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Piaget And Vygotsky's Theory Of Cognitive Development

772 Words4 Pages
Although physical growth during infancy is evident to everyone, Cognitive development is not as clear. Throughout childhood up until adulthood, infants are able to visualize and understand their surroundings to be competent to solve problems, make decisions, process their thoughts and recall all the acquired information one might need or want (Wells, 2014). This mental process is known as cognitive development. Piaget and Vygotsky are very well known for their theories on this matter. While their theories might be similar, each has a different theory of how cognitive development evolves throughout one’s life. Piaget believed that every human being has schemas, where knowledge is gathered from past events and organized to serve as a foundation to understand new memories and experiences (Wells, 2014). With new events that happen everyday, schemas are constantly changing with two processes that are known as Assimilation and Accommodation (Wells, 2014). While assimilation refers to oneself acquiring new events by linking with previous events and experiences that they already know, Accommodation refers to the schema changing itself completely to accommodate new knowledge and experience (Wells, 2014). With assimilation and accommodation in mind, Piaget believed that there had to be a balance between both and it was known as equilibration (Wells, 2014). At the core of Piaget’s theory, it is said that Cognitive development occurs in four stages in the same order. Each stage has
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