Cognition refers to internal, mental operations. (Obviously, cognition affects and is affected by the individual's attitudes and feelings.) The emphasis in cognition is on what is occurring within individuals as they react to the stimuli impinging upon them. Cognition includes not only the individuals' mental capacities, but also the intellectual network into which they have organized
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their previous experiences, their learning style for acquiring, organizing, perceiving, and storing new information, their learning skills, and their set for learning. A person's ability to learn is affected by many factors, including previously acquired knowledge, learning aptitude, and various affective factors.
''Undoubtedly, the most comprehensive view of development is the cognitive-developmental (stage) theory formulated by Piaget . . . , the top child psychologist living today" (Mouly, 1973, p. 130). For many years Piaget's work was rejected by psychologists in the United States due to the fact that many of his conclusions were based on research procedures that did not conform to the strict scientific approach followed by American psychologists. His approach was qualitative, while prior to 1960 the dominant approach in American psychology was quantitative. Too, ". . . most Americans were be- haviorally oriented and did not treat with much respect Piaget's attempt to examine the child's internal thought processes" (Gorman, 1972, p. 4). However, as the pendulum in psychology began to swing back in the 1960s from a strict behaviorist approach toward a more cognitive and personalistic view of the child, Piaget's ideas have been more readily and widely received and accepted.
In Piaget's model of cognitive development there are five stages, encompassing the qualitative changes in cognitive processes as individuals learn, grow, and mature. The first stage lasts from birth until around the age of two. This is the sensori-motor state in which reflexes and habits are developed. Children become aware of permanent objects and learn how to use means to gain ends. They begin to organize their previously undifferentiated world. The next stage, symbolic thought , lasts from two to four. During this period children learn to use language and to participate in symbolic play. From four to seven, the period of intuitive thought, children progress to the level of syncretism 1 of understanding and transductive reasoning. 2 The stage of concrete operations begins at approximately age seven and continues to around age twelve. In this phase, the children's mental and perceptual processes are beginning to be organized into a logical system. They grow beyond the rather simple trial-and-error learning system which has dominated their thinking up to this point. Finally they enter the stage of formal operations. At this stage of cognitive maturity they can handle abstract, conceptual thought without reference to concrete objects and examples. They are now ready for hypothetico-deductive thinking at the highest and most abstract level (Gorman, 1972). 3
Piaget's model of intelligence contains two basic components: assimilation and accommodation. The term assimilation refers to the mental processes involved in incorporating new information from the environment into the individual's existing mental organization of reality. As the individual's acquired knowledge changes, he accommodates himself to this new experience. Piaget "assumes that higher mental processes organize thought and keep it adaptive, coordinated, and efficient" (Kagan, 1971, p. 657).
Two major implications for teaching are attributable to Piaget's theories. The first is that the stages of cognitive development are hierarchical and progressive. That is, the child must complete one level before she can move to the next. The second is that teaching and learning materials should be geared to the student and her level of cognitive development, not vice versa. (It should be kept in mind that these differences in cognitive processes as the child develops from one stage to the next are qualitative as well as quantitative.) The areas with which the educational system must concern itself are (1) the extent to which children from underprivileged backgrounds with deprived learning environments have failed to proceed through the various stages of cognitive development, and (2) ways and means by which the individual's cognitive abilities can be improved.