Cognition And Perception Essay Research Paper In

Cognition And Perception Essay, Research Paper

In this Topic, we discuss the development of cognition and perception in the child. In the first section, we discuss perception, the ability to acquire information about the world. The child’s ability to distinguish different visual and auditory stimuli, as well as stimuli in all the rest of the senses, develops rapidly over the course of the first two years. While some of this development is passive, the majority of it depends on the child’s active exploration of an environment that provides opportunities for diverse kinds of experiences.

Although the meaning of “perception” is fairly well agreed-upon, “cognition” is a term that has been construed in a variety of ways. In modern psychology it is sometimes used to refer to any “information-processing” approach to the study of behavior. This definition is, however, a bit too broad. A clearer and more specific definition might go as follows: cognition is the structure of our representations of the world and the processes we use to manipulate that structure. The study of cognitive development is thus the study of how both our knowledge of the world and our ways of acquiring new knowledge grow over time. Language is obviously an important part of this growth process–so important, in fact, that it is here covered in a separate Topic. While reading this Topic, keep in mind the role language might play in influencing and enabling other cognitive abilities.

In the second section, we discuss one of the most influential theoretical models of cognitive development. Jean Piaget’s model of the stages of cognition, and the observations upon which he founded his model, make him far and away the most important cognitive developmentalist in the history of the field. Piaget distinguished between four stages of development: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete-operational stage, and the formal-operational stage. He postulated two processes that drove the child’s development: assimilation and accommodation.

In the third section, we discuss some of the criticisms that have been brought against Piaget’s model and some of the alternatives that have been offered–specifically, information-processing and social accounts of cognitive development.

Finally, we discuss an area of cognitive development that has become an increasingly popular subject of study over the past twenty years: theory of mind. Theory of mind straddles the divide between cognitive and socioemotional development. It is concerned with the development of a child’s recognition of his or her mind and the minds of others, including the child’s ability to understand the existence of false beliefs, the use of deception, and the way that beliefs, desires, and actions are related.

Terms

Altricial – The term “altricial” refers to species in which infants are born unable to fend for themselves. It is contrasted with “precocial,” which refers to species, such as horses and other hoofed animals, in which the newborn is immediately able to find food, run from predators, etc.

Autism – A developmental disorder characterized by mental retardation, impairments in language, changes in sensory function, repetitive or ritualized motions, and marked deficits in theory of mind.

Accommodation – Accommodation is a process of changing one’s representation of the world to fit the existing evidence. According to Piaget, it is one of the two “functional invariants” that drive development.

Assimilation – Assimilation is the process of changing one’s interpretation of the world to fit one’s representation of it. According to Piaget, it is one of the two “functional invariants” that drive development.

Concrete-Operational Stage – The concrete-operational stage is one of the four stages in Piaget’s developmental theory. It lasts from ages seven to eleven and is characterized by an ability to mentally manipulate representations of real-world (”concrete”) objects.

Formal-Operational Stage – The formal-operational stage is one of the four stages in Piaget’s developmental theory. It starts around age eleven and lasts through adulthood. It is characterized by an ability to mentally manipulate symbols, such as mathematical equations or linguistic sentences, that are not connected to real-world objects.

Metacognition – Thinking about one’s own thought processes.

Object Permanence – Object permanence is the concept that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen. The acknowledgment of object permanence starts, according to Piaget, during the preoperational stage.

Preoperational Stage – The preoperational stage is one of the four stages in Piaget’s developmental theory. This stage lasts from ages two to seven. It is characterized by a growing ability to verbalize and symbolize concrete objects, but an inability to perform “operations”–mental manipulations or logical transformations–on them.

Sensorimotor Stage – The sensorimotor stage is one of the four stages in Piaget’s developmental theory. It lasts from birth to age two. It is characterized by the development of internalized representations of concrete objects that grow out of the child’s perceptions of and actions on those objects.

Visual Acuity – Visual acuity refers to the “spatial resolution” of a person’s vision: a person with high vi

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