problem solving in cognitive development

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Child cognitive development is a fascinating and complex process that entails the growth of a child’s mental abilities, including their ability to think, learn, and solve problems. This development occurs through a series of stages that can vary among individuals. As children progress through these stages, their cognitive abilities and skills are continuously shaped by a myriad of factors such as genetics, environment, and experiences. Understanding the nuances of child cognitive development is essential for parents, educators, and professionals alike, as it provides valuable insight into supporting the growth of the child’s intellect and overall well-being.

Throughout the developmental process, language and communication play a vital role in fostering a child’s cognitive abilities . As children acquire language skills, they also develop their capacity for abstract thought, reasoning, and problem-solving. It is crucial for parents and caregivers to be mindful of potential developmental delays, as early intervention can greatly benefit the child’s cognitive development. By providing stimulating environments, nurturing relationships, and embracing diverse learning opportunities, adults can actively foster healthy cognitive development in children.

Key Takeaways

Child cognitive development involves the growth of mental abilities and occurs through various stages.
Language and communication are significant factors in cognitive development , shaping a child’s ability for abstract thought and problem-solving.
Early intervention and supportive environments can play a crucial role in fostering healthy cognitive development in children.

Child Cognitive Development Stages

Child cognitive development is a crucial aspect of a child’s growth and involves the progression of their thinking, learning, and problem-solving abilities. Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget developed a widely recognized theory that identifies four major stages of cognitive development in children.

Sensorimotor Stage

The Sensorimotor Stage occurs from birth to about 2 years old. During this stage, infants and newborns learn to coordinate their senses (sight, sound, touch, etc.) with their motor abilities. Their understanding of the world begins to develop through their physical interactions and experiences. Some key milestones in this stage include object permanence, which is the understanding that an object still exists even when it’s not visible, and the development of intentional actions.

Preoperational Stage

The Preoperational Stage takes place between the ages of 2 and 7 years old. In this stage, children start to think symbolically, and their language capabilities rapidly expand. They also develop the ability to use mental images, words, and gestures to represent the world around them. However, their thinking is largely egocentric, which means they struggle to see things from other people’s perspectives. During this stage, children start to engage in pretend play and begin to grasp the concept of conservation, recognizing that certain properties of objects (such as quantity or volume) remain the same even if their appearance changes.

Concrete Operational Stage

The Concrete Operational Stage occurs between the ages of 7 and 12 years old. At this stage, children’s cognitive development progresses to more logical and organized ways of thinking. They can now consider multiple aspects of a problem and better understand the relationship between cause and effect . Furthermore, children become more adept at understanding other people’s viewpoints, and they can perform basic mathematical operations and understand the principles of classification and seriation.

Formal Operational Stage

Lastly, the Formal Operational Stage typically begins around 12 years old and extends into adulthood. In this stage, children develop the capacity for abstract thinking and can consider hypothetical situations and complex reasoning. They can also perform advanced problem-solving and engage in systematic scientific inquiry. This stage allows individuals to think about abstract concepts, their own thought processes, and understand the world in deeper, more nuanced ways.

By understanding these stages of cognitive development, you can better appreciate the complex growth process that children undergo as their cognitive abilities transform and expand throughout their childhood.

Key Factors in Cognitive Development

Genetics and brain development.

Genetics play a crucial role in determining a child’s cognitive development. A child’s brain development is heavily influenced by genetic factors, which also determine their cognitive potential , abilities, and skills. It is important to understand that a child’s genes do not solely dictate their cognitive development – various environmental and experiential factors contribute to shaping their cognitive abilities as they grow and learn.

Environmental Influences

The environment in which a child grows up has a significant impact on their cognitive development. Exposure to various experiences is essential for a child to develop essential cognitive skills such as problem-solving, communication, and critical thinking. Factors that can have a negative impact on cognitive development include exposure to toxins, extreme stress, trauma, abuse, and addiction issues, such as alcoholism in the family.

Nutrition and Health

Maintaining good nutrition and health is vital for a child’s cognitive development. Adequate nutrition is essential for the proper growth and functioning of the brain . Key micronutrients that contribute to cognitive development include iron, zinc, and vitamins A, C, D, and B-complex vitamins. Additionally, a child’s overall health, including physical fitness and immunity, ensures they have the energy and resources to engage in learning activities and achieve cognitive milestones effectively .

Emotional and Social Factors

Emotional well-being and social relationships can also greatly impact a child’s cognitive development. A supportive, nurturing, and emotionally healthy environment allows children to focus on learning and building cognitive skills. Children’s emotions and stress levels can impact their ability to learn and process new information. Additionally, positive social interactions help children develop important cognitive skills such as empathy, communication, and collaboration.

In summary, cognitive development in children is influenced by various factors, including genetics, environmental influences, nutrition, health, and emotional and social factors. Considering these factors can help parents, educators, and policymakers create suitable environments and interventions for promoting optimal child development.

Language and Communication Development

Language skills and milestones.

Children’s language development is a crucial aspect of their cognitive growth. They begin to acquire language skills by listening and imitating sounds they hear from their environment. As they grow, they start to understand words and form simple sentences.

Infants (0-12 months): Babbling, cooing, and imitating sounds are common during this stage. They can also identify their name by the end of their first year. Facial expressions play a vital role during this period, as babies learn to respond to emotions.
Toddlers (1-3 years): They rapidly learn new words and form simple sentences. They engage more in spoken communication, constantly exploring their language environment.
Preschoolers (3-5 years): Children expand their vocabulary, improve grammar, and begin participating in more complex conversations.

It’s essential to monitor children’s language development and inform their pediatrician if any delays or concerns arise.

Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal communication contributes significantly to children’s cognitive development. They learn to interpret body language, facial expressions, and gestures long before they can speak. Examples of nonverbal communication in children include:

Eye contact: Maintaining eye contact while interacting helps children understand emotions and enhances communication.
Gestures: Pointing, waving goodbye, or using hand signs provide alternative ways for children to communicate their needs and feelings.
Body language: Posture, body orientation, and movement give clues about a child’s emotions and intentions.

Teaching children to understand and use nonverbal communication supports their cognitive and social development.

Parent and Caregiver Interaction

Supportive interaction from parents and caregivers plays a crucial role in children’s language and communication development. These interactions can improve children’s language skills and overall cognitive abilities . Some ways parents and caregivers can foster language development are:

Reading together: From an early age, reading books to children enhance their vocabulary and listening skills.
Encouraging communication: Ask open-ended questions and engage them in conversations to build their speaking skills.
Using rich vocabulary: Expose children to a variety of words and phrases, promoting language growth and understanding.

By actively engaging in children’s language and communication development, parents and caregivers can nurture cognitive, emotional, and social growth.

Cognitive Abilities and Skills

Cognitive abilities are the mental skills that children develop as they grow. These skills are essential for learning, adapting, and thriving in modern society. In this section, we will discuss various aspects of cognitive development, including reasoning and problem-solving, attention and memory, decision-making and executive function, as well as academic and cognitive milestones.

Reasoning and Problem Solving

Reasoning is the ability to think logically and make sense of the world around us. It’s essential for a child’s cognitive development, as it enables them to understand the concept of object permanence , recognize patterns, and classify objects. Problem-solving skills involve using these reasoning abilities to find solutions to challenges they encounter in daily life .

Children develop essential skills like:

Logical reasoning : The ability to deduce conclusions from available information.
Perception: Understanding how objects relate to one another in their environment.
Schemes: Organizing thoughts and experiences into mental categories.

Attention and Memory

Attention refers to a child’s ability to focus on specific tasks, objects, or information, while memory involves retaining and recalling information. These cognitive abilities play a critical role in children’s learning and academic performance . Working memory is a vital component of learning, as it allows children to hold and manipulate information in their minds while solving problems and engaging with new tasks.

Attention: Focuses on relevant tasks and information while ignoring distractions.
Memory: Retains and retrieves information when needed.

Decision-Making and Executive Function

Decision-making is the process of making choices among various alternatives, while executive function refers to the higher-order cognitive processes that enable children to plan, organize, and adapt in complex situations. Executive function encompasses components such as:

Inhibition: Self-control and the ability to resist impulses.
Cognitive flexibility: Adapting to new information or changing circumstances.
Planning: Setting goals and devising strategies to achieve them.

Academic and Cognitive Milestones

Children’s cognitive development is closely linked to their academic achievement. As they grow, they achieve milestones in various cognitive domains that form the foundation for their future learning. Some of these milestones include:

Language skills: Developing vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure.
Reading and mathematics: Acquiring the ability to read and comprehend text, as well as understanding basic mathematical concepts and operations.
Scientific thinking: Developing an understanding of cause-and-effect relationships and forming hypotheses.

Healthy cognitive development is essential for a child’s success in school and life. By understanding and supporting the development of their cognitive abilities, we can help children unlock their full potential and prepare them for a lifetime of learning and growth.

Developmental Delays and Early Intervention

Identifying developmental delays.

Developmental delays in children can be identified by monitoring their progress in reaching cognitive, linguistic, physical, and social milestones. Parents and caregivers should be aware of developmental milestones that are generally expected to be achieved by children at different ages, such as 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, 9 months, 18 months, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, and 5 years. Utilizing resources such as the “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” program can help parents and caregivers recognize signs of delay early in a child’s life.

Resources and Support for Parents

There are numerous resources available for parents and caregivers to find information on developmental milestones and to learn about potential developmental delays, including:

Learn the Signs. Act Early : A CDC initiative that provides pdf checklists of milestones and resources for identifying delays.
Parental support groups : Local and online communities dedicated to providing resources and fostering connections between families experiencing similar challenges.

Professional Evaluations and Intervention Strategies

If parents or caregivers suspect a developmental delay, it is crucial to consult with healthcare professionals or specialists who can conduct validated assessments of the child’s cognitive and developmental abilities. Early intervention strategies, such as the ones used in broad-based early intervention programs , have shown significant positive impacts on children with developmental delays to improve cognitive development and outcomes.

Professional evaluations may include:

Pediatricians : Primary healthcare providers who can monitor a child’s development and recommend further assessments when needed.
Speech and language therapists : Professionals who assist children with language and communication deficits.
Occupational therapists : Experts in helping children develop or improve on physical and motor skills, as well as social and cognitive abilities.

Depending on the severity and nature of the delays, interventions may involve:

Individualized support : Tailored programs or therapy sessions specifically developed for the child’s needs.
Group sessions : Opportunities for children to learn from and interact with other children experiencing similar challenges.
Family involvement : Parents and caregivers learning support strategies to help the child in their daily life.

Fostering Healthy Cognitive Development

Play and learning opportunities.

Encouraging play is crucial for fostering healthy cognitive development in children . Provide a variety of age-appropriate games, puzzles, and creative activities that engage their senses and stimulate curiosity. For example, introduce building blocks and math games for problem-solving skills, and crossword puzzles to improve vocabulary and reasoning abilities.

Playing with others also helps children develop social skills and better understand facial expressions and emotions. Provide opportunities for cooperative play, where kids can work together to achieve a common goal, and open-ended play with no specific rules to boost creativity.

Supportive Home Environment

A nurturing and secure home environment encourages healthy cognitive growth. Be responsive to your child’s needs and interests, involving them in everyday activities and providing positive reinforcement. Pay attention to their emotional well-being and create a space where they feel safe to ask questions and explore their surroundings.

Promoting Independence and Decision-Making

Support independence by allowing children to make decisions about their playtime, activities, and daily routines. Encourage them to take age-appropriate responsibilities and make choices that contribute to self-confidence and autonomy. Model problem-solving strategies and give them opportunities to practice these skills during play, while also guiding them when necessary.

Healthy Lifestyle Habits

Promote a well-rounded lifestyle, including:

Sleep : Ensure children get adequate and quality sleep by establishing a consistent bedtime routine.
Hydration : Teach the importance of staying hydrated by offering water frequently, especially during play and physical activities.
Screen time : Limit exposure to electronic devices and promote alternative activities for toddlers and older kids.
Physical activity : Encourage children to engage in active play and exercise to support neural development and overall health .

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the key stages of child cognitive development.

Child cognitive development can be divided into several key stages based on Piaget’s theory of cognitive development . These stages include the sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years), preoperational stage (2-7 years), concrete operational stage (7-11 years), and formal operational stage (11 years and beyond). Every stage represents a unique period of cognitive growth, marked by the development of new skills, thought processes, and understanding of the world.

What factors influence cognitive development in children?

Several factors contribute to individual differences in child cognitive development, such as genetic and environmental factors. Socioeconomic status, access to quality education, early home environment, and parental involvement all play a significant role in determining cognitive growth. In addition, children’s exposure to diverse learning experiences, adequate nutrition, and mental health also influence overall cognitive performance .

How do cognitive skills vary during early childhood?

Cognitive skills in early childhood evolve as children progress through various stages . During the sensorimotor stage, infants develop fundamental skills such as object permanence. The preoperational stage is characterized by the development of symbolic thought, language, and imaginative play. Children then enter the concrete operational stage, acquiring the ability to think logically and solve problems. Finally, in the formal operational stage, children develop abstract reasoning abilities, complex problem-solving skills and metacognitive awareness.

What are common examples of cognitive development?

Examples of cognitive development include the acquisition of language and vocabulary, the development of problem-solving skills, and the ability to engage in logical reasoning. Additionally, memory, attention, and spatial awareness are essential aspects of cognitive development. Children may demonstrate these skills through activities like puzzle-solving, reading, and mathematics.

How do cognitive development theories explain children’s learning?

Piaget’s cognitive development theory suggests that children learn through active exploration, constructing knowledge based on their experiences and interactions with the world. In contrast, Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory emphasizes the role of social interaction and cultural context in learning. Both theories imply that cognitive development is a dynamic and evolving process, influenced by various environmental and psychological factors.

Why is it essential to support cognitive development in early childhood?

Supporting cognitive development in early childhood is critical because it lays a strong foundation for future academic achievement, social-emotional development, and lifelong learning. By providing children with diverse and enriching experiences, caregivers and educators can optimize cognitive growth and prepare children to face the challenges of today’s complex world. Fostering cognitive development early on helps children develop resilience, adaptability, and critical thinking skills essential for personal and professional success.

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A-Z Publications

Annual Review of Psychology

Volume 62, 2011, review article, the development of problem solving in young children: a critical cognitive skill.

Rachel Keen 1
View Affiliations Hide Affiliations Affiliations: Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904; email: [email protected] * *Photograph by Cat Thrasher
Vol. 62:1-21 (Volume publication date January 2011) https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.031809.130730
First published as a Review in Advance on September 03, 2010
© Annual Reviews

Problem solving is a signature attribute of adult humans, but we need to understand how this develops in children. Tool use is proposed as an ideal way to study problem solving in children less than 3 years of age because overt manual action can reveal how the child plans to achieve a goal. Motor errors are as informative as successful actions. Research is reviewed on intentional actions, beginning with block play and progressing to picking up a spoon in different orientations, and finally retrieving objects with rakes and from inside tubes. Behavioral and kinematic measures of motor action are combined to show different facets of skill acquisition and mastery. We need to design environments that encourage and enhance problem solving from a young age. One goal of this review is to excite interest and spur new research on the beginnings of problem solving and its elaboration during development.

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StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan-.

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Cognitive development.

Fatima Malik ; Raman Marwaha .

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Last Update: April 23, 2023 .

Definition/Introduction

The concept of childhood is relatively new; in most medieval societies, childhood did not exist. At approximately seven years of age, children were considered little adults with similar expectations for a job, marriage, and legal consequences. Charles Darwin originated ideas of childhood development in his work on the origins of ethology (the scientific study of the evolutionary basis of behavior) and "A Biographical Sketch of an Infant," first published in 1877.

It wasn't until the 20th century that developmental theories emerged. When conceptualizing cognitive development, we cannot ignore the work of Jean Piaget. Piaget suggested that when young infants experience an event, they process new information by balancing assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is taking in new information and fitting it into previously understood mental schemas. Accommodation is adapting and revising a previously understood mental schema according to the novel information. Piaget divided child development into four stages.

The first stage, Sensorimotor (ages 0 to 2 years of age), is the time when children master two phenomena: causality and object permanence. Infants and toddlers use their sense and motor abilities to manipulate their surroundings and learn about the environment. They understand a cause-and-effect relationship, like shaking a rattle may produce sound and may repeat it or how crying can make the parent(s) rush to give them attention. As the frontal lobe matures and memory develops, children in this age group can imagine what may happen without physically causing an effect; this is the emergence of thought and allows for the planning of actions. Object permanence emerges around six months of age. It is the concept that objects continue to exist even when they are not presently visible.

