Vosniadou's Theory Of Cognitive Development Essay

All children have a set of pre-existing beliefs that are influenced by daily observations, experiences and intuitions where they presume the natural world is essentially flat and unsupported objects fall as reported by Vosniadou (1994). This was shown when children were asked to draw and describe the structure of the earth in (Vosniadou and Brewer, 1992) experiment that suggested a development of theory-like “mental models” of the earth. In the beginning, children construct different naïve mental models of the earth based on observations and intuitions and develop presuppositions of a flat earth (Nobes & Panagiotaki, 2009). They then slowly obtain scientific information from cultural influences. The combination of counterintuitive scientific information and the children’s own beliefs led to ‘synthetic’ models such as hollow and dual earth which is then replaced with spherical earth during late childhood (Vosniadou & Brewer 1992, 1994). This supports the ‘theory theory’ of cognitive development (Brewer & Samarapungavan, 1991) that explained that children construct their own beliefs and theories to explain and interpret the physical world.

The importance of this study is to comprehend the evolvement of children’s minds throughout childhood and to fully understand the cognitive growth of children for the improvement of early childhood education. Their different and unique views on the external world are influenced primarily by intuitions (Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992) which help us to understand the emotional, social and cognitive changes a child undergoes in life as they grow