THEORY CRITIQUE

Theories Critique

Theories Critique

Part A cognitive behavioral theory critique

Cognitive development is incredibly important when dealing with children because understanding their mental progress and growth is an essential when working with them. Cognitive development is the construction of thought processes, including remembering, problem solving, and decision making from childhood to adolescent (Theory of cognitive development, 2009). Being that a child?s thought process is completely different from an adult, many child pychologists have developed their own personal theories on how this procedure occurs.

Two of the most influential developmental theorist are Jean Piaget and Lev Semionovich Vygotsky who both have very distinct yet some of the same opinions about this topic. Some similarities between the two theories are that both Piaget and Vygotsky?s view on the nature or development of intelligence has to do with the acquisition of sign systems which happens in an invariant sequence of steps that is the same for all children (Slavin, 2009). In other words, children learn by remembering certain object by the way they interact with them. They were also both referred to as constructivist because of the idea of mental construction. To them children learn by putting together new information with information that they already know.

Jean Piaget's own personal view on the nature or development of intelligence differs from Vygotsky's because Piaget believes children need to develop first before they can learn and that knowledge comes from action. In other words they learn by interacting with their surroundings, he did not believe it was by the input from others. He provides many examples to support his theory, one of which is schemes. Schemes play an important role when describing his theory because whenever a child exhibits a certain pattern of behavior or thinking, they are demonstrating schemes. An example of this is how babies will often grab items to shake or to put them into their mouth. These schemes enable them to become more familiar with that object.

Assimilation and accommodation also plays an important role in Piaget's theory. When a child shows assimilation, they are showing that they understand it because of a particular scheme. So for example if an infant is already familiar with rattles and is given a new one with a different shape, he is most likely going to shake it to see what sound the new produces. On the other hand Piaget uses accommodation to describe modifying an existing scheme to fit new situations. For instance if a baby has a sucking scheme for soft toys like stuffed animals, then they more than likely will apply that to all things that are soft including objects that are inappropriate for biting, thus having the possibility of changing the scheme. When infants handle new situations that could not be fulfilled by an existing scheme, they are disequilibrium, and restoring it is referred to as equilibrium. According to Piaget, this is perhaps the main technique infants use to accomplish learning.

In contrast to Piaget, Vygotsky's view on the nature or devolvement of intelligence is ...