Second is the "Pre-operational" stage (ages 2 to 7 years), when a child can use mental representations such as symbolic thought and language. Children in this age group learn to imitate and pretend to play. This stage is characterized by egocentrism, i.e., being unable to perceive that others can think differently than themselves, and everything (good or bad) somehow links to the self.

Third is the "Concrete Operational stage" (ages 7 to 11 years), when the child uses logical operations when solving problems, including mastery of conservation and inductive reasoning. Finally, the Formal Operational stage (age 12 years and older) suggests an adolescent can use logical operations with the ability to use abstractions. Adolescents can understand theories, hypothesize, and comprehend abstract ideas like love and justice.

Childhood cognitive development and the Piaget stages are poorly generalizable. For example, conservation may overlap between the Pre-operational and Concrete Operational stages as the child masters conservation in one task and not in another. Similarly, the current understanding is that a child masters the "Theory of Mind" by 4 to 5 years, much earlier than when Piaget suggested that egocentrism resolves. [1]

Stages of Cognitive Development (Problem-Solving and Intelligence)

The word intelligence derives from the Latin "intelligere," meaning to understand or perceive. Problem-solving and cognitive development progress from establishing object permanence, causality, and symbolic thinking with concrete (hands-on) learning to abstract thinking and embedding of implicit (unconscious) to explicit memory development.

Birth to two months: The optical focal length is approximately 10 inches at birth. Infants actively seek stimuli, habituate to the familiar, and respond more vigorously to changing stimuli. The initial responses are more reflexive, like sucking and grasping. The infant can fix and follow a slow horizontal arc and eventually will follow past the midline. Contrasts, colors, and faces are preferred. The infant will distinguish familiar from moderately novel stimuli. As habituation to the faces of caregivers occurs, preferences are developed. The infant will stare momentarily where at the place from where an object has disappeared (lack of object permanence). At this stage, high-pitched voices are preferred.

Two to six months: Children in this age bracket engage in a purposeful sensory exploration of their bodies, staring at their hands and reaching and touching their body parts; this builds the concepts of cause and effect and self-understanding. Sensations and changes outside of themselves are appreciated with less regularity. As motor abilities are mastered, something that happens by chance will be repeated. For example, touching a button may light up the toy, or crying can cause the appearance of the caregiver. Routines are appreciated in this age group.

Six to twelve months: Object permanence emerges in this age group as the toddler looks for objects. A six-month-old will look for partially hidden objects, while a nine-month-old will look for wholly hidden objects and uncover them; this includes engaging in peek-a-boo-type games. Separation and stranger anxiety emerge as the toddler understands that out of sight is not out of mind. As motor abilities advance, sensory exploration of the environment occurs via reaching, inspecting, holding, mouthing, and dropping objects. They learn to manipulate their environment, learning cause and effect by trial and error, like banging two blocks together can produce a sound. Eventually, as Piaget suggested, mental schemas are built, and objects can be used functionally; for example, by intentionally pressing a button to open and reach inside a toy box.

Twelve to eighteen months: Around this time, motor abilities make it easier for the child to walk and reach, grasp, and release. Toys can be explored, made to work, and novel play skills emerge. Gestures and sounds can be imitated. Egocentric pretend play emerges. As object permanence and memory advance, objects can be found after witnessing a series of displacements, and moving objects can be tracked.

Eighteen months to two years: As memory and processing skills advance and frontal lobes mature, outcomes are imagined without so much physical manipulation, and new problem-solving strategies emerge without rehearsal. Thought arises, and there is the ability to plan actions. Object permanence is wholly established, and objects can be searched for by anticipating where they may be without witnessing their displacement. At 18 months, symbolic play expands from just the self; the child may attempt to feed a toy along with themselves, and housework may be imitated.

Two to five years: During this stage, the preschool years, magical and wishful thinking emerges; for example, the sun went home because it was tired. This ability may also give rise to apprehensions with fear of monsters, and having logical solutions may not be enough for reassurance. Perception will dominate over logic, and giving them an imaginary tool, like a monster spray, to help relieve that anxiety may be more helpful. Similarly, conservation and volume concept lacks, and what appears bigger or larger is more. For example, one cookie split into may equal two cookies.

Children in the preschool stage have a poor concept of cause and may think sickness is due to misbehavior. They are egocentric in their approach and may look at situations from only their point of view, offering comfort from a favorite stuffed toy to an upset loved one. At 36 months, a child can understand simple time concepts, identify shapes, compare two items, and count to three. Play becomes more comprehensive. At 48 months, children can count to four, identify four colors and understand opposites.

At five years of age, pre-literacy and numeracy skills further; five-year-old children can count to ten accurately, recites the alphabet by rote, and recognize a few letters. A child also develops hand preference at this age. Play stories become even more detailed between four and five years and may include imaginary scenarios, including imaginary friends. Playing with some game rules and obedience to those rules also establishes during the preschool years. Rules can be absolute.

Six to twelve years: During early school years, scientific reasoning and understanding of physical laws of conservation, including weight and volume, develop. A child can understand multiple points of view and can understand one perspective of a situation. They realize the rules of the game can change with mutual agreement. Basic literacy skills of reading and numbers are mastered initially. Eventually, around third to fourth grade, the emphasis shifts from learning to read to reading to learn and from spelling to composition writing. All these stages need mastery of sustained attention and processing skills, receptive and expressive language, and memory development and recall. The limitation of this stage is an inability to comprehend abstract ideas and reliance on logical answers.

Twelve years and older: During this age, adolescents can exercise logic systematically and scientifically. They can simultaneously apply abstract thinking to solve algebraic problems and multiple logics to reach a scientific solution. It is easier to use these concepts for schoolwork. Later in adolescence and early adulthood, these concepts can also apply to emotional and personal life problems. Magical thinking or following ideals guides decisions more than wisdom. Some may have more influence from religious or moral rules and absolute concepts of right and wrong. Questioning the prevalent code of conduct may cause anxiety or rebellion and eventually lead to the development of personal ethics. Side by side, social cognition, apart from self, also is developing, and concepts of justice, patriarchy, politics, etc. establish. During late teens and early adulthood, thinking about the future, including ideas such as love, commitment, and career goals, become important. [2]

Issues of Concern

Pediatric and primary care practitioners are in a prime position to monitor the growth and development of children, particularly cognitive development. A lag in cognitive development may alert the provider to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, learning disability, global developmental delay, developmental language disorder, developmental coordination disorder, mild intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorders, moderate-severe intellectual disability, cerebral palsy, fetal alcohol syndrome (FASD), or vision and auditory disorders.

The most well-known causes of intellectual disability are FASD, Down syndrome, Fragile X syndrome, other genetic or chromosomal problems, lead or other toxicities, and environmental influences such as poverty, malnutrition, abuse, and neglect. Prenatal causes of intellectual disability include infection, toxins and teratogens, congenital hypothyroidism, inborn errors of metabolism, and genetic abnormalities. Fetal alcohol syndrome is the most common preventable cause of intellectual disability. Down syndrome is the most common genetic cause, and Fragile X syndrome is the most common inherited cause. First-tier tests recommended for intellectual disability are chromosomal microarray and Fragile X testing.

Clinical concerns can arise in areas of visual analysis, proprioception, motor control, memory storage and recall, attention span and sequencing, and deficits in receptive or expressive language. Early recognition of intellectual disability leads to earlier diagnosis and intervention, showing promising results in improved cognition. Besides what is best for children and families, early intervention saves overall economic expenditure on disabilities. Thus, surveillance alone is inadequate; active screening for developmental delay should be an integral part of medical practice. [3] Some commonly used measures for screening are the Ages and Stages Questionnaire and the Survey of Well-being of Young Children. If the results of surveillance and screening are concerning, watchful waiting is inadequate, and a referral is necessary for early intervention.

Intellectual disability is defined when there is a concern for intellectual and adaptive functioning. Usually, on standardized measures, this means a score less than two standard deviations below the mean, which is 100 for most measures. Standardized tests used to measure intellectual function include the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI), and the Stanford-Binet test. One standardized test for adaptive functioning is the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale.

A learning disability should be suspected when the intelligence score is within the average range, but a significant discrepancy in achievement scores exists, or a child does not respond to evidence-based interventions. Evidence-based interventions include increasing instruction time and specialized instruction by trained personnel in deficit areas.

Clinical Significance

Early intervention during the "critical period" in development has shown promising results. [4] Thus clinicians must take the lead to diagnose, treat, and establish resources for early intervention to provide optimal health opportunities to our children. Early intervention services should be provided in two areas; biological risk/disabilities and environmental risk.

Pediatric and primary care practitioners should understand The Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) and other federal policies. Early intervention laws give entitlement to services from birth through early intervention home-based service, the Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) from birth to 3 years of age, and individualized education plans for ages 3 to 21 years. The goal is to minimize or prevent disability by accommodating children with intellectual disabilities or changing the curriculum to meet the individualized needs of the child. This plan should be based on an interprofessional assessment to understand the child's needs.

Thus, clinicians should partner with social workers, psychologists, or psychiatrists for thorough evaluations, lawyers to explore legal support and advocacy for services, therapists, early intervention providers, and schools to plan individualized goals and monitor progress.

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Disclosure: Fatima Malik declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

Disclosure: Raman Marwaha declares no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies.

This book is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ), which permits others to distribute the work, provided that the article is not altered or used commercially. You are not required to obtain permission to distribute this article, provided that you credit the author and journal.

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Cognitive Development Theory: What Are the Stages?

Sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage, formal operational stage.

Cognitive development is the process by which we come to acquire, understand, organize, and learn to use information in various ways. Cognitive development helps a child obtain the skills needed to live a productive life and function as an independent adult.

The late Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget was a major figure in the study of cognitive development theory in children. He believed that it occurs in four stages—sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

This article discusses Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, including important concepts and principles.

FatCamera / Getty Images

History of Cognitive Development

During the 1920s, the psychologist Jean Piaget was given the task of translating English intelligence tests into French. During this process, he observed that children think differently than adults do and have a different view of the world. He began to study children from birth through the teenage years—observing children who were too young to talk, and interviewing older children while he also observed their development.

Piaget published his theory of cognitive development in 1936. This theory is based on the idea that a child’s intelligence changes throughout childhood and cognitive skills—including memory, attention, thinking, problem-solving, logical reasoning, reading, listening, and more—are learned as a child grows and interacts with their environment.

Stages of Cognitive Development

Piaget’s theory suggests that cognitive development occurs in four stages as a child ages. These stages are always completed in order, but last longer for some children than others. Each stage builds on the skills learned in the previous stage.

The four stages of cognitive development include:

Sensorimotor
Preoperational
Concrete operational
Formal operational

The sensorimotor stage begins at birth and lasts until 18 to 24 months of age. During the sensorimotor stage, children are physically exploring their environment and absorbing information through their senses of smell, sight, touch, taste, and sound.

The most important skill gained in the sensorimotor stage is object permanence, which means that the child knows that an object still exists even when they can't see it anymore. For example, if a toy is covered up by a blanket, the child will know the toy is still there and will look for it. Without this skill, the child thinks that the toy has simply disappeared.

Language skills also begin to develop during the sensorimotor stage.

Activities to Try During the Sensorimotor Stage

Appropriate activities to do during the sensorimotor stage include:

Playing peek-a-boo
Reading books
Providing toys with a variety of textures
Singing songs
Playing with musical instruments
Rolling a ball back and forth

The preoperational stage of Piaget's theory of cognitive development occurs between ages 2 and 7 years. Early on in this stage, children learn the skill of symbolic representation. This means that an object or word can stand for something else. For example, a child might play "house" with a cardboard box.

At this stage, children assume that other people see the world and experience emotions the same way they do, and their main focus is on themselves. This is called egocentrism .

Centrism is another characteristic of the preoperational stage. This means that a child is only able to focus on one aspect of a problem or situation. For example, a child might become upset that a friend has more pieces of candy than they do, even if their pieces are bigger.

During this stage, children will often play next to each other—called parallel play—but not with each other. They also believe that inanimate objects, such as toys, have human lives and feelings.

Activities to Try During the Preoperational Stage

Appropriate activities to do during the preoperational stage include:

Playing "house" or "school"
Building a fort
Playing with Play-Doh
Building with blocks
Playing charades

The concrete operational stage occurs between the ages of 7 and 11 years. During this stage, a child develops the ability to think logically and problem-solve but can only apply these skills to objects they can physically see—things that are "concrete."

Six main concrete operations develop in this stage. These include:

Conservation : This skill means that a child understands that the amount of something or the number of a particular object stays the same, even when it looks different. For example, a cup of milk in a tall glass looks different than the same amount of milk in a short glass—but the amount did not change.
Classification : This skill is the ability to sort items by specific classes, such as color, shape, or size.
Seriation : This skill involves arranging objects in a series, or a logical order. For example, the child could arrange blocks in order from smallest to largest.
Reversibility : This skill is the understanding that a process can be reversed. For example, a balloon can be blown up with air and then deflated back to the way it started.
Decentering : This skill allows a child to focus on more than one aspect of a problem or situation at the same time. For example, two candy bars might look the same on the outside, but the child knows that they have different flavors on the inside.
Transitivity : This skill provides an understanding of how things relate to each other. For example, if John is older than Susan, and Susan is older than Joey, then John is older than Joey.

Activities to Try During the Concrete Operational Stage

Appropriate activities to do during the concrete operational stage include:

Using measuring cups (for example, demonstrate how one cup of water fills two half-cups)
Solving simple logic problems
Practicing basic math
Doing crossword puzzles
Playing board games

The last stage in Piaget's theory of cognitive development occurs during the teenage years into adulthood. During this stage, a person learns abstract thinking and hypothetical problem-solving skills.

Deductive reasoning—or the ability to make a conclusion based on information gained from a person's environment—is also learned in this stage. This means, for example, that a person can identify the differences between dogs of various breeds, instead of putting them all in a general category of "dogs."

Activities to Try During the Formal Operational Stage

Appropriate activities to do during the formal operational stage include:

Learning to cook
Solving crossword and logic puzzles
Exploring hobbies
Playing a musical instrument

Piaget's theory of cognitive development is based on the belief that a child gains thinking skills in four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. These stages roughly correspond to specific ages, from birth to adulthood. Children progress through these stages at different paces, but according to Piaget, they are always completed in order.

National Library of Medicine. Cognitive testing . MedlinePlus.

Oklahoma State University. Cognitive development: The theory of Jean Piaget .

SUNY Cortland. Sensorimotor stage .

Marwaha S, Goswami M, Vashist B. Prevalence of principles of Piaget’s theory among 4-7-year-old children and their correlation with IQ . J Clin Diagn Res. 2017;11(8):ZC111-ZC115. doi:10.7860%2FJCDR%2F2017%2F28435.10513

Börnert-Ringleb M, Wilbert J. The association of strategy use and concrete-operational thinking in primary school . Front Educ. 2018;0. doi:10.3389/feduc.2018.00038

By Aubrey Bailey, PT, DPT, CHT Dr, Bailey is a Virginia-based physical therapist and professor of anatomy and physiology with over a decade of experience.

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The development of problem solving in young children: a critical cognitive skill

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1 Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904, USA. [email protected]
PMID: 20822435
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.psych.031809.130730

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Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Saul McLeod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

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Sociocultural Theory

The work of Lev Vygotsky (1934, 1978) has become the foundation of much research and theory in cognitive development over the past several decades, particularly what has become known as sociocultural theory.

Vygotsky’s theory comprises concepts such as culture-specific tools, private speech, and the zone of proximal development.

Vygotsky believed cognitive development is influenced by cultural and social factors. He emphasized the role of social interaction in the development of mental abilities e.g., speech and reasoning in children.

Vygotsky strongly believed that community plays a central role in the process of “making meaning.”

Cognitive development is a socially mediated process in which children acquire cultural values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society.

The more knowledgeable other (MKO) is someone who has a higher level of ability or greater understanding than the learner regarding a particular task, process, or concept.

The MKO can be a teacher, parent, coach, or even a peer who provides guidance and modeling to enable the child to learn skills within their zone of proximal development (the gap between what a child can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance).

