The Emergence of Thought and Language: Cognitive Development in Infancy and Early Childhood

The Emergence of Thought and Language Student’s Name Institution Course Name and Number Lecturer’s Name Due Date The Emergence of Thought and Language Cognitive development is the cornerstone of an infant’s social and psychological growth. It focuses on the thoughts, language, social cognition and problem-solving skills of a child (Babakr et al., 2019). This concept is mainly related to the brain growth of a child, with experts discerning it as the development of intellectual abilities in early childhood. Intellectual development has many stages. Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist who coined cognitive development theory, conducted various studies related to intellectual development in infants, children, and adults. He found that children have different abilities to reason, learn languages, and engage in other intellectual abilities (Case, 2013). This ability is based on an individual. However, people can develop and improve these skills through practice and other techniques. Piaget’s theory identifies four stages of human development. The first stage is sensorimotor. It begins from birth to two years. At this stage, infants use their senses and motor skills to learn about their surrounding. The second stage is pre-operational stage. It ranges from 2-7 years and involves a child’s use of language and thoughts to communicate and convey ideas (Bovet et al., 2014). This is the stage where children develop thoughts and vision. Language development and conversation understanding manifests in this stage. The concrete operational stage ranges between age 7-11. It is the beginning of a child’s understanding of the world and different perspectives (Case, 2013). This stage is also characterized by a child’s logical thinking about concrete events and the use of logical operations when solving problems. The final stage is a formal operational stage that begins from twelve years and extends to adolescence. During this stage, individuals adopt abstract logical and deductive reasoning. At this point, adolescents and young adults learn to think more scientifically about their surroundings (Malik & Marwaha, 2023). Out of these four stages, the first two stages focus on early childhood development, highlighting cognitive and language development in infants and young children. Piaget believed that humans continuously strive to achieve and maintain cognitive balance in their knowledge and observations (Moore, 2014). However, maintaining this balance is hard for children because they encounter new situations, new objects and new words every time. These new occurrences should be structured with a schema: - an information organizing framework. Children develop plans through assimilation and accommodation processes (Babakr et al., 2019). Children tend to demonstrate assimilation when experiencing new situations. This includes incorporating new situation into an existing schema. For example, they can can call any animal with four legs ‘a cat’ because they are familiar with the term ‘cat’ (Rose et al., 2019). Children can also expand their knowledge by accommodating new situations and learning new things accurately. As noted, infants learn through their senses and motor abilities (Case, 2013). These abilities promote cognitive skills in children. The sensorimotor stage, the stage of the emergence of thought and language in infants has six sub-stages (Malik & Marwaha, 2023). The first sub-stage is reflexes. Infants learn about their world by using their reflexes like sucking and grasping. The second stage is primar...