Child and Adolescence

Question: Discuss changes in cognition in early childhood and evaluate Piaget's theoretical approach for this area. Answer: The Piagets theory states that cognitive development is highly dependable on early childhood stages where progressive mental manipulation occurs due to biological, social, economical as well as environmental factors. Paiget focused on two processes of cognitive development that are assimilation and accommodation that paly a very important role for changes to occur in early childhood (McDevitt Ormrod, 2010). In assimilation process, new information is added to existing cognitive intelligence by external elements. However, accommodation is the process that involves new information gain only from ones environment that is added to pre-existing conscious. The assimilation and accommodation are two sides of one coin and cognitive development is not possible without any one process (Sameroff, 2010). Example An example of assimilation and accommodation that changes childs attitude is when they view a zebra and call it as the horse. The assimilation of information occurs in childs conscious for the horse. However, in the process of accommodation child studies, the different properties of zebra and further child accommodate information calling it a zebra by name (McDevitt Ormrod, 2010). References McDevitt, T. M., Ormrod, J. E. (2010).Child development and education. Pearson College Division. Sameroff, A. (2010). A unified theory of development: A dialectic integration of nature and nurture.Child development,81(1), 6-22.