The interactions with more knowledgeable others significantly increase not only the quantity of information and the number of skills a child develops, but also affects the development of higher-order mental functions such as formal reasoning. Vygotsky argued that higher mental abilities could only develop through interaction with more advanced others.

According to Vygotsky, adults in society foster children’s cognitive development by engaging them in challenging and meaningful activities. Adults convey to children how their culture interprets and responds to the world.

They show the meaning they attach to objects, events, and experiences. They provide the child with what to think (the knowledge) and how to think (the processes, the tools to think with).

Vygotsky’s theory encourages collaborative and cooperative learning between children and teachers or peers. Scaffolding and reciprocal teaching are effective educational strategies based on Vygotsky’s ideas.

Scaffolding involves the teacher providing support structures to help students master skills just beyond their current level. In reciprocal teaching, teachers and students take turns leading discussions using strategies like summarizing and clarifying. Both scaffolding and reciprocal teaching emphasize the shared construction of knowledge, in line with Vygotsky’s views.

Vygotsky highlighted the importance of language in cognitive development. Inner speech is used for mental reasoning, and external speech is used to converse with others.

Initially, these operations occur separately. Indeed, before age two, a child employs words socially; they possess no internal language.

Once thought and language merge, however, the social language is internalized and assists the child with their reasoning. Thus, the social environment is ingrained within the child’s learning.

Effects of Culture

Vygotsky’s theory emphasizes individuals’ active role in their cognitive development, highlighting the interplay between innate abilities, social interaction, and cultural tools.

Vygotsky posited that people aren’t passive recipients of knowledge but actively interact with their environment. This interaction forms the basis of cognitive development.

Infants are born with basic abilities for intellectual development, called “elementary mental functions.” These include attention, sensation, perception, and memory.

Through interaction within the sociocultural environment, elementary functions develop into more sophisticated “higher mental functions.”

Higher mental functions are advanced cognitive processes that develop through social interaction and cultural influences. They are distinct from the basic, innate elementary mental functions.

Unlike elementary functions (like basic attention or memory), higher functions are:

Conscious awareness : The individual is aware of these processes.
Voluntary control : They can be deliberately used and controlled.
Mediated : They involve the use of cultural tools or signs (like language).
Social in origin : They develop through social interaction.

Examples include language and communication, logical reasoning, problem-solving, planning, attention control, self-regulation, and metacognition.

Vygotsky posited that higher mental functions are not innate but develop through social interaction and the internalization of cultural tools.

Tools of Intellectual Adaptation

Cultural tools are methods of thinking and problem-solving strategies that children internalize through social interactions with more knowledgeable members of society.

These tools, such as language, counting systems, mnemonic techniques, and art forms, shape the way individuals think, problem-solve, and interact with the world.

Tools of intellectual adaptation is Vygotsky’s term for methods of thinking and problem-solving strategies that children internalize through social interactions with the more knowledgeable members of society.

Cultural tools, particularly language, influence the development of higher-order thinking skills.

Other tools include writing systems, number systems, mnemonic techniques, works of art, diagrams, maps, and drawings.

These tools are products of sociocultural evolution, passed down and transformed across generations.

Each culture provides its children with tools of intellectual adaptation that allow them to use basic mental functions more effectively.

These tools, along with social interaction, contribute to the development of higher mental functions through a process of internalization.

This historical and cultural embeddedness means that tools carry within them the accumulated knowledge and practices of a particular community.

For example, biological factors limit memory in young children. However, culture determines the type of memory strategy we develop.

For example, in Western culture, children learn note-taking to aid memory, but in pre-literate societies, other strategies must be developed, such as tying knots in a string to remember, carrying pebbles, or repeating the names of ancestors until large numbers can be repeated.

Vygotsky, therefore, sees cognitive functions, even those carried out alone, as affected by the beliefs, values, and tools of intellectual adaptation of the culture in which a person develops and, therefore, socio-culturally determined.

Therefore, intellectual adaptation tools vary from culture to culture – as in the memory example.

More Knowledgeable Other

The more knowledgeable other (MKO) is somewhat self-explanatory; it refers to someone who has a better understanding or higher skill level than the learner in a particular task or concept.

As a result of shared dialogues with more knowledgeable others, which provide hints, instructions, and encouragement, the child can internalize the ‘how to do it’ part of the task as part of their inner or private speech. The child can use this later when they tackle a similar task independently.

Although the implication is that the MKO is a teacher or an older adult, this is not necessarily the case. Often, a child’s peers or an adult’s children may be the individuals with more knowledge or experience.

What constitutes “more knowledgeable” can vary across cultures and contexts. In some situations, traditional knowledge held by elders might be most valued, while in others, cutting-edge technical skills of younger individuals might be more relevant.

For example, who is more likely to know more about the newest teenage music groups, how to win at the most recent PlayStation game, or how to correctly perform the newest dance craze – a child or their parents?

In fact, the MKO need not be a person at all. To support employees in their learning process, some companies are now using electronic performance support systems.

Electronic tutors have also been used in educational settings to facilitate and guide students through learning. The key to MKOs is that they must have (or be programmed with) more knowledge about the topic being learned than the learner does.

The MKO is not a static position of superiority but a fluid role that shifts contextually in response to the learners’ evolving understanding and the dynamics of the learning environment.

As learners gain greater understanding, they can transition from being novices to assuming the role of MKO for their peers.

This highlights the collaborative and fluid nature of learning within the ZPD, where knowledge is co-constructed rather than simply transmitted from a more knowledgeable individual.

Abtahi (2016) suggests that tools themselves can function as “more knowledgeable others,” embodying cultural-historical knowledge that guides learners’ thinking and actions.

Abtahi uses the example of fraction strips guiding children’s understanding of fraction addition, even without direct instruction from an adult. This suggests that the design and affordances of tools can structure learning experiences, creating a zone of proximal development (ZPD) where learners, through their interactions with these tools, can achieve more than they could independently.

This idea is further supported by Puntambekar and Hübscher (2005), who discuss the use of curricula, software tools, and other resources as forms of scaffolding.

Zone of Proximal Development

The concept of the more knowledgeable other relates to the second important principle of Vygotsky’s work, the zone of proximal development (ZPD).

The ZPD relates to the difference between what a child (or a novice) can achieve independently and what a child can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner.

Vygotsky (1978) views the zone of proximal development as the area where the most sensitive instruction or guidance should occur, enabling the child to develop skills they will later use independently, thus fostering higher mental functions.

The ZPD is not a static space but constantly shifts as the child learns and develops new skills. As a child’s competence grows, their zone of proximal development also expands to encompass new challenges.

Vygotsky emphasizes social interaction as crucial to learning, arguing that children develop more fully with support than alone. He defines the gap between actual and potential learning as the ZPD, asserting that collaboration with more knowledgeable others is essential to bridge this gap.

According to Vygotsky (1978), the child (or a novice) learns through social interaction with a skillful tutor. The tutor may model behaviors and/or provide verbal instructions for the child.

Vygotsky refers to this as cooperative or collaborative dialogue. The child seeks to understand the actions or instructions provided by the tutor (often the parent or teacher) and then internalizes the information, using it to guide or regulate their performance.

Social interaction, therefore, supports the child’s cognitive development in the ZPD, leading to a higher level of reasoning.

Internalization of Knowledge

Internalization is a central concept in Vygotsky’s theory, bridging the gap between social interaction and individual cognitive development.

It’s the process by which external, socially mediated activities are transformed into internal mental processes, allowing individuals to acquire new knowledge and skills.

Vygotsky viewed higher mental functions, such as language, reasoning, and self-regulation, as originating in social interaction. He argued that these functions are not innate or biologically determined but acquired through participation in culturally meaningful activities with others.

Internalization within the ZPD isn’t a passive transfer of information but a dynamic process where learners actively participate and engage in meaning-making.

This active engagement ensures that learners don’t simply replicate the expert’s actions but develop a deeper understanding of the underlying principles and strategies.

For example, a child learning to solve a problem with a parent’s guidance doesn’t simply memorize the solution but actively constructs their understanding through dialogue and interaction .

This process, often termed scaffolding, underscores the importance of providing support that aligns with the learner’s current capabilities and gradually diminishes as the learner gains mastery.

Scaffolding

The ZPD has become synonymous with the term “scaffolding” in the literature. However, it is important to note that Vygotsky never used this term in his writing; it was introduced by Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976).

Scaffolding consists of activities provided by the educator or a more knowledgeable person to support the student as he or she is led through the zone of proximal development.

It’s the “how” of guided learning, the specific strategies and techniques used by a more knowledgeable other to bridge the gap between a learner’s current abilities and potential development.

This support can be provided in many different ways, such as modeling or asking questions, and is used across different subjects and age groups.

Scaffolding is a dynamic process that changes based on the student’s progress and the task at hand, so it will look different in different situations.

Contingency (or responsiveness) is paramount. This means the teacher continually assesses the learner’s understanding and calibrates their support accordingly.

Support is tapered off (i.e., withdrawn) as it becomes unnecessary, much as a scaffold is removed from a building during construction. The student will then be able to complete the task again independently.

Shaffer (1996) gives the example of a young girl given her first jigsaw. Alone, she performs poorly in attempting to solve the puzzle. The father then sits with her and describes or demonstrates some basic strategies, such as finding all the corner/edge pieces, and provides a couple of pieces for the child to put together herself, and offers encouragement when she does so.

As the child becomes more competent, the father allows the child to work more independently.

Evidence for Vygotsky and the ZPD

Freund (1990) conducted a study in which children had to decide which furniture items should be placed in particular areas of a doll’s house.

Some children were allowed to play with their mother in a similar situation before they attempted it alone (zone of proximal development) while others were allowed to work on this by themselves (Piaget’s discovery learning).

Freund found that those who had previously worked with their mother (ZPD) showed the greatest improvement compared with their first attempt at the task.

The conclusion is that guided learning within the ZPD led to greater understanding/performance than working alone (discovery learning).

Vygotsky and Language

Vygotsky believed that language develops from social interactions for communication purposes. Vygotsky viewed language as man’s greatest tool for communicating with the outside world.

According to Vygotsky (1962), language plays two critical roles in cognitive development:

Cultural transmission of knowledge : Language is the primary vehicle for passing down cultural knowledge, values, and practices across generations. This transmission occurs through formal instruction and informal interactions, shaping individuals’ understanding of the world and their place within it.
Language becomes a powerful tool for intellectual adaptation : Language is not merely a tool for communication; it’s a tool for thinking. Language facilitates the development of higher mental functions like abstract thinking, planning, and problem-solving.

Vygotsky (1987) differentiates between three forms of language:

Social speech: The initial form of language serves as the primary means for children to engage with others, establish shared meanings, and participate in cultural activities (typical from age two).
Private speech: Overt and audible speech directed to the self and serves an intellectual function (typical from age three).
Inner speech: According to Vygotsky, private speech doesn’t simply disappear; it goes “underground,” transforming into silent inner speech (typical from age seven).

For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three years of age.

At this point, speech and thought become interdependent: thought becomes verbal, and speech becomes representational.

As children develop mental representation, particularly the skill of language, they start to communicate with themselves in much the same way as they would communicate with others.

When this happens, children’s monologues are internalized to become inner speech. The internalization of language is important as it drives cognitive development.

This internal dialogue allows individuals to mentally rehearse different viewpoints, contributing to more sophisticated social understanding and problem-solving abilities.

“Inner speech is not the interiour aspect of external speech – it is a function in itself. It still remains speech, i.e., thought connected with words. But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words dies as they bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings.” (Vygotsky, 1962: p. 149)

Private Speech

Vygotsky (1987) was the first psychologist to document the importance of private speech.

He considered private speech as the transition point between social and inner speech, the moment in development where language and thought unite to constitute verbal thinking.

Thus, in Vygotsky’s view, private speech was the earliest manifestation of inner speech. Indeed, private speech is more similar (in form and function) to inner speech than social speech.

Private speech is “typically defined, in contrast to social speech, as speech addressed to the self (not to others) for the purpose of self-regulation (rather than communication).” (Diaz, 1992, p.62)

Private speech is overt, audible, and observable, often seen in children who talk to themselves while problem-solving.

Conversely, inner speech is covert or hidden because it happens internally. It is the silent, internal dialogue that adults often engage in while thinking or problem-solving.

In contrast to Piaget’s (1959) notion of private speech representing a developmental dead-end, Vygotsky (1934, 1987) viewed private speech as:

“A revolution in development which is triggered when preverbal thought and preintellectual language come together to create fundamentally new forms of mental functioning.” (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005: p. 1)

In addition to disagreeing on the functional significance of private speech, Vygotsky and Piaget also offered opposing views on the developmental course of private speech and the environmental circumstances in which it occurs most often (Berk & Garvin, 1984).

Functions of Private Speech

Through private speech, children collaborate with themselves in the same way a more knowledgeable other (e.g., adults) collaborates with them to achieve a given function.

Vygotsky sees “private speech” as a means for children to plan activities and strategies, aiding their development. Private speech is the use of language for self-regulation of behavior.

Private speech is not just aimless chatter; it serves a vital self-regulatory function. As children develop, they need to transition from relying on external guidance from adults to directing their own actions and thoughts.

Private speech emerges as a way for children to guide their own behavior, especially during challenging tasks. They are essentially verbalizing the thought process that will eventually become internalized as inner speech.

Berk (1986) provided empirical support for the notion of private speech. She found that most private speech exhibited by children serves to describe or guide the child’s actions.

Therefore, language accelerates thinking and understanding ( Jerome Bruner also views language this way). Vygotsky believed that children who engage in large amounts of private speech are more socially competent than children who do not use it extensively.

Vygotsky (1987) notes that private speech does not merely accompany a child’s activity but acts as a tool the developing child uses to facilitate cognitive processes, such as overcoming task obstacles, and enhancing imagination, thinking, and conscious awareness.

Children use private speech most often during intermediate difficulty tasks because they attempt to self-regulate by verbally planning and organizing their thoughts (Winsler et al., 2007).

Imagine a child working on a complex puzzle. They might say things like, “Where does this piece go? No, it doesn’t fit there. Maybe I should try turning it around.”

This self-directed talk helps them to:

Focus attention : By verbalizing the problem and possible solutions, children are more likely to stay on task.
Plan and sequence actions : Talking through the steps helps them organize their approach.
Monitor progress : They can use their words to evaluate their success and make adjustments.

The frequency and content of private speech correlate with behavior or performance. For example, private speech appears functionally related to cognitive performance: It appears at times of difficulty with a task.

For example, tasks related to executive function (Fernyhough & Fradley, 2005), problem-solving tasks (Behrend et al., 1992), and schoolwork in both language (Berk & Landau, 1993), and mathematics (Ostad & Sorensen, 2007).

There is also evidence (Behrend et al., 1992) that those children who displayed the characteristic whispering and lip movements associated with private speech when faced with a difficult task were generally more attentive and successful than their ‘quieter’ classmates.

Developmental Trajectory

Berk also discovered that children engaged in private speech more often when working alone on challenging tasks and when their teacher was not immediately available to help them.

Furthermore, Berk also found that private speech develops similarly in all children regardless of cultural background.

Vygotsky (1987) proposed that private speech is a product of an individual’s social environment. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that there exist high positive correlations between rates of social interaction and private speech in children.

Children raised in cognitively and linguistically stimulating environments (situations more frequently observed in higher socioeconomic status families) start using and internalizing private speech faster than children from less privileged backgrounds.

Indeed, children raised in environments characterized by low verbal and social exchanges exhibit delays in private speech development.

As children become more adept at a task, their private speech typically becomes quieter and less grammatically complete.

This process of internalization involves “syntactic and semantic abbreviation,” meaning children start using a sort of mental shorthand, reflecting their increasing mastery of the task and the underlying cognitive processes. Eventually, this abbreviated private speech transforms into silent inner speech.

Children’s use of private speech diminishes as they grow older and follows a curvilinear trend. This is due to changes in ontogenetic development whereby children can internalize language (through inner speech) to self-regulate their behavior (Vygotsky, 1987).

For example, research has shown that children’s private speech usually peaks at 3–4 years of age, decreases at 6–7, and gradually fades out to be mostly internalized by age 10 (Diaz, 1992).

Vygotsky proposed that private speech diminishes and disappears with age not because it becomes socialized, as Piaget suggested, but because it goes underground to constitute inner speech or verbal thought” (Frauenglass & Diaz, 1985).

