A Comparative Analysis of Piaget and Vygotsky’s Theories of Cognitive Development

Comparison and Contrast of Piaget and Vygotsky’sTheoriesYu-Chia Huang11Shanghai American School, Shanghai, ChinaCorresponding author’s e-mail: Vivian.wang@cas-harbour.orgABSTRACTJean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky are the two most influential developmental psychologists. Their contributions to the fieldof developmental psychology, though different, are still similarly remarkable and unique. In spite of such resemblances,there exists a crucial, and generally unnoticed, the difference between Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories, and that thisdifference underlies the way each author addresses the concept of cognitive development. In short, which theory is morecorrect? Throughout this paper, we will discover what informs both psychologists’ theories, how they are similar, howthey are different, and why they have both remained so prominent throughout educational textbooks. Although never indirect competition with each other, the theories developed by Piaget and Vygotsky are often used in contrast with oneanother, since both offer learning theories with a significant difference, but still impacting on understanding cognitivedevelopment.Ultimately, discovering that neither Piaget or Vygotsky’s theory is actively correct, but both arehighly important to be aware of when education early learners.Keywords: Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Cognitive Development, Assimilation, Sociocultural1. INTRODUCTIONCognitive development is a field of study inneuroscience and psychology that focus on how humansthink, explore and solve problems. It is the developmentof knowledge, skills, problem solving and dispositions,which help children to think about and understand theworld around them. The methods and approaches to thecognitive-developmental issue in psychology have beengreatly influenced by the research of Jean Piaget and LevVygotsky. Both researchers have significantlycontributed to the field for children’s development. Theimpact of their thoughts on how a person learns led totheories on how a person should be taught. The work ofthe Swedish scientist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) of geneticepistemology concentrated on the social in learning.While the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s culturalhistorical theory concentrated on the individual inlearning. Piaget and Vygotsky both provided a distinctiveyet remarkable similar approaches to cognitivedevelopment— bringing us to the crux of this researchpaper. The development of scientific psychological ideasis determined by the aggregation of many factors, whereit has its own logic of development which is expressed inthe gradual change of scientific paradigms, approaches,and methods of research into a psychological reality. Thetopic of “Piaget vs. Vygotsky” could be categorized as“parallel discoveries” when contemporary problemsarising from the constant development of psychologicalknowledge and based on previous discoveries are addedsimultaneously by scholars representing differentscientific schools and traditions, where at times it can becontrasting to each other.Throughout this article, how both psychologists’theories are similar and different, and why they have bothremained so prominent throughout today’s educationaltextbooks will be discovered, in order to answer thequestion of who’s theory is more correct. Although neverin direct competition with each other, Piaget andVygotsky’s theories are often used in contrast with oneanother, since both offer learning theories with asignificant difference, however still impacting onunderstanding cognitive development.Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 554Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Humanities andSocial Science Research (ICHSSR 2021)Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license -http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 28

2. ANALYSIS2.1. Jean Piaget’s Cognitive DevelopmentTheoryJean Piaget definition of the cognitive development isdependent on how the child interacts with theenvironment, in other words, the constructivist approachof the child. Children will actively construct and createschemas (cognitive frameworks that organize andinterpret information) which strive in order to make senseof the world around us. As the child goes through its life,it will incorporate the experiences it had encountered intoits existing schemas [4]. However, sometimes the newinformation and experiences do not ‘neatly fit’ or violatea schema, thus the children must change their way ofthinking to accommodate the new knowledge or to makesense of their environment. Disequilibrium occurs whennew knowledge does not fit with the children’saccumulated knowledge [1]. Therefore, when a childattains assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium,the child creates a new stage of cognitive development.Humans essentially change their way of thinking toaccommodate the new knowledge.2.1.1. Four Distinct Cognitive Stages:SensorimotorJean Piaget also proposed that the human minddeveloped through the four distinct universal series ofstages from infant to young adult: sensorimotor,preoperational, concrete operations, and formaloperations. Between the ages of zero and two years of age,the infant is in the sensorimotor stage. During this stage,babies experience his or her world mostly throughsensory impressions and motor activities. Around the ageof 8 months old, the child begins to develop a sense ofobject permanence, which is a realization that objectscontinue to exist even when the object is not within thefield of vision. Moreover, the child begins to develop agoal- directed behavior, where a child essentially beginsto understand that his or her actions could cause anotheraction. For example, kicking an object would result in amovement in the object. Children in the sensorimotorstage are able to reverse actions, however, still unable toreverse thinking.2.1.2. Four Distinct Cognitive Stages: Pre-OperationalA child in the pre-operational stage, between the ageof two and seven years old, they will begin to masterlanguage, however still unable to perform mentaloperations; which refers to the irreversibility concept ofmentally reversing a sequence of events. Children earlyin this stage are egocentric, as they view the worldthrough their