Introduction to Cognitive Development

In addition to rapid physical growth, young children also exhibit significant development of their cognitive abilities, particularly in language acquisition and in the ability to think and reason. In this section, we’ll apply Piaget’s model of development to cognitive tasks during infancy through adolescence. The ability to use language is an innately and uniquely human phenomenon, and we will examine how language develops during the early years. We will also examine bilingualism and why it is important for children to be exposed to as much language (and if the opportunity is available, multiple languages) as possible in their early life.

Early childhood is a time of pretending, blending fact and fiction, and learning to think of the world using language. As young children move away from needing to touch, feel, and hear about the world toward learning basic principles about how the world works, they hold some pretty interesting initial ideas. For example, how many of you are afraid that you are going to go down the bathtub drain? Hopefully, none of you! But a child of three might really worry about this as they sit at the front of the bathtub. A child might protest if told that something will happen “tomorrow” but be willing to accept an explanation that an event will occur “today after we sleep.” Or the young child may ask, “How long are we staying? From here to here?” while pointing to two points on a table. Concepts such as tomorrow, time, size and distance are not easy to grasp at this young age. Understanding size, time, distance, fact, and fiction are all tasks that are part of cognitive development in the preschool years.

Children in middle childhood are beginning a new experience—that of formal education. In the United States, formal education begins at a time when children are beginning to think in new and more sophisticated ways. According to Piaget, the child is entering a new stage of cognitive development where they are improving their logical skills. Educational opportunities do not end with graduation from high school, and we will discuss how the goals and experience of education change from childhood mandatory education to returning to college among middle or older adults.

In adolescence, changes in the brain interact with experience, knowledge, and social demands and produce rapid cognitive growth. The changes in how adolescents think, reason, and understand can be even more dramatic than their obvious physical changes. This stage of cognitive development, termed by Piaget as the formal operational stage, marks a movement from the ability to think and reason logically only about concrete, visible events to an ability to also think logically about abstract concepts. Adolescents are now able to analyze situations logically in terms of cause and effect and to entertain hypothetical situations and entertain what-if possibilities about the world. This higher-level thinking allows them to think about the future, evaluate alternatives, and set personal goals. Although there are marked individual differences in cognitive development among teens, these new capacities allow adolescents to engage in the kind of introspection and mature decision making that was previously beyond their cognitive capacity. For example, while moral development begins far before adolescence, these new cognitive  skills allow adolescents to consider the implications of moral decision-making and morality.

We will also discuss changes in adult cognition. Does cognitive development end after adolescence? According to Piaget, it does. However, other theories and research suggest otherwise, and we will explore some changes that might occur beyond the formal operational stage. Adults experience changes in their memories as they age, but not all these changes are undesirable; older adults have some cognitive advantages when it comes to memory and decision-making in everyday tasks.

One of the ways in which individual define themselves in through their occupation. This section will also discuss some of the factors that influence our decisions about work and the role that work plays in many adults’ lives. Our work is the product of many factors, including societal and cultural expectations, educational opportunities, and sense of identity. This discussion of work will encompass many of the cognitive concepts discussed in this section and will prepare us to move into the realm of psychosocial development in the following section.