Inner Speech

Inner speech develops from private speech. As Vygotsky (1987) proposed, private speech “goes underground” to become inner speech.

Inner speech is a silent, internal language of thought that we use to reason, plan, and regulate our behavior. Unlike private speech, which is outwardly audible self-talk, inner speech is a completely internal process.

Vygotsky viewed language as a “tool” that mediates between our thoughts and actions. In the context of inner speech, language provides the very structure and form for our internal dialogue. It’s how we represent ideas, construct arguments, and engage in mental problem-solving.

Our capacity for silent thought (inner speech) is not an innate ability but rather a developmental achievement that emerges from our social world.

Our earliest experiences with language and dialogue shape the very structure of our internal thought processes.
Language acts as a tool, a system of representation, that enables us to think and reason internally.
We carry the patterns and structures of social dialogue into our private mental landscapes.

The quality and development of inner speech can vary significantly across individuals. Factors such as social experiences, cultural background, and even the presence of developmental differences can influence the way inner speech manifests and its role in cognitive functioning.

Characteristics

Social dialogue : Inner speech is not merely a solitary monologue but retains the dialogic structure of social interaction. This means that when we engage in inner speech, we are essentially conversing with ourselves, mentally rehearsing different viewpoints, considering alternatives, and working through problems using language as the primary tool.
Abbreviated and telegraphic: Inner speech is typically highly condensed, lacking the full grammatical structure of spoken language. This is because, in our own minds, we don’t need to state every detail explicitly. We can rely on shared context and understanding implicit in our internal dialogue.
Simultaneity of perspectives: A key characteristic of mature inner speech is the ability to hold multiple perspectives simultaneously. Rather than a linear, back-and-forth exchange, inner speech can encompass a complex interplay of ideas, allowing for more nuanced and flexible thinking.
Planning and problem solving: Inner speech is essential for planning future actions, considering potential consequences, and developing strategies for navigating challenges.
Self-regulation and control: Inner speech facilitates self-regulation, as it allows us to inhibit impulsive behaviors, stay focused on goals, and manage our emotions and motivations.
Social understanding: There is a link between inner speech and our capacity to understand others’ minds. Engaging in internal dialogue, mentally representing different perspectives, might lay the groundwork for making sense of others’ thoughts, feelings, and intentions.

Educational Implications

Vygotsky’s approach to child development is a form of social constructivism , based on the idea that cognitive functions are the products of social interactions.

Social constructivism posits that knowledge is constructed and learning occurs through social interactions within a cultural and historical context.

Vygotsky emphasized the collaborative nature of learning by constructing knowledge through social negotiation. He rejected the assumption made by Piaget that it was possible to separate learning from its social context.

Vygotsky believed everything is learned on two levels. First, through interaction with others, then integrated into the individual’s mental structure.

Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals. (Vygotsky, 1978, p.57)

Teaching styles grounded in constructivism represent a deliberate shift from traditional, didactic, memory-oriented transmission models (Cannella & Reiff, 1994) to a more student-centered approach.

Traditionally, schools have failed to foster environments where students actively participate in their own and their peers’ education. Vygotsky’s theory, however, calls for both the teacher and students to assume non-traditional roles as they engage in collaborative learning.

Rather than having a teacher impose their understanding onto students for future recitation, the teacher should co-create meaning with students in a manner that allows learners to take ownership (Hausfather, 1996).

For instance, a student and teacher might start a task with varying levels of expertise and understanding. As they adapt to each other’s perspective, the teacher must articulate their insights in a way that the student can comprehend, leading the student to a fuller understanding of the task or concept.

The student can then internalize the task’s operational aspect (“how to do it”) into their inner speech or private dialogue. Vygotsky referred to this reciprocal understanding and adjustment process as intersubjectivity.

Because Vygotsky asserts that cognitive change occurs within the zone of proximal development, instruction would be designed to reach a developmental level just above the student’s current developmental level.

Vygotsky proclaims, “learning which is oriented toward developmental levels that have already been reached is ineffective from the viewpoint of the child’s overall development. It does not aim for a new stage of the developmental process but rather lags behind this process” (Vygotsky, 1978).

Appropriation is necessary for cognitive development within the zone of proximal development. Individuals participating in peer collaboration or guided teacher instruction must share the same focus to access the zone of proximal development.

“Joint attention and shared problem solving is needed to create a process of cognitive, social, and emotional interchange” (Hausfather,1996).

Furthermore, it is essential that the partners be on different developmental levels and the higher-level partner be aware of the lower’s level. If this does not occur or one partner dominates, the interaction is less successful (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather, 1996).

Vygotsky’s theories also feed into the current interest in collaborative learning, suggesting that group members should have different levels of ability so more advanced peers can help less advanced members operate within their ZPD.

Scaffolding and reciprocal teaching are effective strategies to access the zone of proximal development.

Reciprocal Teaching

A contemporary educational application of Vygotsky’s theory is “reciprocal teaching,” used to improve students” ability to learn from text.

In this method, teachers and students collaborate in learning and practicing four key skills: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher’s role in the process is reduced over time.

Reciprocal teaching allows for the creation of a dialogue between students and teachers. This two-way communication becomes an instructional strategy by encouraging students to go beyond answering questions and engage in the discourse (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather, 1996).

A study conducted by Brown and Palincsar (1989) demonstrated the Vygotskian approach with reciprocal teaching methods in their successful program to teach reading strategies.

The teacher and students alternated turns leading small group discussions on a reading. After modeling four reading strategies, students began to assume the teaching role.

The results showed significant gains over other instructional strategies (Driscoll, 1994; Hausfather,1996).

Cognitively guided instruction is another strategy to implement Vygotsky’s theory. This strategy involves the teacher and students exploring math problems and then sharing their problem-solving strategies in an open dialogue (Hausfather,1996).

Based on Vygotsky’s theory, the physical classroom would provide clustered desks or tables and workspace for peer instruction, collaboration, and small-group instruction. Learning becomes a reciprocal experience for the students and teacher.

Like the environment, the instructional design of the material to be learned would be structured to promote and encourage student interaction and collaboration. Thus the classroom becomes a community of learning.

Also, Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development on learners is relevant to instructional concepts such as “scaffolding” and “apprenticeship,” in which a teacher or more advanced peer helps to structure or arrange a task so that a novice can work on it successfully.

A teacher’s role is to identify each individual’s current level of development and provide them with opportunities to cross their ZPD.

A crucial element in this process is the use of what later became known as scaffolding; the way in which the teacher provides students with frameworks and experiences which encourage them to extend their existing schemata and incorporate new skills, competencies, and understandings.

Scaffolding describes the conditions that support the child’s learning, to move from what they already know to new knowledge and abilities.

Scaffolding requires the teacher to allow students to extend their current skills and knowledge.

During scaffolding, the support offered by an adult (or more knowledgeable other) gradually decreases as the child becomes more skilled in the task.

As the adult withdraws their help, the child assumes more of the strategic planning and eventually gains competence to master similar problems without a teacher’s aid or a more knowledgeable peer.

It is important to note that this is more than simply instruction; learning experiences must be presented in such a way as to actively challenge existing mental structures and provide frameworks for learning.

Five ways in which an adult can “scaffold” a child’s learning:

Engaging the child’s interest
Maintaining the child’s interest in the task e.g., avoiding distraction and providing clear instructions on how to start the task.
Keeping the child’s frustration under control e.g., by supportive interactions, adapting instructions according to where the child is struggling.
Emphasizing the important features of the task
Demonstrating the task: showing the child how to do the task in simple, clear steps.

As the child progresses through the ZPD, the necessary scaffolding level declines from 5 to 1.

The teacher must engage students’ interests, simplify tasks to be manageable, and motivate students to pursue the instructional goal.

In addition, the teacher must look for discrepancies between students” efforts and the solution, control for frustration and risk, and model an idealized version of the act (Hausfather, 1996).

Challenges to Traditional Teaching Methods

Vygotsky’s social development theory challenges traditional teaching methods. Historically, schools have been organized around recitation teaching.

The teacher disseminates knowledge to be memorized by the students, who in turn recite the information to the teacher (Hausfather,1996).

However, the studies described above offer empirical evidence that learning based on the social development theory facilitates cognitive development over other instructional strategies.

The structure of our schools does not reflect the rapid changes our society is experiencing. The introduction and integration of computer technology in society has tremendously increased the opportunities for social interaction.

Therefore, the social context for learning is transforming as well. Whereas collaboration and peer instruction were once only possible in shared physical space, learning relationships can now be formed from distances through cyberspace.

Computer technology is a cultural tool that students can use to meditate and internalize their learning. Recent research suggests changing the learning contexts with technology is a powerful learning activity (Crawford, 1996).

If schools continue to resist structural change, students will be ill-prepared for the world they will live.

Critical Evaluation

Vygotsky’s work has not received the same level of intense scrutiny that Piaget’s has, partly due to the time-consuming process of translating Vygotsky’s work from Russian.

Also, Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective does not provide as many specific hypotheses to test as Piaget’s theory, making refutation difficult.

Risk of Overemphasizing Environmental Influence

Vygotsky overemphasized socio-cultural factors at the expense of biological influences on cognitive development.

Vygotsky prioritized the role of cultural tools and social interaction in shaping mental processes, but paid insufficient attention to innate cognitive abilities and developmental processes that unfold more independently of social influence.

This imbalance in focus potentially led Vygotsky to underestimate the impact of elementary mental functions (arising from the natural line) on the development of higher mental functions (shaped by cultural tools).

Vygotsky’s theory cannot explain why cross-cultural studies show that the stages of development (except the formal operational stage ) occur in the same order in all cultures suggesting that cognitive development is a product of a biological process of maturation.

Lack of Attention to Emotional Development

The theory is criticized for focusing primarily on cognitive development while neglecting the emotional and social-emotional aspects of development.

Modern developmental psychology recognizes that cognitive and emotional development are deeply intertwined. Critics argue that Vygotsky’s theory doesn’t adequately address how emotions influence cognitive processes and vice versa.

While Vygotsky emphasized the social nature of learning, he didn’t extensively explore how children develop emotional intelligence or learn to regulate their emotions through social interactions.
The concept of ZPD focuses on cognitive tasks, but critics argue it should also consider emotional challenges and how supportive relationships help children develop emotional competencies.
The process of internalization in Vygotsky’s theory focuses on cognitive processes, but critics argue it should also consider how children internalize emotional coping strategies and understanding.

Vague Explanation of Internalization

People take in (internalize) dialogues and guidance they’ve received from others who are more knowledgeable. This internalized information is then used to guide their own actions and thinking.

While Vygotsky considered internalization a cornerstone of his theory, he did not fully articulate the specific mechanisms by which this process occurs.

This concept is important because it describes how social interactions and cultural contexts contribute to individual cognitive development.

The idea is that higher mental functions first exist in the social realm (between people) before becoming internalized and part of an individual’s cognitive processes.

Eurocentric Bias

Vygotsky saw cultural development like a ladder, with European culture at the top. This view implies some cultures are “better” than others.

Vygotsky’s tendency to view cultural development as a linear hierarchy (often positioning European culture at the apex) can lead to:

An oversimplification of cultural differences
An underappreciation of the unique strengths and values of diverse cultural perspectives

A more nuanced approach, recognizing the heterogeneity of cultural tools and the situated nature of cognitive development, would better reflect the complexity of cultural influences on human thought and behavior.

Collaborative ZPD

Collaborative ZPD challenges traditional interpretations of ZPD that focus on the asymmetry between a more knowledgeable individual and a less knowledgeable learner.

Instead, a collaborative ZPD emphasizes the symmetrical nature of learning within peer interactions, where knowledge is co-constructed through mutual contributions and challenges, even among individuals with comparable expertise.

Collaborative ZPD represents a shift from viewing learning as an individual endeavor to recognizing it as a social practice (Tudge, 1992).

The most significant aspect of the ZPD is not the individual benefits gained by participants but the emergence of “a new form of collective consciousness,” highlighting how the interaction creates something new that transcends the contributions of any single individual.

Teachers need to go beyond simply placing students in groups and instead create conditions that foster genuine collaboration, characterized by:

Transactive discussion, where students clarify, elaborate, justify, and critique their own and each other’s reasoning.
Opportunities for students to challenge each other’s thinking, prompting metacognitive awareness and deeper engagement with the content.

Vygotsky vs. Piaget

Unlike Piaget’s notion that children’s cognitive development must necessarily precede their learning, Vygotsky argued, “learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human psychological function” (1978, p. 90).

In other words, social learning precedes (i.e., come before) development.

Differences betwee Vygotsky and Piaget In Psychology

Vygotsky’s theory differs from that of Piaget in several important ways:

Vygotsky places more emphasis on how culture affects cognitive development.

Unlike Piaget, who emphasized universal cognitive change (i.e., all children would go through the same sequence of cognitive development regardless of their cultural experiences), Vygotsky leads us to expect variable development depending on cultural diversity.

This contradicts Piaget’s view of universal stages of development (Vygotsky does not refer to stages like Piaget does).

Hence, Vygotsky assumes cognitive development varies across cultures, whereas Piaget states cognitive development is mostly universal across cultures.

Vygotsky places considerably more emphasis on social factors contributing to cognitive development.

Vygotsky states the importance of cultural and social context for learning. Cognitive development stems from social interactions from guided learning within the zone of proximal development as children and their partners co-construct knowledge. In contrast, Piaget maintains that cognitive development stems largely from independent explorations in which children construct knowledge.

The importance of scaffolding and language may differ for all cultures. Rogoff (1990) emphasizes the importance of observation and practice in pre-industrial societies (e.g., learning to use a canoe among Micronesian Islanders).

Vygotsky places more (and different) emphasis on the role of language in cognitive development.

According to Piaget , language depends on thought for its development (i.e., thought comes before language). For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three years of age, producing verbal thought (inner speech).

In Piaget’s theory, egocentric (or private) speech gradually disappears as children develop truly social speech, in which they monitor and adapt what they say to others.

Vygotsky disagreed with this view, arguing that as language helps children to think about and control their behavior, it is an important foundation for complex cognitive skills.

As children age, this self-directed speech becomes silent (or private) speech, referring to the inner dialogues we have with ourselves as we plan and carry out activities.

For Vygotsky, cognitive development results from an internalization of language.

According to Vygotsky, adults are an important source of cognitive development.

Adults transmit their culture’s tools of intellectual adaptation that children internalize.

In contrast, Piaget emphasizes the importance of peers, as peer interaction promotes social perspective-taking.

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Winsler, A., Abar, B., Feder, M. A., Schunn, C. D., & Rubio, D. A. (2007). Private speech and executive functioning among high-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37 , 1617-1635.

Wood, D., Bruner, J., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Child Psychiatry , 17, 89−100.

How is Vygotsky’s theory applied in teaching and learning?

Vygotsky’s theory has profound implications for classroom learning. Teachers guide, support, and encourage children, yet also help them to develop problem-solving strategies that can be generalized to other situations.

Children learn best not when they are isolated, but when they interact with others, particularly more knowledgeable others who can provide the guidance and encouragement to master new skills.

What was Vygotsky’s best know concept?

Lev Vygotsky was a seminal Russian psychologist best known for his sociocultural theory. He constructed the idea of a zone of proximal development , which are those tasks which are too difficult for a child to solve alone but s/he can accomplish with the help of adults or more skilled peers.

Vygotsky has developed a sociocultural approach to cognitive development. He developed his theories at around the same time as Jean Piaget was starting to develop his ideas (1920’s and 30″s), but he died at the age of 38, and so his theories are incomplete – although some of his writings are still being translated from Russian.

Like Piaget, Vygotsky could be described as a constructivist , in that he was interested in knowledge acquisition as a cumulative event – with new experiences and understandings incorporated into existing cognitive frameworks.

However, while Piaget’s theory is structural (arguing that physiological stages govern development), Vygotsky denies the existence of any guiding framework independent of culture and context.

No single principle (such as Piaget’s equilibration) can account for development. Individual development cannot be understood without reference to the social and cultural context within which it is embedded. Higher mental processes in the individual have their origin in social processes.

What is Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory?

Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory is often referred to as the Sociocultural Theory.

Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory posits that social interaction is fundamental to cognitive development. Vygotsky emphasized the influence of cultural and social contexts on learning, claiming that knowledge is constructed through social collaboration.

His most known concept, the Zone of Proximal Development, refers to the difference between what a learner can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance.

