How to develop a child’s cognitive abilities

What does “cognitive ability” mean and what is the cogat? What is cognitive thinking and how to develop it in a child? These important questions we will discuss and analyze in this article.

Cognitive abilities of a person are given by nature, it is important to develop them, starting from infancy and throughout life.

Cognitive is a cognitive process in which consciousness processes incoming information, mentally converts it into knowledge, stores and uses the accumulated experience in everyday life. In simple words, these are the mental functions: attention, perception, speech, intelligence, learning abilities, and most importantly, thinking.

From the moment of birth, a child’s cognitive abilities need to be developed, and this should be one of the important tasks of parents. This is also helped by dra reading levels. Beliefs and attitudes of life are formed from a young age, the task of the family is to help their child objectively perceive reality without distorting reality. Therefore, parents’ mission is very important; they lay the first seeds of their child’s adult adequate thinking.

J. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development of the child

Piaget’s theory was developed in the last century, but it is still relevant today. Why are his ideas remarkable? According to the Swiss psychologist, children pass through four basic stages of cognitive development, each of which involves a significant change in their understanding of the world.

Jean Piaget Swiss Psychologist

Children are by no means stupider than adults; they just think differently. They are little scientists trying to explore the world around them.

If you dig a little deeper into these words, you can see the main idea that the discoverer was trying to convey. According to Piaget, cognitive development first involves action-based processes, and only then manifests itself in the form of changes in thinking processes.

Piaget divided children’s cognitive development into 4 basic stages:

The sensorimotor stage. Babies acquire knowledge through sensory experience and control of objects of the surrounding reality.

Preoperational stage. Children learn about the world through play. They try to understand their own logic and perceive the logic of their neighbor, with whom they enter into communication.

The concrete operations stage. Children begin to think more logically, but their thinking still lacks the flexibility of adult thinking. They do not quite understand abstraction and hypothetical assumptions, only concreteness.

Formal Operations Stage. The stage involves the development of logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning and understand abstract ideas, the child’s maturation. According to J. Piaget, it is the formal-logical intellect that is the pinnacle of development of human intellect.

Factors that affect children’s cognitive development

Pattern of action. Piaget considered the main purpose of intelligent behavior, or thinking, to be adaptation to the environment. He called the ways of adaptation schemata. Scheme is a repetitive structure or organization of actions in certain situations. It can be simple movements, a set of motor skills, skills or mental actions. It is what shapes our lives: beliefs. They are established in childhood, reinforced by biological patterns of perception and social frameworks.

Assimilation. The child feeds on incorporating new information into pre-existing patterns. This is quite difficult to translate into real life. This process is somewhat subjective, because we tend to try to slightly modify new experiences or information received in order to fit it into already formed beliefs.

Accommodation. It involves the very modification of existing schemas or ideas as a result of new information or new impressions. Completely new schemas can be developed during this process.

Equilibration. Piaget believed that as we progress through the stages of cognitive development, it is important to maintain a balance between applying pre-formed knowledge (i.e., assimilation) and changing behavior in response to new information (accommodation). Balancing helps explain how children are able to move from one stage of thinking to another, to balance in different life situations, and to show resilience to stress.

How do I develop cognitive skills in children?

Cognitive skills are important to develop from childhood. Nowadays, there are a lot of fancy toys, cartoon characters, “live” dolls, collectible cars … but you should not neglect the simple methods of development, games with homemade materials.

Cognitive abilities in young children can be developed in the following ways:

playing with cereals and buttons (under adult supervision and control, of course), pouring materials from container to container.

For example:

The game “Looking for a secret”, you can hide not only pens, but also toys, various objects, large beans. Invite the child to find them.

The game “Plasticine fantasy”, cereals, beans, macaroni, nuts are ideal as additional accessories for activities with plasticine. water games (pouring into containers, water play sets for children, table water games)

Gradually games and activities become more complicated and are aimed at the development of motor skills and speech:

drawing and coloring;
making puzzles, mosaics;
cutting out an image by contour;
construction;
memorizing poems;
reading and retelling;
finding differences in two identical images;
composing stories.

