Cognitive development refer to the long-term changes in the child’s processes of thinking and memory, these including language learning, perceptual skills, and information processing. There are various cognitive development theory, al seeking to explain how a child develops and learns the various behavior they acquire through their stages of development, but I believe Jean Piaget theory of cognitive development best explains this. His theory is based on the belief that intelligence is not a fixed trait and thus cognitive development is as a result of interaction with the environment and biological maturation. That is, as the children interact with the environment or the world around them, they continually gain additional knowledge and build on the existing, this making them adapt previously held ideas to accommodate the new additional information acquired.
One of the major characteristic of this theory is the development of children according to stages. In the sensorimotor stage, Piaget’s theory describes that children think by means of their motor actions and senses ( Simatwa, 2010) . This is true as infants below the age of 2 years often bite or hew objects, continually touch, listen or look, and from this learn the way of the world. Another element that make Piaget’s theory the ideal means of explaining the development process is presence of innate schemata in infants underlying innate reflexes allowing them to understand and respond to the world. For example, the sucking reflex in infants where a baby can suck anything that touches their lips including a person’s finger or a nipple indicate the presence of a sucking schema in infants ( Gallagher, Finlayson, & McCloughlin, 2012) . Moreover, the development process involve assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium, whereby the schemas are exposed to various information, assimilate and adapt to be able to deal with new information ( Joubish & Khurram, 2011) . This leads to the case whereby, children can only learn certain behaviors or conduct at a given age, that is, only when the schemas present are able to process the new information.
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References
Gallagher, A., Finlayson, O., & McCloughlin, T. (2012). Cognitive acceleration in infant classes: testing scientific thinking skills. Proceedings of the primary science symposiun: science live for teachers. Dublin, RDS/CASTeL. pp30-34 .
Joubish, M. F., & Khurram, M. A. (2011). Cognitive development in Jean Piaget’s work and its implications for teachers. World Applied Sciences Journal , 12 (8), 1260-1265.
Simatwa, E. M. (2010). Piaget's theory of intellectual development and its implication for instructional management at pre-secondary school level. Educational Research and Reviews , 5 (7), 366.