Piaget’s Stages: 4 Stages of Cognitive Development & Theory

You’re trying to explain something to a child, and even though it seems so obvious to you, the child just doesn’t seem to understand.

They repeat the same mistake, over and over, and you become increasingly frustrated.

Well, guess what?

The child is not naughty.
They’re also not stupid.
But their lack of understanding is not your fault either.

Their cognitive development limits their ability to understand certain concepts. Specifically, they’re not capable right now of understanding what you’re trying to explain.

In this post, we’ll learn more about Jean Piaget, a famous psychologist whose ideas about cognitive development in children were extremely influential. We’ll cover quite a lot in this post, so make sure you have a cup of coffee and you’re sitting somewhere comfortable.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free . These science-based exercises explore fundamental aspects of positive psychology, including strengths, values, and self-compassion, and will give you the tools to enhance the wellbeing of your clients, students, or employees.

This Article Contains:

Who was jean piaget in psychology, piaget’s cognitive development theory, 1. the sensorimotor stage, 2. the preoperational stage, 3. the concrete operational stage, 4. the formal operational stage, piaget’s theory vs erikson’s, 5 important concepts in piaget’s work, applications in education (+3 classroom games), positivepsychology.com’s relevant resources, a take-home message.

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who contributed greatly to the understanding of children’s cognitive development (Papalia & Feldman, 2011; Waite-Stupiansky, 2017).

He was born in 1896 and originally trained as a biologist and philosopher. Although he is well known for his work as a psychologist, he also published research on sparrows and mollusks (Burman, 2012; Papalia & Feldman, 2011; Waite-Stupiansky, 2017).

Piaget’s contribution to psychology was mainly through his observations of children’s cognitive development (Papalia & Feldman, 2011). Early in his career, Piaget scored the IQ tests that Alfred Binet administered to children.

Piaget noticed that children of certain ages tended to give the same types of incorrect answers. From these observations and follow-up interviews with children about these mistakes, he developed a theory of how children’s cognitive processes developed (Waite-Stupiansky, 2017).

One of the most important implications of his work is that children are not born with the same cognitive processes as adults (Papalia & Feldman, 2011). Instead, children’s cognitive processes:

develop over time,
develop in response to their environment, and
are updated with exposure to new information.

Piaget also influenced psychology in other ways. For example, he emphasized other methods of conducting research, such as the clinical method (Papalia & Feldman, 2011; Waite-Stupiansky, 2017). He relied upon the following research methods:

Naturalistic observation of play and conversation between children (including his own)
Interviewing children

Additionally, he was the first psychologist to study ‘theory of mind’ in children (Papalia & Feldman, 2011). Theory of mind is the understanding or basic sense that each of us has our own consciousness and thoughts.

Specifically, he posited that as children’s thinking develops from one stage to the next, their behavior also changes, reflecting these cognitive developments.

The stages in his theory follow a specific order, and each subsequent stage only occurs after the one before it.

These stages are:

Sensorimotor stage (0–2 years old)
Preoperational stage (2–7 years old)
Concrete operational stage (7–11 years old)
Formal operational stage (11 years old through adulthood)

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The sensorimotor stage is the first phase of children’s cognitive development. During this stage, children primarily learn about their environment through their senses and motor activities.

The sensorimotor stage comprises six substages, where children’s behavior moves from being reflex driven to more abstract. Each substage is described briefly.

1. Use of reflexes (0–2 months)

During this stage, children typically use their reflexes. They cannot consolidate information from their sensory organs into a single, unified concept.

2. Primary circular reactions (1–4 months)

Children start to consolidate information from different sensory organs. They start to engage in behavior that satisfies the way their body feels or their needs. For example, they repeat pleasurable behaviors, and they adapt their behavior to feed from different objects. They turn to respond to sounds and sights in their environment.

3. Secondary circular reactions (4–8 months)

Children’s behaviors become more intentional, and the types of behaviors that they repeat expand to include those that result in interesting responses external to their body. For example, they might push buttons on a toy. Children also start to take more interest in their environment. They repeat behaviors that generate interesting responses.

4. Coordination of secondary schemes (8–12 months)

At this point, children’s behaviors become more goal oriented, and they can combine different behaviors to achieve goals.

5. Tertiary circular reactions (12–18 months)

Instead of performing the same actions, children try new behaviors and actions to achieve different results. These behaviors are not spontaneous or by accident, but are purposeful. Unlike primary and secondary reactions, children can combine more complicated behaviors and even perform a behavior similarly but not the same to get the desired result.

6. Mental combinations (18–24 months)

Children start to rely on mental abstractions to solve problems, use gestures and words to communicate, and can pretend. Instead of relying on numerous attempts to solve problems/puzzles, children can deliberate and carefully choose their actions.

At the age of two, children enter the preoperational stage, where their ability to use mental representations, rather than the physical appearance of objects or people, improves greatly.

Examples of abstract representations include engaging in pretend play and talking about events that happened in the past or people who are not currently in the room.

Other interesting cognitive advances occur during this phase. For example, children understand causality. Children also understand identities, where items and people remain the same even if they look different. For example, at some point during this stage, a caregiver dressing up as Santa Claus might not be as convincing.

In this stage, children also learn more about categorization. They can classify items based on similarities or differences. They also start to understand numbers and quantity (e.g., concepts such as ‘more’ or ‘bigger’).

Although abstract thought advances quickly in the preoperational stage, other cognitive processes develop more slowly.

For example:

Children tend to consider their own viewpoint and perspective.
Children fail to understand that two things can be the same, even if they appear different (more about this in the next section on Conservation).
Children struggle to take someone else’s point of view.

The next phase is the concrete operational stage, which begins around the age of seven. During this stage, children are more capable of solving problems because they can consider numerous outcomes and perspectives. All of their cognitive abilities are better developed in this stage.

Categorization abilities improve so that children can arrange items along a dimension, understand that categories have subcategories, and relate two objects to each other through a third object.
Their numerical abilities improve a lot, and they can perform more complicated mathematical operations.
Their spatial abilities are better. They are better at estimating time and distance. They can read maps and describe how to navigate from one location to another.

Conservation

During this stage, children understand the concept of conservation better and, as a result, are better at solving conservation problems. Conservation refers to the idea that things can be the same, even if they look different.

An example would be a cup of water poured into two glasses. One glass is tall and thin, while the other is short and wide. Recognizing that both glasses contain the same amount of water shows an understanding of conservation.

Children in the preoperational stage struggle with problems of conservation. For example, they struggle with tasks where the following is conserved even it appears different:

Number of items (e.g., two sets of 10 items arranged differently)
The volume of liquid (e.g., the same volume of liquid in two differently shaped glasses)

Children struggle with conservation because they can only focus on one dimension at a time; this is known as centering. For example, with the volume of liquid, they can only consider the shape of the glass, but not the shape of the glass and the volume of water.

They also do not yet understand reversibility. Irreversibility refers to a child’s inability to reverse the steps of an action in their mind, returning an object to its previous state. For example, pouring the water out of the glass back into the original cup would demonstrate the volume of the water, but children in the preoperational stage cannot understand this.

In contrast, children in the concrete operational stage can solve conservation problems. This is because children now have the following cognitive abilities:

They understand reversibility (i.e., items can be returned to original states).
They can decenter (i.e., concentrate on multiple dimensions of items, rather than just one).
They better understand identity (i.e., an item remains the same even if it looks different).

Abstract thought characterizes this stage. Children can think about abstract concepts and are not limited to a current time, person, or situation.

They can think about hypothetical situations and various possibilities, like situations that don’t exist yet, may never exist, or might be unrealistic and fantastical.

During this stage, children are capable of hypothetical-deductive reasoning, which allows them to test hypotheses and draw conclusions from the results. Unlike younger children who haphazardly approach problems, children in the formal operational stage can apply their reasoning skills to apply more complicated problems in a systematic, logical manner.

problem solving in cognitive development

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Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is one of several theories about how children develop. Other contrasting theories include Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, and importantly for this post, Erikson’s psychosocial theory of development.

Differences

Unlike Piaget, who focused on cognitive development, Erikson emphasized healthy ego development (Papalia & Feldman, 2011). Healthy egos are developed when people resolve specific personality issues at set periods in their lives.

Specifically, each developmental stage is characterized by two conflicting personality traits, one positive and one negative. Successful resolution occurs when the positive trait is more emphasized than the other, resulting in the development of a virtue, which aids healthy resolution of subsequent stages.

As an example, between 12 and 18 months, children experience two feelings: trust and mistrust. If they resolve this crisis by balancing a healthy level of trust with mistrust, then they develop the virtue of ‘hope.’

Overall, Erikson proposed eight personality crises, five of which occur before the age of 18:

Basic trust versus mistrust ( 0–12/18 months)
Autonomy versus shame and doubt (12/18 months–3 years)
Initiative versus guilt (3–6 years)
Industry versus inferiority (6 years–puberty)
Identity versus identity confusion (puberty–young adulthood)

Not all of the developmental stages in Erikson’s theory correspond to the cognitive stages proposed by Piaget. For example, Piaget’s preoperational stages overlap with the second and third stages in Erikson’s theories.

Similarities

Like Piaget, Erikson also emphasized that children’s development occurs through interacting with the external environment, but Erikson’s stages focus more on societal influences. Both Piaget and Erikson emphasized that children are active participants in their world and that development occurs in stages.

Schemas and constructivism

Piaget argued that children learn about the world by interacting with it. This notion of gaining knowledge about the world is known as constructivism (Waite-Stupiansky, 2017).

Through their interactions, children construct schemas – or cognitive patterns – about how the world works (Waite-Stupiansky, 2017). These schemas come about through organization, which is how categories are formed, organizing items together based on common characteristics.

According to Piaget schemas can then be repeated and tested. For example, an infant has a schema about a rattle: shake it, and it makes a noise.

Importantly, schemas are not static, and they can be improved and updated with new information. When children learn new information, they do not disregard their previous schemas; instead, they build upon them. As a result, children’s cognitive development happens in stages as schemas are continuously updated with new information.

Adaptation describes how children update their current cognitive organizations and schemas with new information. Adaptation takes place in two ways: assimilation and accommodation.

Assimilation

Assimilation describes how children incorporate new information into existing schemas. For example, a child refers to dogs as ‘woofs.’ When they see a cat for the first time, they refer to the cat as a ‘woof’ too.

Accommodation

Accommodation describes how children adapt their cognitive structures to match new information in the world. Continuing with the previous example, the child realizes that dogs and cats are different. The child updates their cognitive schema of the world, and now refers to cats as ‘cats’ and dogs as ‘woofs’.

Equilibrium

Piaget’s background as a biologist influenced some of his work, notably the concept of ‘equilibrium,’ which resembles homeostasis (Waite-Stupiansky, 2017). He posited that children’s cognitive processes are aimed toward equilibrium. When children learn new information that is at odds with their current schemas, they are in an undesirable state of disequilibrium.

To achieve equilibrium, children adapt their mental instructions by:

Assimilating new information
Accommodating new information by updating their cognitive schemas

By achieving equilibrium, children learn new information.

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

One premise of constructivism is that knowledge about the world is gained and made sense of through active participation. In other words, children are not passive recipients of knowledge. They’re not empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge. Instead, children’s knowledge is generated when they interact with the world (Yilmaz, 2008).

Some of the education implications of this concept are that children cannot be expected to ‘just sit down and learn’ and that teaching methods that emphasize passive learning are discouraged.

An example of passive learning is reading a text without engaging with it, debating with it, or trying to connect it to real life. Instead, teaching rooted in Piaget’s theories emphasizes that children learn by interacting. Here are some examples:

Physical interaction (e.g., seeing and touching insects when learning about them)
Verbal interaction (e.g., talking about how new learning material connects to everyday experiences)
Abstract interaction (e.g., thinking about new ideas, wrestling with difficult or challenging topics, imitating or acting out concepts/ideas/people)

Play theory

Piaget (1951) argued that play is vital for children’s learning. Play is an example of assimilation, and imitation is an example of accommodation.

He argued that there are three types of games that children can play based on their cognitive development:

Practice games
Symbolic games
Games with rules

Practice games include the repetition of a particular set of actions for pure enjoyment. Although it might not seem like much, these practice games are very important for cognitive development.

Symbolic games involve make-believe scenarios and characters, and appear during the preoperational stage.

Rule-based games appear later during the concrete operational stage. As well as abstract elements, these games also include rules and consequences for violating them.

Classroom games

It’s important to tailor classroom games to match the overall development stage of the children.

For very young children in the sensorimotor stage, classroom games that rely on repetition and interesting results are best. In these games, the child repeatedly demonstrates a new skill or behavior that they have learned, reinforcing the behavior . Examples include splashing water, kicking leaves, shaking a rattle or toys, and playing with music instruments.

For children in the preoperational stage, classroom games that involve imitation are useful ways to teach new concepts. For example, children can learn about animals by pretending to be different animals (e.g., ‘roar like a lion,’ ‘jump like a frog’).

Children can also learn about social skills and social interactions by acting out certain social situations, like pretending to be a shopkeeper. Symbolic games are also used when children pretend one item is something else; for example, pretending that a stick is a lightsaber.

Rule-based games are more suitable for older children. These games can teach concepts like theory of mind, because they encourage decentering (DeVries & Kamii, 1975).

For example, in ‘Simon Says,’ children learn to watch the teacher and know that if they don’t follow the teacher, they are out. Typically, young children don’t understand rule-based games and are not good at counting or numbers.

This is why, for example, very young children don’t understand that there is a penalty for one child in ‘Musical Chairs’ (DeVries & Kamii, 1975). Young children will enjoy the game if the penalty is removed and the chairs stay the same.

Other ways that games can facilitate learning is by allowing children to make up the rules (DeVries & Kamii, 1975). New toys related to the concepts that they’re learning about should be available when children engage in unstructured play without the assistance of the teacher.

For more on this, we recommend reading our article How to Promote Cognitive Development: 23 Activities & Games .

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At PositivePsychology.com, you’ll find lots of exercises, tasks, and activities that you can use in the classroom. We’ve highlighted these two as examples.

The Nice Things tool is useful in teaching children compassion. Children are encouraged to recall something ‘nice.’ It could be something nice that happened to them or something nice that they did. Children are also encouraged to share these nice things with each other and the class.

Since this task requires that children have mental/abstract representations of other people and things, it is more applicable for children in the preoperational and concrete operational stages.

In the Shuffle game, children learn how to resolve conflict. In this game, the play area is marked out with a set of items. Each child starts at one item, and an extra player is in the middle. At the start of the game, children have to move to another item.

However, if two children reach the same item simultaneously, they resolve this by playing Rock–Paper–Scissors. Since this is a rule-based game, it is best suited to children in the concrete operational stage; younger children will not understand the consequences of losing Rock–Paper–Scissors.

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Knowing that children’s learning and understanding are limited by their cognitive development, what can you do the next time you explain something?

Use simple, age-appropriate examples.
Explain concepts simply, considering the limitations of each cognitive stage.
Encourage discussion and creativity so that they create meaningful interactions and memories.

Most importantly, remember that children are not born as ‘mini-adults.’ They do not have adult cognitive abilities, and they do not have the lifetime of experiences for these abilities to develop.

Instead, to learn, they need to participate actively with their world and the people in it. They must be exposed to new experiences and information for learning to occur, and importantly, they must have the opportunities to make mistakes.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free .

Burman, J. T. (2012). Jean Piaget: Images of a life and his factory. History of Psychology , 15 (3), 283–288. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0025930
DeVries, R., & Kamii, C. (1975). Why group games? A Piagetian perspective . ERIC Clearinghouse. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED110159
Papalia, D. E., & Feldman, R. D. (2011). A child’s world: Infancy through adolescence (12th ed.). McGraw-Hill. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007YXO3MM/
Piaget, J. (1951). Play, dreams and imitation in childhood (vol. 25). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315009698
Waite-Stupiansky, S. (2017). Jean Piaget’s constructivist theory of learning. In L. E. Cohen & S. Waite-Stupiansky (Eds.), Theories of early childhood education: Developmental, behaviorist, and critical (pp. 3–17). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003288077-2/jean-piaget-constructivist-theory-learning-sandra-waite-stupiansky
Yilmaz, K. (2008). Constructivism: Its theoretical underpinnings, variations, and implications for classroom instruction. Educational Horizons , 86 (3), 161–172. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42923724

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Supporting Cognitive Development: Experiences and Activities

In this lesson, you will learn the importance of providing children with a variety of age-appropriate experiences. This lesson describes how you can engage children in activities to promote cognitive development and address the individual needs of all learners.