What does “cognitive ability” mean? What is cognitive thinking and how to develop it in a child? These important questions we will discuss and analyze in this article.

Cognitive abilities of a person are given by nature, it is important to develop them, starting from infancy and throughout life.

Cognitive is a cognitive process in which consciousness processes incoming information, mentally converts it into knowledge, stores and uses the accumulated experience in everyday life. In simple words, these are the mental functions: attention, perception, speech, intelligence, learning abilities, and most importantly, thinking.

From the moment of birth, a child’s cognitive abilities need to be developed, and this should be one of the important tasks of parents. Beliefs and attitudes of life are formed from a young age, the task of the family is to help their child objectively perceive reality without distorting reality. Therefore, parents’ mission is very important; they lay the first seeds of their child’s adult adequate thinking.

J. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development of the child

Piaget’s theory was developed in the last century, but it is still relevant today. Why are his ideas remarkable? According to the Swiss psychologist, children pass through four basic stages of cognitive development, each of which involves a significant change in their understanding of the world.

Jean Piaget Swiss Psychologist

Children are by no means stupider than adults; they just think differently. They are little scientists trying to explore the world around them.

If you dig a little deeper into these words, you can see the main idea that the discoverer was trying to convey. According to Piaget, cognitive development first involves action-based processes, and only then manifests itself in the form of changes in thinking processes.

Piaget divided children’s cognitive development into 4 basic stages:

The sensorimotor stage. Babies acquire knowledge through sensory experience and control of objects of the surrounding reality.

Preoperational stage. Children learn about the world through play. They try to understand their own logic and perceive the logic of their neighbor, with whom they enter into communication.

The concrete operations stage. Children begin to think more logically, but their thinking still lacks the flexibility of adult thinking. They do not quite understand abstraction and hypothetical assumptions, only concreteness.

Formal Operations Stage. The stage involves the development of logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning and understand abstract ideas, the child’s maturation. According to J. Piaget, it is the formal-logical intellect that is the pinnacle of development of human intellect.

Factors that affect children’s cognitive development

Pattern of action. Piaget considered the main purpose of intelligent behavior, or thinking, to be adaptation to the environment. He called the ways of adaptation schemata. Scheme is a repetitive structure or organization of actions in certain situations. It can be simple movements, a set of motor skills, skills or mental actions. It is what shapes our lives: beliefs. They are established in childhood, reinforced by biological patterns of perception and social frameworks.

Assimilation. The child feeds on incorporating new information into pre-existing patterns. This is quite difficult to translate into real life. This process is somewhat subjective, because we tend to try to slightly modify new experiences or information received in order to fit it into already formed beliefs.

Accommodation. It involves the very modification of existing schemas or ideas as a result of new information or new impressions. Completely new schemas can be developed during this process.

Equilibration. Piaget believed that as we progress through the stages of cognitive development, it is important to maintain a balance between applying pre-formed knowledge (i.e., assimilation) and changing behavior in response to new information (accommodation). Balancing helps explain how children are able to move from one stage of thinking to another, to balance in different life situations, and to show resilience to stress.

How do I develop cognitive skills in children?

Cognitive skills are important to develop from childhood. Nowadays, there are a lot of fancy toys, cartoon characters, “live” dolls, collectible cars … but you should not neglect the simple methods of development, games with homemade materials.

Cognitive abilities in young children can be developed in the following ways:

playing with cereals and buttons (under adult supervision and control, of course), pouring materials from container to container.

For example:

The game “Looking for a secret”, you can hide not only pens, but also toys, various objects, large beans. Invite the child to find them.

The game “Plasticine fantasy”, cereals, beans, macaroni, nuts are ideal as additional accessories for activities with plasticine. water games (pouring into containers, water play sets for children, table water games)

Gradually games and activities become more complicated and are aimed at the development of motor skills and speech:

drawing and coloring;
making puzzles, mosaics;
cutting out an image by contour;
construction;
memorizing poems;
reading and retelling;
finding differences in two identical images;
composing stories.