Week 2 Harris: Piaget VS Vygotsky

Immediately when reading chapter two, all the names and terms all started to sound familiar to me. The term theory, stood out and as explained in the book, is the basis for psychology. "They are essential for constructing meaning out of facts and are explanations for phenomena" (pg.28). Theories help organize all the different information there is out there to one body of information to help learn the facts and view similarities. With this information, it can help find all the possibilities for conclusions and compare all the scholars that have done work in certain subjects. With this chapters gives multiple examples and ideas that scholars had on development and how or why we do the things we do. 

One person I want to focus on is Jean Piaget and his fascination with thought process. On page 34, it discussed Piaget’s thoughts on child development and their thought process when answering questions, test scores, and the process of why they do things certain ways. He believed that children investigate their own hypotheses as they make sense of the world. A great example, which I have experienced as well, is a child continually dropping a toy on the floor for the mere fact that they know someone else will pick it up. This example gave Piaget the opportunity to define object permanence, which is the realization of objects continue to exist even when not seen. This made me think of examples of when a child doesn’t reach this stage yet. Peek-a-boo is a perfect example, because when you cover your face, the child doesn’t understand you are still there and gets excited when you reveal your face again. He says that this develops at the age of two and that there are four distinct stages of development as well.

Another philosopher, Lev Vygotsky, has his own theory, but his was on social processes. He felt that "the clues for understanding mental development lie in children's social process" (pg. 36). This means that children development truly relies on their interaction with the adults around them. In contrast to Piaget’s thought, he focused on social interactions to explain children's cognitive development. I agree with him in the sense that we could greatly benefit learning something from someone who has experiences with it. For example, we go to school to learn about certain subjects from people who have mastered the topic, we don’t just read a book and understand it completely. 

Now to show the main differences between these two philosophers will help give more understanding to what they felt and why. Like previously stated, Piaget’s perspective on children was that they were little scientist who construct their own view of the world, while Vygotsky's perspective is from social interactions. Piaget believed basic psychological mechanism is base off equilibrium between external stimuli and current level of cognitive structure. Again, Vygotsky says social interaction encourages this development through guidance from others and not through their own cognitive. Next, language only emerges as cognitive structure develops in Piglets theory, while Vygotsky says children are born with pre-intellectual speech development and cognitive development continues. Learning relies on assimilation and accommodation, meaning incorporating new information to fit our existing mental structures. Again, Vygotsky still has the same mindset that interaction and sociocultural interacts are the key to language development. Last, Piaget's thoughts on problem solving is based off children’s independence and their independent search to find the solution. Vygotsky’s reasoning for problem solving is with efforts from others, children will be able to guide themselves to find the solution (pg. 38).

After reading and understanding both sides of Piaget and Vislosky, it is easy to see that they both had one idea and didn’t veer out of their mindset. They are too one dimensional and focus on only one aspect of development (pg.44). It is now known that you can’t just focus on one thing and we must pay attention to changes that will occur throughout someone’s lifetime. We need to not only look at children, but look at different stages of life and look at different influences and changes in society. Being able to interact at different levels of development will help better future developmental research and the process of why we develop the way we do.