Perception and cognitive mechanisms of development are two distinct approaches used to explain the conception and perception of the environment by people of different ages. Though the two concepts operate independently, cognitive development has a significant influence on the perception of individuals across different ages. Perception refers to the process that an individual usually applies to make sense from all the stimuli that people encounter in the environment. This mechanism does not rely on only judging and reasoning, but it involves sensory interpretations of all activities and elements that people come across in the interacting environment (Bornstein, 2017). Cognitive development is viewed as a construction of thought processes which involves remembering, problem-solving, and decision making which exists from childhood through adolescences to adulthood. Cognitive and perception development are two distinct mechanisms that explain human development and perception of the environment.
According to McCarthy, (2017), Cognitive development focuses on reasoning and making judgments of all environmental stimuli such as sound and visual objects that people meet in the environment. On the other hand, perception is an interpreting process which seeks to make judgments based on the stimuli that people encounter in daily life. For example, cognition development in infants may appear by the recognition of sounds of people and visual representation of the people, but the child may be unable to interpret the meaning of the sound or physical element in the environment. In this case, the infant will be aware of the existence of sound, but there will be little or no clue about the meaning of the information received from the environment. However, perception involves interpretation and deduction of meaning from the stimuli in the environment, and there is also a judgment of the different stimuli in the environment. For example, a child can be in a position to differentiate between the sounds of a mother from that of other people or get to understanding the meaning of a particular sound in the environment.
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In understanding the difference between cognitive development and attention, there is of evaluating the presence of consciousness and attention in the two aspects. The stages of cognition development call for the need of recognizing the existence of both the consciousness an existence of the stimuli and demonstrate attention of the existence of the stimuli. From this view, it is evident that cognitive development should demonstrate the presence of both consciousness and attention where consciousness involves the recognition of the existence of the stimuli in the environment while attention calls for a need of developing an interest in getting and understanding the meaning of the stimuli. For example, Piaget theory suggested that children in their natural environment by learning and obtaining new things and relating the new experiences with what they already know in the environment (Baillargeon, 2004). This information makes cognitive development to be a learning and accommodative process that enables people to become aware of the existence of different stimuli in the environment. On the other hand, cognition does not necessarily pay attention to the stimuli because there can exist some cognitive without the presence of attention. As a result, attention, and consciousness present the essential feature of the difference between perception and cognitive development process. In the development process, there is an overreliance on the information related to what people hear and see indicating that cognitive development relies heavily on the external sensory to experience and perceive the stimuli in the environment.
On the other hand, perception development depends on the mental interpretation of stimuli that people experience in their living environment. The environment is full of stimuli, and it becomes important for the brain to choose the stimuli that it would like to respond to depending on the intention and perception of the different stimuli that exist in the sounding. For example, a person can step on a cold environment thus sending information to the brain to make a judgment about the existence of the coldness in the environment. In situations where an individual closes eyes, there may not be the experience of cognitive reaction because it exists depending on the perception of the external stimuli which is not functional when the eyes are closed (McCarthy, 2017). However, mental sensory works even when an individual closes eyes because people keep on recalling the activities and stimuli that that drew their attention in the environment. This information indicates that the most distinct feature of recognition is that the brain does not need a physical influence for perception to occur while cognition requires the presence of physical activity to occur.
Cognitive development and perception mechanism of development are two distinct elements that explain how people ranging from children to adults learn about the environment. The difference between the two aspects appears by the perception that it is a difference between seeing and memory recognition as well as the involvement of consciousness and attention to external stimuli. Since cognition development depends on the ability of a person to use external sensory to identify stimuli in the environment with little involvement of the physical, mental interpretation, cognition involves consciousness and attention by the individual to the stimuli. However, perception depends on the memory recognition of the stimuli that exist in the environment. Despite the difference between cognitive development and perception, it is evident that there is a linkage between the two developmental mechanisms. Memory ability to interpret stimuli depends on the experience of past events and what the kind of stimuli that the individual can remember.
References
Baillargeon, R. (2004). Infants’ reasoning about hidden objects: evidence for event ‐ general and event ‐ specific expectations. Developmental science , 7 (4), 391-414.
Bornstein, M. H. (2017). Perceptual development: Stability and change in feature perception. In Psychological Development from Infancy (pp. 37-81). Routledge.
McCarthy, T. (2017). Measuring risk perception and risk-taking behaviour when driven by automatic cognitive processing: the development of new methods (Doctoral dissertation, University of Strathclyde).
