Jessica Odessa Shepherd
Human Development and Learning - FHT4
Western Governors University
Student ID 259630
FHT4 - Task 1

Cognitive Development refers to the construction of the thought process that includes problem solving, remembering and the ability to make decisions, from childhood up to the adulthood stage. Cognitive/Intellectual Development is the ability to learn, reason, and analyze the fact that a process begins from infancy and progresses as the individual (Educational Psychology). Cognitive Development contains events that are logical, like thinking and remembering. Some factors remain the same throughout many of the theories on cognitive development. All theorists agree that people go through specific steps and/or stages of learning and understanding. Along with the fact that there are certain principles must be meet before learning can occur. There are many ideas and opinions that cognitive theorist have about the development of a person’s cognition. Two theorists that are commonly known in the field of cognitive development are Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. These two theorists agree on the several concepts of cognitive development but differ on others, the most commonly agreed difference among all theorists involved in cognitive development is the simple yet complex question of how cognitive development occurs.
Jean Piaget, born 1896 and died 1980, was a Swiss psychologist; his focused was on the way an individual child acts upon an object in their environment, in order to build mental models of the way the world works. Piaget believed that the physical environment was important to a person’s cognitive development. Ensuring that the environment was rich and stimulating was the adult’s role, according to Jean Piaget. The adult, whether it be a parent, a teacher, or an older sibling is to occasionally ask questions that challenge children’s