Identify examples of types of learning that take place across various age and ability levels.
Explore your own values and assumptions about how and what children learn.
Create experiences and activities that you can use with the children in your care.

You most likely serve a diverse group of children in your family child care home and, in turn, address a variety of needs and interests. You know that children’s cognitive development is important, so you plan your environment and daily activities to support their learning. Your understanding of what skills are typical for children of certain ages, what is interesting and appropriate for an individual child, and what is valued by families and the community affects your daily interactions with the children in your care (Bredecamp & Copple, 2009). Developmentally appropriate practice is a term used to describe educational and caregiving methods that promote each child’s optimal learning and development through a strengths-based approach to joyful, engaged learning. You can implement developmentally appropriate practice by recognizing the multiple assets all young children bring to the group as unique individuals and as members of families and communities (NAEYC, 2019). You should use this knowledge to make daily decisions about the learning experiences you offer children.

Experiences and Activities that Promote Infants’ and Toddlers’ Cognitive Development

Infants and toddlers learn best through daily interactions with warm, caring adults and play-based experiences. Play helps children develop their approaches toward learning. Memory, spatial awareness, problem solving, attention, and persistence are a few cognitive competencies developed through play. Families and caregivers can support children in becoming better learners by engaging in play with them.

It is important to remember that young children are natural explorers. They are hungry for information about the world around them. Children are learning how to learn. Adults can nurture this curiosity by promoting exploration and problem-solving. This helps young children develop thinking skills. There is a lot you can do to help young children learn. Here is a short list of ways to support infants and toddlers in your care:

Model your own thinking skills. Show interest, ask questions, and make comments about your observations as you play with children. For example, you might say, “Hmm. I really wanted to paint this part of my picture purple, but the purple paint is being used. What should I do?”
Find opportunities throughout the day to play “What if…?” games. Ask the children questions like, “I wonder what sound this drum will make if I bang on it?” or “What if we run out of snack? What should we do?”
Give children lots of chances to explore concepts. Read books and promote literacy development during individual and group activities, sing songs about the stories you read, and encourage children to imitate story characters with sounds or movements.

Consider the following ways in which young children learn important concepts through play (Guyton, 2011). You might notice that many of these examples involve learning in more than one area, or developmental domain. Developmental domains represent specific aspects of a child’s overall development (Cognitive, Motor, Language &Literacy, Social-Emotional, Physical Well-Being). It is important to keep in mind that, during play, children often learn across multiple developmental domains. You may also notice that these examples reflect everyday experiences, which offer many opportunities for learning.

When a young infant interacts with a mobile by reaching for an item or visually tracking a moving item, they are learning about the important concept of cause and effect while at the same time improving their eye-hand coordination.
When a pre-toddler interacts with books, they are engaging in early literacy, as well as learning the names of objects or characters on book pages.
When a toddler uses a puppet to tell a story or act out happenings in the story they are learning to use their imagination, abstract thinking, and language.

A care giver engages with a toddler with toys practicing cause and effect and joint attention

Experiences and Activities that Promote Preschool-Age Children’s Cognitive Development

As children move into the ages of 3 to 5 years, their knowledge and skills continue to develop each day. Observing the children you care for helps you learn about their unique interests and strengths. You can use your knowledge of child development and your observations about the individual children in your care to plan developmentally appropriate activities to promote cognitive development.

Much of preschoolers’ learning occurs through their interaction and their experiences with materials and the environment. Preschool children’s cognitive learning falls into several categories or content areas including: math, science, social studies, language and literacy, art, and technology. You can support children’s learning across these content areas. Here are a few examples of ways children might learn important concepts:

Math: A preschool child notices what comes next in a pattern. A child notices that his friend has a different number (size) on his shoe.
Science: A child uses her senses to explore a new food offered at lunch. Another child shares information about her pet and what food her pet likes to eat.
Social studies: A child brings his baby pictures and takes on family roles in the dramatic play area. Children draw a map of the buildings they passed on a walk to the park.
Language and literacy: A child sings rhyming songs and claps the syllables in words. A child spends time after nap relaxing and looking at pictures in books.
Art: A child creates a three-dimensional sculpture of the bird house he sees in your backyard. Another child dances to music and pats a rhythm on a toy drum.
Technology: A child uses a computer to create a message and artwork for his mother.

You may notice that many of the above examples involve learning in more than one area. It’s important to keep in mind that, during play, children often learn across multiple domains. For example, when a child types a message to his mother on the computer, he is learning about technology and literacy. When a child claps along to a rhyming song, she may be learning literacy, math, and music. Everyday experiences offer preschool children many opportunities for learning. Some examples of ways you can support preschooler’s cognitive development in your family child care include:

Taking clipboards and markers outside to observe, draw and write about nature
Planting seeds, discussing what they need to grow and observing how they change as they grow
Exploring prisms and transparent objects on a light table
Rolling cars or balls down ramps of different inclines to see how far they travel
Mixing different colors of paints to create new colors
Creating a graph of children’s favorite colors, season, food, or sports as a group
Using measuring cups and funnels to fill containers with sand in the sensory table
Exploring parts of a flower with magnifying glasses
Setting up dramatic play so that children can pretend to cook, be doctors, make grocery lists, or take care of baby dolls
Sorting plastic animals by different characteristics (size, shape, color)
Listening and acting out stories like “The Three Little Pigs”
Creating patterns by using colored blocks and pattern pictures
Drawing maps or driving toy cars along maps or roads
Creating classroom rules together as a group
Sorting objects into groups, counting how many are in each group or identifying which group has less or more

Preschoolers are naturally curious and eager to explore. As a family child care provider you can nurture their curiosity and promote thinking skills. Observe the children in your care, note what they are interested in and provide opportunities for exploration. You can use everyday materials and objects to help children learn about their world. Here are just a few examples of ways you can support preschool children’s learning:

Model your own thinking and ask children to generate ideas. “I wonder how I can attach this hook on the wall. What are some ideas you have for attaching it?”
Find opportunities to use language to facilitate children’s mathematical thinking. “I have four bananas, but we have six children to eat a snack. I wonder how we can make sure everyone has a part of a banana.”
Give children many opportunities to explore concepts. Play games during transition to outdoors by asking children to get their coats based on some characteristics: “Everyone who is wearing a blue shirt can get their coat.”
Encourage children to use self-control and acknowledge when they do. Say things like, “I know you were working really hard on that structure. It is hard to stop, but your mom is here. How about we put a sign on your structure and save it for tomorrow?”

A care giver uses cards with images and letters to practice spelling and literacy

Experiences and Activities that Promote School-Age Children’s Cognitive Development

Caring for school-age children in your family child care setting means offering experiences and activities that they enjoy. Again, observing the children and watching what their interests are can help with planning meaningful activities for school-age children. At this age, children may be learning to read, write, do math problems, search the internet for research reports, and conduct simple science experiments. Talking with children about what they are learning in school may help you collect interesting books, materials, games, and software that appeal to children. Here are a few examples of ways school-age children might learn important concepts:

Reading & Writing

Reading and writing opportunities help school-age children and youth to develop the skills and knowledge to effectively communicate information, ideas, and opinions to a variety of audiences. Learning to write, like reading, is a lifelong process. Research has shown that when students receive writing instruction, their reading fluency and comprehension improve. You can support school-age children’s reading and writing skills by offering the following opportunities in your family child care home:

Partner reading: School-age children are learning to communicate with others through reading and writing. Supporting reading and writing in your family child care home may include asking school-age children to read aloud to a friend or to one of the younger children. Partner reading not only helps readers build their ability to read smoothly (i.e., fluency), but it encourages children to work together (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborne, 2001).
Reader’s theater: Acting out a story gives children the opportunity to work together to bring a book to life. Children at play naturally create characters, scenes, and stories. Dramatic play experiences encourage emotional growth, motivation, and engagement (Prescott, 2020). Reader’s theater is a form of dramatic play that effectively builds reading fluency by encouraging listening and speaking skills and boosting comprehension.
Book discussions or literature circle: Literature circles help children and youth think and talk about the books they have read with other peers. Children can build a sense of community, deepen their understanding of books, and learn speaking and listening skills through these conversations.
Creative writing activities: Younger children benefit from daily writing experiences, so embedding writing in the daily curriculum, such as having students write about their day, is helpful. Older children might benefit from writing-focused activities such as writing poems, writing letters to pen pals, writing autobiographies, writing songs, writing and acting out plays, and writing book reports on a topic of interest. Provide paper of different colors, sizes, and textures. Read poems and have children write their own poems, stories, and books, and illustrate them with photos (drawn and digital).
Author’s chair: Children take turns reading books they have written to their friends. You can designate a special chair and make this a weekly activity.

Mathematics

You can help school-age children become confident and successful mathematicians by planning math activities in your family child care setting. Here are just a few examples:

Make math visual and hands-on . Many school-age children have difficulties picturing numbers and calculations in their minds. Active, hands-on learning opportunities provide students ways to visualize math concepts. For young children, addition and subtraction problems can be simplified by counting actual objects. Children can practice geometry by using toothpicks and marshmallows, for example, to create different types of shapes and angles. Older children can practice mathematical concepts by designing towers using building blocks or Legos and measuring them with tape measures, yardsticks, or rulers.
Create engaging opportunities for learning . If an activity relates to children’s lives, interest, or hobbies, then their level of participation and effort will increase. Sports, board games, card games, and videos can incorporate aspects of math. One example is for children to take a poll, asking the other children and their family members their favorite animal or food item. Then, children can create a graph to show the results of their poll.
“I'm noticing a pattern here, what patterns do you see?“
“How did you figure that out?”
“How did you solve this problem?”
“What would happen if ...?”
“Tell me more about this.”

Science and Exploration

Children are natural explorers who use all of their senses to investigate their surroundings. The enthusiasm and energy that children bring to new experiences provides a wealth of opportunities for learning. Opportunities for exploration and problem solving are tied with the physical world, the life sciences, earth and the environment. A fallen bird’s nest, the illumination of lightning bugs, the presence of pollution and litter are just a few examples of topics that can be used for deeper exploration. Growing plants, collecting rocks, finding insects, or creating a book about different birds seen in the neighborhood are all ways to engage children in science. Activities such as a walk to the park or a trip to the public library can help children make and document new discoveries.

A care giver conducts a science project with children using water specimen tubes outdoors

Social Studies

You can make social studies come alive by creating opportunities for experiential learning. Experiential learning simply means to learn by doing. Experiential learning is a successful teaching strategy that enables children to learn and retain information through experiences tied to their learning. When engaged in experiential learning, children draw on all their senses. They read and listen to information to develop background knowledge. Children can see items or visuals related to a particular topic. They can take on roles to experience the topic they are learning about (Diem, 2004).

Many social studies topics can be taught through experiential learning. For example, children studying a particular culture can perform tasks that individuals from that culture may typically perform (e.g., trading goods and services; designing transportation for a country; creating a mock election). The children can work together and with you to design engaging and meaningful learning around social studies.

Addressing the Needs of Diverse Learners and Families

All children need a strong developmentally appropriate curriculum, supportive environment, and nurturing relationships. As a family child care provider, you will need to plan experiences and activities that address the varying developmental needs of the children you serve. Some children you care for will thrive even without much support from you while other children will need your help more frequently. It is critical that you work with each child’s family to learn more about their child’s learning and development and what supports have been most successful. Some children have specific learning needs and require individualized strategies to help them be successful in your child care home. Include an item asking about this on any paperwork you create as a “Getting to Know Your Child” form in your parent handbook. You will want to know about any special activities or equipment, specialists or programs that provide individualized strategies or services, and how your environment and daily activities can support the child’s optimal development.

Infants and toddlers (birth to three years) with disabilities may have an Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) that was written with the child’s parents and specialized therapists. Ask parents to share ideas and specific strategies about how you can best meet their child’s learning needs. Parents are the experts about their child. The more you know and understand each individual child’s developmental needs the better care you can support them.

Children (three years and older) may have an Individualized Education Program (IEP) written with the child’s parents, teachers, and therapists. Ask the parents to share any information from their child’s IEP that will assist you in caring for the child. IEP’s may have specific strategies for learning new vocabulary, eliciting language, responding to questions, and following directions. When you can accommodate individual learning needs, you support the individual child as well as the other children in your care. Specialized learning strategies often are helpful not only for the child with special needs but for all the children in your family child care home.

Children who speak another language and are learning English are often called English language learners (ELLs) or dual language learners (DLLs). It might be hard for some children who are learning English to easily participate in all the activities in child care. The children learning English may be at different stages of acquiring their home language and English. Some children may hear quite a bit of English in their home, while others may hear none. This means some children may need more help than others. You can help children who are learning English by (a) including activities that are culturally meaningful to them, (b) giving them special supports, and (c) making children feel included in all activities. Helping all children is characterized by flexibility and a variety of changes. By making adaptations to the materials and/or the environment, or by adjusting your expectations of an activity, all children can feel successful and included.

Changes to Curricula

The curriculum should support the development and well-being of all children in a group to foster learning. While children may have diverse learning needs, the skills, and concepts they are learning through the curriculum may be similar.

Think about whether your experiences and activities include the right kind of goals and instruction for children. If not, you can make some changes to how information is presented. For example, some children who have difficulty with reading comprehension may need to have an abridged version of a book while other children can read the book in its entirety. Children with weak vocabulary skills might benefit from vocabulary instruction before reading a new book. School-age children can use a concept map where they write the vocabulary word, write the definition, identify an example and non-example, and draw a picture of the vocabulary word.

An example of a wordmap with the word its definition several examples and a non-example

Changes to the Environment

You may have to make some changes to your family child care environment to meet the needs of all children. A school-age child may prefer reading while sitting on an exercise ball. Some children may prefer a self-monitoring chart (a list that children use to help know they are staying on task). Some children enjoy quiet classical music playing to help them stay focused on a game. In family child care, the mixed ages of children are an advantage when looking at the overall environment. Some school-age children with disabilities may enjoy playing in areas of your home child care that are designed for the younger children (e.g., an 8-year-old takes the role of the cashier in a pretend grocery store area). You may have to rethink the environment so that an older child can participate in more age-appropriate ways (e.g., make signs for the pretend store or count the play money so each preschooler has an equal amount). It is important to keep the environment age-appropriate and challenging for all the children in your care. You can do this by talking with parents about a child’s specific special needs and interests. Then, intentionally use the child’s interests to engage the child in planned activities.

Changes During Activities

Children with disabilities might find some activities very challenging. For example, a school-age child who is learning how to add numbers may have difficulty quickly adding up the points when playing a board game with other children. You can make the activity easier by providing this child with a basic calculator. You can decrease the use of a calculator as the child becomes faster at adding numbers on paper. The help and concrete support that you offer the child will change over time as they become more skilled. Making modifications to activities and offering individualized support allows all children to participate successfully in activities. As a family child care provider, it is your job to support all children. You should know the strengths and needs of all children in your care to ensure that each child gets what they need when they need it.

Partnering with Families

Always support children’s cultures, learning styles, and temperaments as you promote interesting and meaningful learning during daily routines and activities. Maintain open communication with children’s families about your philosophy about how children learn, the importance of the learning environment and planned daily activities. Encourage families to share their own thoughts and beliefs to ensure continuity of care. Additionally, by sharing your weekly schedule of activities and ways children are learning through the experiences with each family, you are demonstrating your commitment to their child’s development.

The following video clips show caregivers supporting children’s cognitive development through various activities and interactions in their family child care setting.

Cognitive Development: Experiences & Activities

You promote learning through your interactions and careful planning of activities every day. You can support children’s cognitive development by:

Providing a variety of enriching, developmentally appropriate activities that are challenging to each age level, but still allow them to feel successful.
Presenting opportunities for toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children to engage in active, project-based learning
Offering interesting, age-appropriate play and exploration choices each day
Providing books and videos that are fiction and nonfiction, culturally sensitive, and supportive of the interests of the children in your care
Creating games and experiences that a variety of ages of children can participate in at their level of development
Developing activity or curriculum plans that incorporate learning opportunities across all content areas (math, literacy, science, social studies, technology, art, music)
Providing books, materials, toys, music, and foods that reflect the cultures of the children in your care
Allowing for voluntary participation in activities knowing that not all children enjoy the same things
Using daily observations and taking notes about the learning and development of each child you care for so you can best meet their individual needs

Each of us has different opinions, philosophies, and ideas about what and how children learn. Read and review the What Should Children Learn activity. Use these scenarios to reflect on your own point of view. Then think about how you would use your knowledge of cognitive development to respond to the adults in the scenarios. Write your responses and share them with your trainer, coach, or family child care administrator. Then compare your answers to the suggested responses. For this activity, it is helpful to consider multiple points of view when reflecting on the parents’ opinions and beliefs compared to your own.

