Critically evaluate the cognitive development theories of Piaget and Essay

Critically evaluate the cognitive development theories of Piaget and Vygotsky and discuss their relevance to Social Work practice - Essay Example He came up with the cognitive development theory where he showed two major aspects to his theory: the process of coming to know and the stages used to acquire the ability to know. In his book, Miller, (2002, p.32) stated that Piaget viewed knowledge as a process and that children have an active process of knowing their surrounding. As a biologist, he was interested in how a given organism adapts to its environment. Behaviour is controlled through mental organization where an individual uses some schemes to represent the world and designate action. This adaptation is motivated by biological drive to obtain balance between the schemes and the environment. Piaget hypothesized that an infant is born with schemes that operate from birth. These schemes are reflexes which are used to adapt the environment and are later replaced by constructed schemes. He described two processes that are used by individual to adapt to the environment; assimilation and accommodation. These processes are used throughout life as the person progressively adapts to the environment in a more complex way. Assimilation is a process of transforming the environment so that it can be suitable in the pre-existing cognitive structures. An example is where an infant uses a sucking schema that was developed by sucking a small bottle when trying to suck a larger bottle. Accommodation on the other hand, is the process of changing the cognitive structures in order to accept anything from the environment. An example would be when the child wants to modify a sucking schema that was developed through sucking on a pacifier to one that could be thriving for sucking on a bottle. The two processes are simultaneously useful throughout life. Piaget proposes that there are four distinct stages of mental representation that children pass through right from their infancy stage to the adult level of intelligence. The four stages are; sensorimotor period, preoperation period, concrete operational stage and formal operational stage. Sensorimotor stage starts from birth to two years. It is the primary stage in cognitive development; this is where infants create an understanding of the world by coordinating the sensory experience with physical actions. They gain knowledge from the world through the physical actions hence, progress from reflexive instinctual action at birth to the beginning of symbolic thought towards the end of the stage. Piaget subdivided the sensorimotor stage into six sub-stages. Simple reflexes are a sub-stage where the infant coordinates the sensation and action through reflexive behaviour. It starts right from birth to the period when the infant is one month old. First habits and primary circular reactions phase is the second sub-stage (Bateson 2005, p 127). It starts from one month to four months after birth. Other sub-stages include: secondary circular reaction phase, coordination of secondary circular reaction phase, tertiary circular reactions and curiosity and internalization of the schemes. By the end of sensorimotor stage, the child acquires the sense of object permanence. The child understands that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be heard, seen or touched. According to Piaget,