Compare and contrast the Piagetian,Vygotskian and information Essay

Compare and contrast the Piagetian,Vygotskian and information Processing theories of cognition. To what extent can these theorie - Essay Example Piaget believed that the wrong answers revealed by children had significance differences between the reasoning of adults and children. Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was the founder of the Vygotskian framework of cognitive development. The elements of Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development include the role of social interactions, the More Knowledge Other, and the Zone of Proximal Development. The Vygotskian theory stresses that social interactions are critical in the cognitive development of children. Information-Processing frameworks are based on the perspective that mental processes undergo maturational changes during children’s development (McCartney & Phillips, 2011). Different cognitive theories of development bear diverse propositions about cognitive stages of development; however, these theories share some similarities concerning cognitive development of children during school years. The Piagetian Theory The Piagetian theory argues that children have the ability to construct and understand the world around them, and experience the difference between their existing knowledge and new information they acquire in the environment (Smith, 2008). The fundamental believe held by Piaget is that reality is a dynamic system characterized by a continuous change. This implies the conception of reality is viewed differently across the ages of development. Some stages of development are filled with imaginations of unreal world, while other stages of development consist of children having the real sense of the world. According to Piaget, the concept reality involves transformations and states. Transformation constitutes the manners of changes that a person undergoes during various stages of development (Smith, 2008). States are the conditions and appearances that characterize developmental stages as they are viewed between transformations. Piaget developed six stages of cognitive development that change as children grow (Bremner and Lewis, 2006). The stages include sensory motor (birth to 2 years), pre-operational stage (2 to 5 years), concrete operational stage (7 to 11 years) and formal operational stage (above 12 years). Children develop various cognitive activities as they undergo these stages. The Concepts of Assimilation, Accommodation, Equilibration and Conservation in Piaget’s Theory Assimilation Assimilation describes the process through which the human mind perceives and adapts to new information. Human beings take in their environment and the new information available and attempt to fit it into the pre-existing cognitive schemas. The human mind tries to make sense of the new learning by referring to be previously acquired information in order to make sense of it (Bekoff, Allen & Burghardt, 2002). The concept of assimilation declares learning a continuous process. The theory also reveals that prior information is crucial in understanding new information. This implies that children who have some concepts of knowledge fi nd it easier to acquire additional knowledge than those who do not have any knowledge. Accommodation According to Johnson, Munakata and Gilmore (2009), accommodation involves taking new information from the environment and adjusting the current schemas to fit in the new learning. Accommodation describes the ways through which human beings continue to interpret new theories, frameworks, and schemas. The mind is adaptive enough to allow proper mental adjustments to accommodate the new learning