What is the process of incorporating new information into existing knowledge known as?

Cognitive Development deals with the child’s development in terms of language, spatial, perception skills and information processing units in the brain. In simple words, it shows the progress of the child’s ability to think and understand. This perspective mainly involves Jean Piaget‘s Cognitive-stage theories and also parts of Vygotsky’s theory on the social contexts of Cognition.

Jean Piaget’s Cognitive-State Theory:

Piaget is considered to be the forerunner of today’s “Cognitive Revolution” (Human Development, Papalia, Olds, Feldman). In order to study thinking, Piaget utilized the clinical method and observed children along with questioning. Piaget believed that cognitive development begins with an inborn ability to adapt to the environment. For instance, by coming in contact with the environment through the 5 major senses, children get a clearer picture of the environment around them.

Piaget came up with 4 major stages in which Cognitive development occurs. As the child grows older, cognitive processes and mental operations improve increasingly, in terms of sensory and motor activity. These 4 major stages were formulated based on the study of three inter-related processes, namely – Organization, Adaptation and Equilibration.

    ORGANIZATION is the human tendency of the child to create more and more complex mental structures. These structures are in the form of anything that can aid the child in getting a more clearer idea of the object in question. This provides channels to incorporate more accurate images of reality. And, these structures are scientifically referred to as schemes. This can be imagines to be a network of a filing system, wherein every new information that the child encounters is placed in their respective drawers. The child can then learn new information by comparing it with the information already present in the child’s Brain.

    ADAPTATION is how the child handles new information that s/he encounters. Adaptation involves two steps: (a) Assimilation which involves incorporating new information into already existing schemes (mental organization structures) and (b) Accommodation which involves a process of changing the characteristics of an existing scheme to accommodate new information.
For example, a newborn baby who is breast fed uses Assimilation when it shifts to using a baby-bottle.
Later, when the infant discovers that drinking from a cup requires different mouth movements compared to sucking from a nipple, the child uses Accommodation to modify the existing knowledge and accommodate the new information.

    EQUILIBRATION is the tendency to look for a balance within the mental structures after the slight disturbance caused by acquiring new information. The infant will feel a disequilibrium when it cannot handle the new information with existing knowledge. Therefore, the child modifies the existing schemes and introduces newer mental patterns that allow the child to experience the new information in a comfortable, stable manner.

During the first three years of the baby’s life, they go through the first stage of development which according to Piaget, is the Sensorimotor stage.

Sensorimotor Stage: (Birth – 2 years)

Using sensory and motor activity, the child is able to organize activities according to the environment. The abilities of Assimilation and Accommodation are built up stronger in this stage.  Another interesting aspect of this stage is that of Object Permanence and A, not-B error.

Object Permanence is the assumption and knowledge that something exists even when it is out of sight. This ability develops only gradually in infants. Initially, the child believes that once the objects is taken out of their range of vision, it ceases to exist. For instance, the game of “Peek-a-boo” works on the basis of this concept.
Between the age of 4-8 months, the child will begin to look for things that they dropped. If they are unable to find it, they begin to think that it no longer exists.
Between the age of 8-12 months, the child exhibits the A, not-B error, which is the tendency to look for an object in a place where they previously found it, rather than the place they saw it being hidden in now, more recently.
For instance, if you hide a ball under the bed in front of the child first, the child will easily be able to find it. Next, if you take the ball from under the bed and keep it inside the cupboard, in front of the child, the child will perform the error of looking under the bed once again.

Sequence of events involved in the “A-not-B error.” This is a standard two-location search task, in which an object is hidden first at one location (A) and then at another (B). A baby watches an object being hidden at Location A; the baby searches at A and finds the object; the object is then hidden at Location B while the baby watches; the baby searches at A. “Where’s the car?!”

[Image courtesy: aboutkidshealth.ca]

However, between 12 and 18 months, they no longer make this error; the infant will search for the object in the place s/he saw it last hidden. However, they will not search for the object where they did NOT see it being hidden.

Finally, by 18-24 months, the toddler achieves complete Object Permanence. Additionally, they will look for the object even if they have not seen it being hidden.

Additionally, between 4-8 months, infants become interested in the environment and repeat actions that have interesting results such as shaking a rattle. For instance, the child may enjoy dropping a toy and watching it fall to the ground repeatedly.
Between 8-12 months, the child’s behavior is characteristically deliberate – for a purpose. This is because the child is able to coordinate between the information the child has learned earlier through the schemes and use the previously learned schemes to reach new goals, and they also begin to anticipate events. For instance, they use their previously learned knowledge of crawling to move across a room in order to reach a toy.

[Image Courtesy: 123rf.com]

Between 12 and 18 months, the toddlers are highly inquisitive and love to experiment. they deliberately do different things/actions in order to see different results. For instance, when a toddler shakes different rattles to listen to the different sounds that emanate.

At around 18 months of age to 2 years, the child develops what is known as Representational Ability. This is the ability to store, use and manipulate symbols as objects and experiences i.e. children can represent objects and events through symbols – words, numbers, pictures etc. They also indulge in deferred imitation – children are able to reproduce actions they had observed earlier even after some time has passed. They can imitate actions that they no longer see in front of them. Additionally, they also use creative abilities such as pretending. they are also capable of thinking about an action even before they do it. The level of trial-and-error also decreases as they learn to solve problems. This is because they constantly explore the environment around them and discover new aspects about the environment or objects, and use this knowledge to solve problems.

Another aspect that Piaget attributed to this age was Egocentricism. This is the inability of the child to consider any other point of view other than one’s own – a sort of self-centredness, that children believe that everyone thinks in the same way as themselves.