own viewpoints and are unable to view asituation from another person’s point of view. However,Piaget asserted that since a child acts on his ownenvironment for learning, the social interaction will movea child away from egocentrism. While later in this stage,children begin to develop the theory of mind, which is theability to infer other people’s intentions, they can beginto understand why somebody did something, and ho thefeelings, perceptions, and thoughts of others may resultin another’s behavior. This is because they canincreasingly understand and formulate expectationsabout what will happen in a situation.2.1.3. Four Distinct Cognitive Stages:Concrete OperationalConcrete operational occurs between the ages ofseven to twelve years old. Reasoning processes begin totake shape during this stage, as they can thinkoperationally and can understand conservation. However,children in this stage cannot think in abstract, as they arestill just concrete thinkers. Take a child learning math, forexample, a child here will often use his or her fingers(physical properties or tangible items) to add or subtract,since they struggle to make the jump to an abstractalgebraic question. In addition, reasoning processes alsobegin in the concrete operational stage, as we gain theability to think about the way we think, or in other words,children begin to develop metacognition. Piaget claimsthat there are three basic reasoning skills that are acquiredduring this stage: identity, compensation, and alsoreversibility. A child will learn that a “person or objectremains the same over time” (identity) and one actioncould cause changes in another (compensation) [7].2.1.4. Four Distinct Cognitive Stages: FormalOperationalThe final stage of Piaget’s cognitive development isthe formal operational, which occurs between the age ofeleven years old to adulthood. This is when an adolescentbegins to think in a different manner, as the thinkingprocess starts to change from being confined to the abilityto think abstractly. Children in this stage now acquiresystematic or logical reasoning abilities. Throughhypothetico-deductive reasoning, one has achieved theability to think scientifically through generatingpredictions, or hypotheses, about the world to answerquestions [4]. Thus, people have the ability of systematicreasoning to conceive the best possible solution to avoidconsequences.2.1.5. The Validity of Piaget’s TheoryResearch supports Piaget’s basic construct of humancognition unfolds basically in the sequence he described.Infants, young children, and older children do use distinctcognitive abilities to construct their understanding of theworld. However, Piaget underestimated the cognitiveAdvances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 55429

abilities of infants and young children. At around 8months old, babies have developed schemas for familiarfaces. When given over to someone who does not fit theschema (an unfamiliar person) they often grow upset andreach out to the familiar person, which this concept isknown as stranger anxiety. Babies also seem to be awareof numbers. If shown 5 toys, then shown only 4, theyseem surprised and shocked. Thus, Piaget underestimatedthe impact of the social and cultural environment oncognitive development.2.1.6. Final Thoughts on Piaget’s TheoryConclusively, Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitivedevelopment essentially suggests that children progressthrough a series of four distinct stages of cognitivedevelopment from an infant to a young adult. Each stageincludes certain milestones where the child begins todemonstrate a more sophisticated comprehension of theenvironment, as well as the children’s continuous drive todevelop and adapt schemas, or understandings about theworld.2.2. Lev Vygotsky’s Cognitive DevelopmentTheoryMeanwhile, another psychologist offered his beliefsregarding the cognitive development theory. As analternative to Piaget’s universal stages of cognitivedevelopment, Lev Vygotsky proposed the SocioculturalTheory of Development, which became a major influencein the field of psychology. Lev Vygotsky’s SocioculturalTheory of Development theory describes student learningas a social process, which facilitates a child’s potential forlearning through social interactions and their culture [3].Clearly, Vygotsky’s theory is much different compared toPiaget’s cognitive development theory— children act ontheir environment to learn, while Vygotsky emphasizeson how children learn through social interactions andtheir ability to communicate with their peers to acquirethe cultural values in society. While both Piaget andVygotsky agreed that children actively constructknowledge. Vygotsky claimed that most of what childrenlearn comes from the culture in which they live in. Thisindicates that language is the primary tool for socialmentoring, as it provides the building blocks for thinkingand, as the child grows older, it comes to serves as themost important tool of learning.2.2.1. Impact of “Dialogues”Through the social interactions of “dialogues”,people begin to move toward a more individualizedthinking. This learning process involves peopleinteracting with each other during shared activities,usually to resolve a problem; when a child receives help,he or she may be able to utilize the strategy from previousexperiences in the future. This social interaction of“dialogues” will lead to internalization, which in turnleads one to independent thinking.2.2.2. Impact of ScaffoldingScaffolding is another of Vygotsky’s principle of thesociocultural perspective. This education teaching stylefacilitates the student as he or she learns a new skill orconcept, with the ultimate goal of the student becomingself- reliant [8]. Derived from Vygotsky’s theories, inpractice, it involves teaching material just beyond thelevel at which the student can learn independently. Thus,scaffolding involves providing the learner with hints orclues, in order to allow the student to better approach theproblem. In this case, Piaget would assume that thestudent does not yet have the mental structures to solvethe problem, Vygotsky would rather offer strategies, inthe form of scaffolding, for the student to attempt to solvethe problem.2.2.3. Impact of Private SpeechPrivate speech also provides an aspect of languagedevelopment [2]. Vygotsky considered private speech asa major transition point between social and inner speech.Private speech is a type of