It is important to offer learning experiences and activities that are appropriate, engaging and supportive of children’s learning and development across various developmental domains including cognitive, social-emotional, physical, language and literacy, and creative development. Providers working toward their CDA credential should use the CDA Science/Sensory Activity Plan and the CDA Mathematics Activity Plan handout to develop a science/sensory and a mathematics learning experience from your curriculum (or new activities you plan on implementing).

What Should Children Learn During the Infant, Toddler, Preschool, and School-Age Years?

Cda science/sensory activity plan, cda mathematics activity plan.

Planning developmentally appropriate activities, experiences, and materials for your family child care home is important to supporting children’s play and exploration. Use the handout Materials and Activities You Use to Support Cognitive Development to think about how you support children’s cognitive development across a variety of ages.

Also, the Extension Database of Hands-On Activities for Child Care is an excellent resource, which includes experiences you can provide to a wide age-range of children: https://childcare.extension.org/hands-on-activities-for-child-care/

Materials and Activities to Support Cognitive Development

Demonstrate.

Child Care Aware of North Dakota. (2017). https://ndchildcare.org/providers/activities.html

Child Trends. (2019). Parental Expectations Increase Kids’ Stress. https://www.childtrends.org/videos/parental-expectations-increase-kids-stress

Gestwicki, C. (2016). Developmentally Appropriate Practice: Curriculum and development in early education (6th ed.). Cengage Learning, Inc.

Graham, S., Bollinger, A., Booth Olson, C., D’Aoust, C., McArthur, C., McCutchen D., & Olinghouse, N. (2012). Teaching Elementary School Students to be Effective Writers: A practice guide (NCEE 2012-4058). National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Educational Sciences.

Gurganus, S. P. (2007). Math Instruction for Students with Learning Problems (1st ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.

Guyton, G. (2011). Using Toys to Support Infant-Toddler Learning and Development. Young Children . https://educate.bankstreet.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=faculty-staff

Harms, T., Cryer, D., & Clifford, R. (2007). Family Child Care Environment Rating Scale (rev. ed.). Teachers College Press.

National Association for the Education of Young Children (2019). NAEYC position statement on developmentally appropriate practice 2020. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/position-statements/dap

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2014). Standards and Focal Points .

Olness, R. (2005). Using Literature to Enhance Writing Instruction . Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Platas, L.M. (2017). Three for One: Supporting social, emotional, and mathematical development. Young Children, 72 (1), 33-37.

Prescott, J. (n.d.) The Power of Reader’s Theater: An easy way to make dramatic changes in kids’ fluency, writing, listening, and social skills. https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/power-readerx2019s-theater/

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Problem-Solving Strategies and Obstacles

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Application
Improvement

From deciding what to eat for dinner to considering whether it's the right time to buy a house, problem-solving is a large part of our daily lives. Learn some of the problem-solving strategies that exist and how to use them in real life, along with ways to overcome obstacles that are making it harder to resolve the issues you face.

What Is Problem-Solving?

In cognitive psychology , the term 'problem-solving' refers to the mental process that people go through to discover, analyze, and solve problems.

A problem exists when there is a goal that we want to achieve but the process by which we will achieve it is not obvious to us. Put another way, there is something that we want to occur in our life, yet we are not immediately certain how to make it happen.

Maybe you want a better relationship with your spouse or another family member but you're not sure how to improve it. Or you want to start a business but are unsure what steps to take. Problem-solving helps you figure out how to achieve these desires.

The problem-solving process involves:

Discovery of the problem
Deciding to tackle the issue
Seeking to understand the problem more fully
Researching available options or solutions
Taking action to resolve the issue

Before problem-solving can occur, it is important to first understand the exact nature of the problem itself. If your understanding of the issue is faulty, your attempts to resolve it will also be incorrect or flawed.

Problem-Solving Mental Processes

Several mental processes are at work during problem-solving. Among them are:

Perceptually recognizing the problem
Representing the problem in memory
Considering relevant information that applies to the problem
Identifying different aspects of the problem
Labeling and describing the problem

Problem-Solving Strategies

There are many ways to go about solving a problem. Some of these strategies might be used on their own, or you may decide to employ multiple approaches when working to figure out and fix a problem.

An algorithm is a step-by-step procedure that, by following certain "rules" produces a solution. Algorithms are commonly used in mathematics to solve division or multiplication problems. But they can be used in other fields as well.

In psychology, algorithms can be used to help identify individuals with a greater risk of mental health issues. For instance, research suggests that certain algorithms might help us recognize children with an elevated risk of suicide or self-harm.

One benefit of algorithms is that they guarantee an accurate answer. However, they aren't always the best approach to problem-solving, in part because detecting patterns can be incredibly time-consuming.

There are also concerns when machine learning is involved—also known as artificial intelligence (AI)—such as whether they can accurately predict human behaviors.

Heuristics are shortcut strategies that people can use to solve a problem at hand. These "rule of thumb" approaches allow you to simplify complex problems, reducing the total number of possible solutions to a more manageable set.

If you find yourself sitting in a traffic jam, for example, you may quickly consider other routes, taking one to get moving once again. When shopping for a new car, you might think back to a prior experience when negotiating got you a lower price, then employ the same tactics.

While heuristics may be helpful when facing smaller issues, major decisions shouldn't necessarily be made using a shortcut approach. Heuristics also don't guarantee an effective solution, such as when trying to drive around a traffic jam only to find yourself on an equally crowded route.

Trial and Error

A trial-and-error approach to problem-solving involves trying a number of potential solutions to a particular issue, then ruling out those that do not work. If you're not sure whether to buy a shirt in blue or green, for instance, you may try on each before deciding which one to purchase.

This can be a good strategy to use if you have a limited number of solutions available. But if there are many different choices available, narrowing down the possible options using another problem-solving technique can be helpful before attempting trial and error.

In some cases, the solution to a problem can appear as a sudden insight. You are facing an issue in a relationship or your career when, out of nowhere, the solution appears in your mind and you know exactly what to do.

Insight can occur when the problem in front of you is similar to an issue that you've dealt with in the past. Although, you may not recognize what is occurring since the underlying mental processes that lead to insight often happen outside of conscious awareness .

Research indicates that insight is most likely to occur during times when you are alone—such as when going on a walk by yourself, when you're in the shower, or when lying in bed after waking up.

How to Apply Problem-Solving Strategies in Real Life

If you're facing a problem, you can implement one or more of these strategies to find a potential solution. Here's how to use them in real life:

Create a flow chart . If you have time, you can take advantage of the algorithm approach to problem-solving by sitting down and making a flow chart of each potential solution, its consequences, and what happens next.
Recall your past experiences . When a problem needs to be solved fairly quickly, heuristics may be a better approach. Think back to when you faced a similar issue, then use your knowledge and experience to choose the best option possible.
Start trying potential solutions . If your options are limited, start trying them one by one to see which solution is best for achieving your desired goal. If a particular solution doesn't work, move on to the next.
Take some time alone . Since insight is often achieved when you're alone, carve out time to be by yourself for a while. The answer to your problem may come to you, seemingly out of the blue, if you spend some time away from others.

Obstacles to Problem-Solving

Problem-solving is not a flawless process as there are a number of obstacles that can interfere with our ability to solve a problem quickly and efficiently. These obstacles include:

Assumptions: When dealing with a problem, people can make assumptions about the constraints and obstacles that prevent certain solutions. Thus, they may not even try some potential options.
Functional fixedness : This term refers to the tendency to view problems only in their customary manner. Functional fixedness prevents people from fully seeing all of the different options that might be available to find a solution.
Irrelevant or misleading information: When trying to solve a problem, it's important to distinguish between information that is relevant to the issue and irrelevant data that can lead to faulty solutions. The more complex the problem, the easier it is to focus on misleading or irrelevant information.
Mental set: A mental set is a tendency to only use solutions that have worked in the past rather than looking for alternative ideas. A mental set can work as a heuristic, making it a useful problem-solving tool. However, mental sets can also lead to inflexibility, making it more difficult to find effective solutions.

How to Improve Your Problem-Solving Skills

In the end, if your goal is to become a better problem-solver, it's helpful to remember that this is a process. Thus, if you want to improve your problem-solving skills, following these steps can help lead you to your solution:

Recognize that a problem exists . If you are facing a problem, there are generally signs. For instance, if you have a mental illness , you may experience excessive fear or sadness, mood changes, and changes in sleeping or eating habits. Recognizing these signs can help you realize that an issue exists.
Decide to solve the problem . Make a conscious decision to solve the issue at hand. Commit to yourself that you will go through the steps necessary to find a solution.
Seek to fully understand the issue . Analyze the problem you face, looking at it from all sides. If your problem is relationship-related, for instance, ask yourself how the other person may be interpreting the issue. You might also consider how your actions might be contributing to the situation.
Research potential options . Using the problem-solving strategies mentioned, research potential solutions. Make a list of options, then consider each one individually. What are some pros and cons of taking the available routes? What would you need to do to make them happen?
Take action . Select the best solution possible and take action. Action is one of the steps required for change . So, go through the motions needed to resolve the issue.
Try another option, if needed . If the solution you chose didn't work, don't give up. Either go through the problem-solving process again or simply try another option.

You can find a way to solve your problems as long as you keep working toward this goal—even if the best solution is simply to let go because no other good solution exists.

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Dunbar K. Problem solving . A Companion to Cognitive Science . 2017. doi:10.1002/9781405164535.ch20

Stewart SL, Celebre A, Hirdes JP, Poss JW. Risk of suicide and self-harm in kids: The development of an algorithm to identify high-risk individuals within the children's mental health system . Child Psychiat Human Develop . 2020;51:913-924. doi:10.1007/s10578-020-00968-9

Rosenbusch H, Soldner F, Evans AM, Zeelenberg M. Supervised machine learning methods in psychology: A practical introduction with annotated R code . Soc Personal Psychol Compass . 2021;15(2):e12579. doi:10.1111/spc3.12579

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By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Problem-Solving

Child putting together the Wooden Wobble Puzzle from The Problem Solver Play Kit

Learning & Cognitive Skills

8 to 11 months

Sorting & Matching, Stacking, Executive Function, Concentration

From tackling a complex project at work to figuring out how to manage your busy schedule, every day you use problem-solving skills like critical thinking, reasoning, and creativity. How did you learn these skills? Just as your child will: through exploration and play. Support their problem-solving skills through activities that let them independently try new things, learn from their mistakes, and test out different ways of thinking.

In this article:

What is problem-solving?

What are examples of problem-solving skills, when do children develop problem-solving skills , why are problem-solving skills important in child development.

Problem-solving games & activities for babies and toddlers

Problem-solving and frustration tolerance

Developmental concerns with problem-solving.

Problem-solving is the process by which your child spots a problem and comes up with a solution to overcome it. Your child uses problem-solving skills in all sorts of contexts, from figuring out how to get a ball out of a cup to interacting with a child who took their toy.

Children don’t inherently understand different approaches to solving problems—these skills develop gradually over time, starting in the earliest days of life. As your child gains experience, tests out strategies, plays with various materials, and watches people around them, they learn how to problem-solve.

Think about strategies you might use to tackle a project at work—for example, creating an outline, breaking the project into steps, or delegating tasks. With your help, your child will develop problem-solving skills like these:

Breaking a large problem into smaller steps
Persevering through challenges or setbacks
Using creativity to think “outside the box” about different solutions
Being resourceful by using available items as tools to reach a goal
Taking the initiative to try a possible solution and see if it works
Seeking help when you get stuck
Using compromise or negotiation to help resolve a conflict
Using critical thinking to discover what the next step should be

As early as 8 to 11 months, you may see the earliest signs of your child’s problem-solving skills at work. If you hide a toy under a blanket or basket, for example, they may use basic problem-solving to try to uncover it.

As a toddler, your child will grow more experienced with different types of playthings and the challenges they offer. They’ll also develop more focus and patience to work through problems on their own. Support their emerging problem-solving skills by observing their efforts—without stepping in right away to help. It’s tempting to intervene when you see your toddler struggle to fit the pieces of a puzzle, align blocks so they won’t fall, or get a stuck car out of the Race & Chase Ramp . Banging, rotating, failing, and trying again are all important parts of the process. Your toddler gains more problem-solving experience with every attempt.

RELATED: Subtle signs of your toddler’s developing focus

By 3 years of age, your child will have more skills to help them solve a problem. They’ve learned how to communicate and follow directions. They also have more control over their emotions and their body. Not only are they ready to solve more complex puzzles and games, they’re learning how to solve social problems, like working through conflict and negotiating with peers during play.

If your child is accustomed to tackling problems, they’re more likely to at least attempt to get the cup they need off the high shelf, or try to buckle those tricky sandal straps. Practicing problem-solving can help your child overcome challenges, try flexible ways of thinking, and become more confident and independent in the process.

Problem-solving skills are also crucial to your child’s cognitive development. They encourage your child’s brain to make new connections and process information in new ways. This is why so many of the best games, toys, and activities for young children stress some element of problem-solving, critical thinking, or creativity.

Your child can develop better social skills when they practice problem-solving, too: Understanding how to resolve conflicts and compromise with peers is a crucial problem-solving skill they’ll take with them into preschool and beyond.

Problem-solving activities & games

You don’t need elaborate planning or fancy equipment to help your child develop these skills. Many problem-solving activities for kids can be incorporated into daily life or during playtime.

Problem-solving activities for babies

It will be years before your baby is ready for advanced problem-solving skills, like compromising with others and project planning. For now, they’ll experiment with different ways to solve simple problems, showing initiative, perseverance, and creativity. Here are a few activities that help spark your baby’s problem-solving skills.

Reaching for a toy: Setting a goal is the very first step in problem-solving. Once your baby can sit independently, place toys one at a time in front of them, behind them, beside them, between their legs, or on a nearby shelf. This allows them to practice setting a goal—get the toy!—and making a plan to achieve it.

Emptying a container: Dumping objects out of containers sounds like a mess, but it’s a valuable skill for babies to learn. Place a Wood Ball in a Nesting Stacking Drip Drop Cup and show your baby how to tip over the cup to empty it. Then, put the ball back into the cup and let your baby figure out how to get the ball out of the container on their own.

See inside The Inspector Play Kit

The Inspector Play Kit (Months 7-8)

Fuel your baby’s exploration with toys from The Inspector Play Kit

Finding hidden objects: Your baby practices problem-solving with the Sliding Top Box every time they work to figure out how to slide the top to reveal the ball inside. This also builds fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.

Posting: The Wooden Peg Drop lets your baby experiment with “posting,” or fitting an object into its container, a much-loved fine motor activity. The tab release is an engaging problem-solving task for your baby, as they discover how to press down to release the pegs from their slots.

Explore playthings that encourage problem-solving

The Thinker Play Kit (Months 11-12)

Boost your child’s problem-solving skills with toys from The Thinker Play Kit

Problem-solving activities for toddlers

At 12 to 18 months, your toddler’s problem-solving skills are still taking shape. But you may begin to see them work to figure out more complex problems, like pulling toys around obstacles or getting objects “unstuck.” Encourage your toddler through play with activities that challenge their creative thinking.

Object interactions: What happens when you push a squishy ball through a small opening? How does a bendy thing react when it hits something hard? Understanding how different objects interact helps your child learn to use tools for problem-solving.

As you play with your toddler, demonstrate different ways playthings can interact. Two blocks can be banged together, stacked, or lined up side by side. The insects from the Fuzzy Bug Shrub can be stuck to the outside of the shrub or put inside. Give your child pieces from different playthings and see how they can make them interact. Perhaps the balls from the Slide and Seek Ball Run and the rings from the Wooden Stack & Slot can interact in some new, fun way?

The Babbler Play Kit (Months 13-15)

Foster your toddler’s early communication skills with toys from The Babbler Play Kit.

