Piaget Vs Vygotsky Essay

The two theories I chose to discuss are Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s concepts of cognitive development. Both theories do have some similarities with each other. Piaget and Vygotsky thought differently on how high-level mental functions begin, Vygotsky stated that they started externally and then they are internalized versus Piaget who thought of high-level mental functions beginning more internally (Newman & Newman, 2015). Although they thought differently on a few things, I did notice some similarities with their theories. Each theorist discussed about how infants are able to develop some control over their environment, language and problem solving. Piaget has stages of development whereas Vygotsky does not, however they both discussed how infants develop a sense of control in their environment. Piaget’s discussed this in the first stage of development, the sensorimotor intelligence stage where infants will develop “increasingly complex motor and sensory schemes in which allow them to organize and exercise some control over their environment” (Newman and Newman, 2015 p.35). Vygotsky discussed an infant’s development to control a part of their environment through learning to gesture at objects and internalizing these gestures when their goal is met (Newman & Newman, 2015). Both theorists discussed the importance of language development and importantly egocentric speech. While both theorists thought differently on the pathway for egocentric speech, both agreed that egocentric speech helps children with problem solving (Newman & Newman, 2015). Newman and Newman (2015) mentioned that Vygotsky took it a step further and explained how egocentric speech develops into mostly inner speech although egocentric speech

Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development brings in culture as a factor. Vygotsky’s theory incorporates how children learn from the world around them (Owens,