speech addressed to the self(not others) for the purpose of self-regulation. Thus,Vygotsky understood the significance of self-directedspeech, while Piaget may view the private speech asegocentric or immature.2.2.4. Cultural ToolsVygotsky also recognized the importance of culturaltools in cognition. Cultural tools in cognition can bereferred to as any tool that supports communication [9].For instance, the media or television are just a handful ofall the tools that are available for problem solving andlearning. Therefore, children can utilize the cultural toolsto help support their own learning.2.2.5. Final Thoughts on Vygotsky’s TheoryVygotsky stated that “learning is a necessary anduniversal aspect of the process of developing culturallyorganized, the specifically human psychologicalfunction” [5]. This demonstrates that social learningtends to precede cognitive development. Just like Piaget,Vygotsky believed that there were problems regardingchildren’s range of learning. Thus, Vygotsky proposed theprinciple of the zone of proximal development. Incontrast with Piaget, Vygotsky believed that throughproper assistance and encouragement, children are ableto perform a task that Piaget would consider to be out ofthe child’s mental capabilities. The zone of proximaldevelopment refers to what the child can perform whengiven proper assistance. Therefore, the term “proximal””indicates those skills that the learner is “close” toAdvances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 55430

mastering [6]. Vygotsky believed the role of education toprovide children with experiences to socially interactwith each other will allow the children to acquire thecultural values in society, thereby encouraging theirindividual learning through his theory of the zone ofproximal development.3. DISCUSSIONBoth psychologist, Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotskyoffered distinctive approaches to the cognitive-developmental issue in the field of psychology. WhilePiaget and Vygotsky both agreed that children activelyconstruct knowledge through the acquisition of speech.Vygotsky claimed that most of what the children learncomes from the culture in which they live. Thefundamental difference between Piaget and Vygotsky isthat Piaget believed in the constructivist approach ofchildren, or in other words, how the child interacts withthe environment, whereas Vygotsky stated that learningis taught through socially and culturally. Piaget believedchildren should be given the ability to understandschemas on their own. While Vygotsky believes thatchildren will be able to reach a higher cognitive levelthrough instruction from a more knowledgeableindividual.In addition, Piaget believed children will only learnwhen they attain assimilation, accommodation, andequilibrium. For example, when a child encounters ahorse, they might assimilate this information and call thisanimal a dog. The process of accommodation will allowthe child to adapt to the existing schema in order toincorporate the knowledge that some four-legged animalsare horses. Whereas Vygotsky believed that thedevelopment could be taught with correct scaffoldingthat is within the zone of proximal development. Forinstance, if students are not at the reading level requiredto understand a text, the teacher might usescaffolding to incrementally improve the students’reading ability until they are able to read the textindependently without assistance.4. CONCLUSIONUltimately, both psychologists have significantlycontributed to the field for children’s cognitivedevelopment. Piaget proposed that children progressthrough a universal stage of cognitive developmentthrough maturation, discovery practices, and some socialtransmissions of assimilation and accommodation.Vygotsky’s theory emphasized the importance of cultureand language of one’s cognitive development. While bothPiaget and Vygotsky may provide a distinctive approachto cognitive development theory that differs from eachother, both theories offer reasonable approaches on howto teach certain material, concerning the ways in whichchildren’s process of thinking develops into adulthood.When both theories are used in conjunction to oneanother, there is an endless scope to help children developcritical thinking skills as well as cognitive awareness fora well-rounded method to learn. In the final analysis, it isclear that neither theory is actively correct to answer thequestion whether Piaget or Vygotsky’s theory is correct,however both psychologists are highly critical to thediscussion of cognitive development.ACKNOWLEDGMENTFirst and foremost, words are powerless to expressmy gratitude towards my mentor, Professor Li. I thankyou from the bottom of my heart for all you have done. Itruly appreciate the fact that you sacrificed your own timeto spread your knowledge and wisdom regarding thesubjects that you prepared: brain, behavior, andpsychopathology; where you could have rather spentyour precious time being around your family and friends,especially during the time of a COVID-19 pandemic.REFERENCES[1] S. D’Mello. Cognitive Disequilibrium Theory.ResearchGate, Jan. 2010,www.researchgate.net/figure/Cognitive-Disequilibrium- Theory_fig1_215835874.[2] P. Feigenbaum. Private Speech: Cornerstone ofVygotsky’s Theory of the Development of HigherPsychological Processes.lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2009_11.dir/pdf1Gp XwFkltX.pdf.[3] M. Lally, and S.Valentine-French. LifespanDevelopment. Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory ofCognitive Development | Lifespan Development,courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-lifespandevelopment/chapter/vygotskys-sociocultural-theory-of-cognitive-development/.[4] S. Mcleod. Jean Piaget’s Theory of CognitiveDevelopment. Simply Psychology, SimplyPsychology, 6 June 2018,www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html.[5] S. Mcleod. Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky | SimplyPsychology, 2018,www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html.[6] S. Mcleod. What Is the Zone of ProximalDevelopment? Zone of Proximal Development andScaffolding | Simply Psychology, SimplyPsychology, 2019,www.simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-Proximal-Development.html.[7] A.N. Meltzoff, and M.K. Moore. OBJECTREPRESENTATION, IDENTITY, AND THEPARADOX OF EARLY PERMANENCE: StepsAdvances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 55431