about the world around them. At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the
point of view of other people. They also often struggle with understanding the idea of constancy. For example, a researcher might
take a lump of clay, divide it into two equal pieces, and then give a child the choice between two pieces of clay to play with. One
piece of clay is rolled into a compact ball while the other is smashed into a flat pancake shape. Since the flat shape  looks larger, the
preoperational child will likely choose that piece even though the two pieces are exactly the same size.

The Concrete Operational Stage (Ages: 7 to 11 Years)

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes. During this stage, children begin to think logically about concrete
events. They begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall,
skinny glass. Their thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete. Children begin using inductive logic, or
reasoning from specific information to a general principle. While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this
point in development, they become much more adept at using logic. The egocentrism of the previous stage begins to disappear as
kids become better at thinking about how other people might view a situation. While thinking becomes much more logical during
the concrete operational state, it can also be very rigid. Kids at this point in development tend to struggle with abstract and
hypothetical concepts. During this stage, children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other people might
think and feel. Kids in the concrete operational stage also begin to understand that their thoughts are unique to them and that not
everyone else necessarily shares their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

The Formal Operational Stage (Ages: 12 and Up)

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:At this stage, the adolescent or young adult begins to think abstractly
and reason about hypothetical problems. Abstract thought emergesTeens begin to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical,
social, and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning. Begin to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general
principle to specific information.The final stage of Piaget's theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive
reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas.
At this point, people become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems and think more scientifically about
the world around them. The ability to thinking about abstract ideas and situations is the key hallmark of the formal operational
stage of cognitive development. The ability to systematically plan for the future and reason about hypothetical situations are also
critical abilities that emerge during this stage. It is important to note that Piaget did not view children's intellectual development as
a quantitative process; that is, kids do not just add more information and knowledge to their existing knowledge as they get older.
Instead, Piaget suggested that there is a qualitative change in how children think as they gradually process through these four
stages.A child at age 7 doesn't just have more information about the world than he did at age 2; there is a fundamental change
in how he thinks about the world.

"The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply
repeating what other generations have done.“ Jean Piaget

Post competency

Describe the significance of Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory to your career as future educator

Quiz: Write the letter of the correct answer.

1. The ability of a child to produce and understand two languages

a. bilingualism c. productive bilingualism
b. simultaneous bilingualism d. receptive bilingualism

2. an infant's knowledge of the world is limited to his or her sensory perceptions and motor activities.
a. pre-operational stage c. formal operational stage
b. sensorimotor stage d. concrete operational

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 Republic of the Philippines
CENTRAL BICOL STATE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE
Impig, Sipocot, Camarines Sur 4408
www.cbsua.edu.ph

COLLLEGE OF EDUCATION

3. Emphasizes the critical role the parents and early caregivers play in language development of children
a. Lev Vygotsky c. Jerome Bruner
b. Noam Chomsky d. Jean Piaget

4. An approach to language development which focuses on the innate Language Acquisition Device of the children
a. Ethology c. sociobiology
b. Nativism d. Support System

5. An early training device used by children which is a give and take conversation between the mother and the child where
the adult maintains the flow of conversation
a. pseudodialogue c. protoimperatives
b. protodeclaratives d. protodialogue

6. Another early training device where a child uses gestures to make some sort of statement.
a. protoimperatives c. pseudodialogue
b. protodialogues d. protodeclarative

7. When a child learn the second language at the age of 3 and acquired primary language at an early stage
a. simultaneous c. productive
b. sequential d. receptive

8. The capacity to think and understand is called

a. intelligence c. learning
b. cognition d. achievement

9. refers to the child's inability to see a situation from another person's point of view.
a. centration c. egocentrism
b. egocentric speech d. conservation

10. This emphasizes the cognitive development through active contribution of learner and the more experienced people.
a. reciprocal instruction c. cultural variation
b. guided participation d. social interaction

THANK YOU.

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