Revise/rewrite the provided research paper on Infant Cognitive Development.
It should be revised with the following corrections:
1) Your intro should clearly state your position and list the evidence you will provide.
2) Each argument paragraph should begin with a clear opening statement linking that argument to your central position.
3) Each argument paragraph should be supported by an empirical study (i.e. an experiment).
4) For an empirical study explain what the research question was, who participated, what participants heard/saw/did (i.e. measures), what the study found, and how that supports your position.
5) Stick to the 5-paragraph format.
Here is the paper:
Infant cognitive development involves the study of psychological processes of knowledge and thinking development in young children. In a nutshell, it goes without saying that a child contributes to his/her own cognitive development. Research done and theories developed confirms to this assertion. To start with infant cognitive development is part of child development which encompasses mastering and learning of skills like sitting, talking, walking and skipping. In addition, through cognitive development a child learns how to solve problems. For instance, for an infant, this is the time when the baby learns on exploration of the environment through use of eyes and hands. For a five-year-old; it is the time he learns how to tie shoe laces and solve a simple math problem (Oakly, 2004).
This paper postulates that infant cognitive development is inborn thus a child contributes to self-cognitive development. It uses Piaget theory on infant development to further illustrate the evidence as well as using the hierarchical model and description of the empirical research done.
Cognitive Development Theory was developed to investigate the cognitive development stages of an infant by Piaget and it proposes four sophisticated mental development stages of representation a child goes through in intelligence before becoming an adult. The four stages include sensorimotor which is between 0-2 months (period stage); preoperational period which is from 2 to 6 years; concrete operational period- 12 years and above. In addition to that, he believed that children through these stages between infancy and adolescence. In the first stage, toddlers use sensorimotor equipment, their ears, eyes and hands to think. According to him, a child’s development change with age; schemes are basically action oriented but later they develop into mental level.
The research found out that cognitive changes took place through the following ways; adaptation- processes through which building schemes come into contact with the environment. Also, assimilation as part of adaptation involves a process where the external environment is processed through the existing schemes. Again, accommodation is another sub set of adaptation which involves the creation of schemes and adjustment of old ones in order for them to fit the environment. Equilibrium come up as a result of children are steady and not changing leading to comfortable cognitive state; thereby assimilation is used as compared to accommodation. He further asserts that during these phases there is disequilibrium which is a cognitive discomfort state that arise s during rapid change and movement between equilibrium and disequilibrium enhances the development of effective schemes (Piaget, 1970).
Reed at al (2005) did an empirical study on evaluating the attentiveness and cognitive control in toddlers and infants, with a focus on age improvement. The research consisted of the comparisons of 3 researches on infant cognitive development. The studies used A-not-B paradigm in investigating toddlers and infants’ ability to look for hidden objects or correctly locate hidden objects. This paradigm is among the few studied research paradigms for early cognitive control development and it encompasses conflict resolution which requires a shift of flexible responses aimed at achieving a goal. Study one examined individual differences within ten month’s babies’ ability to search for hidden objects using the manual A-not-B. Infants’ search characters were observed, both in terms of reaching and looking responses. The second research used eye tracking by specifically looking for attention demand from 10 to 12 months’ babies, and also, the different modalities in responses. They intended to investigate age-related improvements with regards to distractions and the capacity to resist such distractions in time of searching. This research came to the conclusion that children contributed to their own cognitive development since they were able to track the hidden objects. In addition to that, it proved that the development was gradual starting basically from variable to attentive and stable cognitive nature.
According to Vygostsky, he maintains that cultural and biological factors enhance human cognitive development. Biological factors subsets like maturation result into the development of mental functions like simple perception, involuntary attention and simple memory. He further maintains that biological and cultural factors contribute to cognitive development in infants. Further, he asserts that unlike psychological functions, infant cognitive functions are consciously affected by processes and abstractions from the surrounding.
In summation, those who support Piaget’ accounts of cognitive development have been criticized on several grounds. Firstly, as he noted, development is never uniform like the theory presupposes. Unpredictable events during development progress indicate that his model is a useful approximation. Additionally, psychologists like Zygotsky reasoned differently from Piaget’s thus suggesting the importance of language in cognitive development. Another recent challenge involves the new Ecological System Theory which is based on contextual influences in children’s life like their immediate families, society, school and world- how they affect their development. Therefore, the recent research on infant cognitive development has been influenced by cognitive science thus moving away from the generality that infants’ development is influenced hence arriving at the conclusion that different cognitive faculties are largely independent and they develop differently. Though one can interpret cognitive development differently using either Piaget or Vygostsky theory, research has proved that infant cognitive development is contributed by the child.