The Adventurer Play Kit (Months 16-18)

Fuel your toddler’s sense of discovery with toys from The Adventurer Play Kit

Asking questions : Once your toddler learns how to push the Carrots through the Carrot Lid for the Coin Bank, the question becomes how to get them out. Ask your toddler simple questions to spark their problem-solving skills: “Where did the carrots go?” or “How can we get them out?” Encourage your child to explore the Coin Bank and give them time to discover a solution on their own.

Simple challenges: Your toddler may be ready for some problem-solving challenges with their playthings. For example, when your toddler can pick up a toy in each hand, offer a third toy and see if they can figure out how to carry all three at once. Or place parts of a toy—like the rings for the Wooden Stack & Slot—in different locations around the room, so your child needs to plan how to retrieve the pieces. Pack as many Quilted Critters as will fit in The Lockbox and let your toddler discover how to get them out. This type of challenge may seem simple, but your child has to problem-solve how to navigate their hand into the box to pull out the Critters.

Cause and effect: Your toddler may discover how to pull on a string attached to a toy to make it move. They understand that the toy and the string are linked, and use simple problem-solving skills to test—and re-test—what happens when they move the string differently. This type of problem-solving can be supported by pull toys such as The Pull Pup . As your toddler encounters different obstacles—like the corner of the couch—with The Pull Pup, they’ll have to problem-solve to keep the toy moving.

The Pull Pup

The perfect companion for pretend play, encouraging coordination and gross motor skills.

RELATED: Pull toys are classic for a reason

Puzzles are a classic childhood problem-solving activity for good reason. Your child learns how things fit together, how to orient and rotate objects, and how to predict which shape might fit a particular space. Puzzles come in such a wide variety of difficulty levels, shapes, sizes, and formats, there’s a puzzle that’s right for almost every stage of development.

Lovevery co-founder Jessica Rolph explains how Lovevery puzzles are designed to progress with your child’s problem-solving and fine motor skills:

Babies can begin exploring simple one-piece puzzles around 6 to 8 months of age. Puzzles that have round slots and easy-to-hold pieces with knobs, like the First Puzzle , are ideal for this age. Around 13 to 15 months of age, they can try simple puzzles with several pieces in the same shape, like the Circle of Friends Puzzle .

By 18 months, your toddler is probably ready to work with puzzle shapes that are geometric, animal, or organic, like the Community Garden Puzzle . This reinforces your toddler’s newfound understanding that different shapes fit in different places. As they progress, they may start to enjoy stacking and nesting puzzles, like the 3D Geo Shapes Puzzle . This type of puzzle requires problem-solving on a new level, since your child may have to turn the shapes in different directions to orient and place them correctly.

As your toddler approaches their second birthday, they may be ready for classic jigsaw puzzles. Puzzles with large pieces that are easy for your toddler to hold, like the Chunky Wooden Jigsaw Puzzle , are a great place to start. At this age, your toddler may also find 3D puzzles, like the Wooden Posting Stand , an engaging problem-solving challenge. Since the dowels are different diameters, your child will likely use trial and error to determine which size fits in the correct slot. At first, you may have to guide them a bit: Point out that the dowels need to go in straight in order to fit.

The Companion Play Kit (Months 22-24)

Nurture your toddler’s emotional intelligence with toys from The Companion Play Kit

How to encourage puzzle play for active toddlers

Depending on your toddler’s temperament, they may love to sit quietly and work on a puzzle—or they may be constantly on the move. Highly active toddlers may seem like they never sit still long enough to complete an activity. Here are a few ways to combine their love of movement with puzzle play:

Play “hide-and-seek” with toys (or puzzle pieces) by placing them on top of furniture that’s safe to cruise along or climb on.
Place puzzle pieces in different places around the room, so they have to retrieve them one by one to solve the puzzle.
Place the puzzle pieces on stairs or in different rooms so your toddler has to walk or climb to find them.

Stacking toys

Stacking toys such as blocks or rings engage babies and toddlers in a challenging form of problem-solving play. Your child’s skills are put to the test as they plan where to place each item, work to balance their stack, and wrestle with gravity to keep the stack from toppling.

You can introduce your baby to stacking play around 9 to 10 months with playthings that are easy to work with, like the Nesting Stacking Drip Drop Cups . Stacking takes coordination, precision, and patience, and if they try to stack items that are too difficult to keep upright, they may become frustrated and give up.

You can also make basic blocks easier to stack by using a larger item as a base. Demonstrate how to stack a block on top of the base, then knock the tower down. Hand a block to your toddler and allow them to try stacking and knocking it down. As their movements become more controlled and purposeful, introduce another block to stack.

Stacking a tower with the pegs from the Wooden Stacking Pegboard is a fun way to introduce goal-setting, an important aspect of problem-solving. The pegs nest together securely, allowing your toddler to build a higher, more stable tower than they could create with regular blocks. You can gently suggest a goal for your child—“Can we stack it higher?”—and see if they’re ready for the challenge. Then, sit and support them as they try to solve any problems that arise: “Is the tower too tall? Can we make it wider so it won’t fall so easily?”

Hide-and-seek

The classic childhood game of hide-and-seek offers your toddler many problem-solving opportunities. Your child has to use reasoning to figure out what would be a good hiding spot. They also use the process of elimination when they think about where they have and haven’t looked. They might even use creative thinking skills to discover a new place to hide.

The game doesn’t always have to involve you and your child hiding. When your child is around 12 months, you can introduce them to the concept using toys or other objects. Hide a small ball in one of two identical containers that you can’t see through, like upside-down cups. Make sure your child sees you put the ball under one of the containers, then mix them up. Lift the empty container to show your toddler that the ball isn’t inside and say, “Where is the ball?” If your toddler looks at the other container, say, “Yes! The ball is under this one.” Let your toddler lift the second container to find the ball.

Your toddler might enjoy a game of hide-and-seek with The Lockbox . Hide a small toy, like one of the Quilted Critters or a small ball, inside The Lockbox. This activity challenges your toddler’s problem-solving skills on two levels: figuring out how to unlock the different mechanisms to open the doors, and feeling around inside to discover what’s hidden. Add another layer of fun to the challenge by letting your child try to guess the object just by touching it—no peeking.

See inside The Realist Play Kit

The Realist Play Kit (Months 19-21)

Equip your toddler’s with real-world skills with toys from The Realist Play Kit

Using tools to solve problems

Around 17 to 24 months of age, your child may begin using tools to solve simple problems. For example, if you ask your child to pick up their toys, their hands may become full quickly. You can model how to load toys into a bucket or bag to carry them to another spot. This might seem like an obvious choice, but the ability to use a tool to make a task easier or solve a problem is an important cognitive skill.

Here are a few ways you and your toddler can explore using tools to solve a problem:

Show your child how to make a “shirt bowl” by using the upturned edge of their shirt as a cradle to hold toys or playthings.
If a toy gets stuck behind the sofa, model how you can use a broomstick to push the toy to a place where you can reach it.
Provide a child-size stool that your child can use to reach the sink or counter.

The Transfer Tweezers are a simple tool that your toddler can use to pick up other items besides the Felt Stars . They could try picking up the animals from the Quilted Critter Set or other child-safe items. Whenever you model how to use tools in everyday life, your child learns to think about new and different ways to solve problems.

Pretend play

Pretend play supports your child’s problem-solving skills in many ways. Research suggests that children’s pretend play is linked to different types of problem-solving and creativity. For example, one study showed that pretend play with peers was linked to better divergent problem-solving—meaning that children were able to “think outside the box” to solve problems.

Pretend play is also a safe place for children to recreate—and practice solving—problems they’ve seen in their lives. Your 2- to 3-year-old may reenact an everyday challenge—for example, one doll might take away another doll’s toy. As practice for real-world problem-solving, you can then help them talk through how the dolls might solve their issue together

Pretend play may help children be more creative and open to new ideas. In pretend play, children put together play scenarios, act on them, and develop creative solutions. A 3- or 4-year-old child might be ready to explore creative problem-solving through pretend play that uses their playthings in new ways. Help your child start with an idea: “What do you want to pretend to be or recreate — a favorite storybook scene or someone from real life like a doctor or server at a restaurant?” Then encourage them to look for playthings they can use to pretend. Maybe a block can be a car or the beads from the Threadable Bead Set serve as “cups” in your child’s pretend restaurant. As your child gains practice with creative pretend play, they may start to form elaborate fantasy worlds.

Even if you don’t think of yourself as creative, you can model creative thinking by showing your child how a toy can be used in many different ways. Research finds that parents who model “out of the box” ways to play can encourage creative thinking and problem-solving in their children, starting in toddlerhood.

It can be difficult for young children to manage their frustration, but giving your child opportunities to solve problems on their own helps build both confidence and frustration tolerance . Research suggests that the ability to set goals and persist in them through challenges—sometimes called “grit”—is linked to school and career success. Here’s how you can play an important role in helping your child develop problem-solving persistence.

Model persistence. You know your toddler closely observes everything you do 🙃 A 2017 study shows that young children who watch their parents persist in their own challenge were more likely to show persistence themselves. Allow your toddler to see you attempting an activity, failing, and talking yourself through trying again. While playing with blocks, try stacking a few off balance so they fall. Notice aloud what went wrong and continue to narrate as you move slowly to carefully stack the blocks again.

Give them time. A little frustration can go a long way toward learning. It can take enormous restraint not to point out where to put the puzzle piece or how to slot the peg in place—but try to give them time to problem-solve on their own. You’re helping them feel capable and confident when faced with new challenges.

RELATED: 11 ways to build your toddler’s frustration tolerance

Ask questions to encourage new strategies. If your toddler gets frustrated with a problem, encourage their problem-solving process by asking questions: “Are you trying to race the car down the ramp but it got stuck? Is the car too long to go down sideways?” This may help your child refocus their attention on their goal instead of what they have already unsuccessfully tried. With a little time and creative problem-solving, your child may figure it out on their own.

Problem-solving skills are just one component of your child’s overall cognitive development. By around 12 months of age, you should see signs that your child is attempting to solve simple problems, like looking for a toy under a blanket. By about 30 months, your child may show slightly more advanced problem-solving skills, like using a stool to reach a high counter. Their attempts might not always be successful at this age, but the fact that they’re trying shows they’re thinking through different options. If you don’t see signs of your child trying to solve problems in these ways, talk to your pediatrician about your concerns. They can assess your child’s overall development and answer any questions.

Explore The Play Kits

The Play Kits

Unlock your child’s potential with our expertly designed toys from The Play Kits.

Posted in: 7 - 8 Months , 9 - 10 Months , 11 - 12 Months , 13 - 15 Months , 16 - 18 Months , 19 - 21 Months , 22 - 24 Months , 25 - 27 Months , 28 - 30 Months , Learning & Cognitive Skills , Cause and Effect , Problem Solving , Cognitive Development , STEM , Independent Play , Puzzles , Child Development , Learning & Cognitive Skills

Meet the Experts

Learn more about the lovevery child development experts who created this story..

Research & Resources

Alan, S., Boneva, T., & Ertac, S. (2019). Ever failed, try again, succeed better: Results from a randomized educational intervention on grit . The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134 (3), 1121-1162.

Bergen, D. (2002). The role of pretend play in children’s cognitive development . Early Childhood Research & Practice , 4(1), n1.

Bruner, J. S. (1973). Organization of early skilled action . Child Development , 1-11.

Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: perseverance and passion for long-term goals . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92 (6), 1087.

Hoicka, E., Mowat, R., Kirkwood, J., Kerr, T., Carberry, M., & Bijvoet‐van den Berg, S. (2016). One‐year‐olds think creatively, just like their parents . Child Development , 87 (4), 1099-1105.

Keen, R. (2011). The development of problem solving in young children: A critical cognitive skill. Annual Review of Psychology , 62 , 1-21.

Mullineaux, P. Y., & Dilalla, L. F. (2009). Preschool pretend play behaviors and early adolescent creativity . The Journal of Creative Behavior , 43(1), 41-57.

Keep reading

Toddler playing with the Geo Shapes Puzzle by Lovevery

16 - 18 Months

Puzzling over puzzles—what the progression looks like

Puzzles build fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and problem-solving strategies. Here is the progression of puzzle solving for babies and toddlers.

Toddler playing with the Wooden Peg Drop by Lovevery

13 - 15 Months

Toddler independent play tips

When your toddler plays on their own, they develop concentration, problem-solving, and autonomy. Read these 4 tips for for supporting independent play.

Child playing with The Block Set by Lovevery

19 - 21 Months

22 - 24 Months

11 ways to build your toddler’s frustration tolerance

Help your toddler work through feelings of disappointment, sadness, and frustration when their skills don't quite match their ambitions.

Problem Solving

Your baby is learning how to get what she wants, when she wants it; this is also called thinking and problem solving.

During the first year of your baby’s life, she is making great strides in her ability to think, solve problems, and communicate with you. These are critical cognitive skills.

For instance, your baby thinks to herself, I want that rattle! Your baby solves the problem by deciding to roll over and reach for or crawl to the rattle. Maybe your baby is thinking, I am hungry! She solves the problem by communicating through cries, grunts, or pointing until you feed her.

Once you are sure your infant’s basic needs have been met and she is not in any danger, it is important to give your baby time to work on problem-solving skills.

Think about times you have just put your baby in the crib, and she immediately begins to cry as you turn to leave the room. Even though you may want to pick her up again and rock her longer, this is a great opportunity to let your infant work on her problem-solving skills, namely the skill of being able to self-soothe and see what she can do to make herself comfortable enough to go to sleep. It is certainly hard to listen to the cries, especially when it is your f irst baby, but as your baby matures, she will need to be able to put herself to sleep.

It is also very important to support problem-solving skills when your baby is learning to feed herself a bottle or use a spoon.

Infants as young as six months have been known to feed themselves; they won’t get all the food on the spoon or even in their mouths, but they are developing self-help skills and problem-solving skills. They are also developing their wrist muscles and fine motor skills (small muscle skills).

When you support problemsolving skills with your infant, you are supporting her brain development and giving her the power to think and constantly learn about the world around her.

Support your baby’s problem-solving skills by responding to her efforts to communicate. Use words to describe what she is experiencing: “I see you looking at the toy on the floor. Let me get that for you.” Talking to your child and explaining what you are doing when you do it also increases language development.

Your infant's problem-solving development:

0 to 2 months —Your infant is born with built-in problem-solving tools called reflexes (rooting and sucking for food).

2 to 4 months —Your infant is more alert; she explores; hand-eye coordination begins to develop and bringing toys to mouth leads to problem solving.

8 months —Your infant plays with toys to produce responses to actions by grasping, shaking, and banging.

12 months —Your baby uses more purposeful levels of problem solving and is no longer limited to what is immediately in front of her. She can now push a toy aside to choose another one.

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Student-centered active learning improves performance in solving higher-level cognitive questions in health sciences education.

Simple Summary

1. introduction, 2. materials and methods, 2.1. study design, 2.2. theoretical lectures, 2.3. informative sessions, 2.4. student surveys, 2.5. learning outcomes assessment, 3.1. learning outcomes assessment, 3.2. survey conducted during the information session on active learning, 3.2.1. academic year 2022/2023.

27% of the students had experience with problem-based learning.
72% had experienced collaborative learning.
27% were familiar with flipped learning.

3.2.2. Academic Year 2023/2024

Almost all students indicated they had no prior experience with any form of active learning.
79% had experience with collaborative learning.
56% knew what flipped learning was.
10% of the students chose option (a): “Expository teaching, where the teacher tells me everything I need to know”.
89% of students chose option (b): “Active teaching, where I learn to think about and use the content I am learning under the guidance of the teacher”.
1% of students chose option (c): “I don’t care, I can always be a GoogleVet”.

3.3. Anonymous Survey Conducted at the End of the Thematic Block

3.4. anonymous survey conducted at the end of the experience, 3.5. students attending to discussion session, 4. discussion, 5. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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	Lower Order		Higher Order
Bloom’s Levels	1 (Knowledge)	2 (Comprehension)	3 (Application)	4 (Analysis)
Distinguishing features of questions	Questions are straightforward with answers likely stated verbatim in notes or text Questions usually not placed in a clinical context Students not required to make independent connections from the information		Anatomic information may be placed in a clinical scenario or a new setting (although not all clinical questions are higher order) Students must interpret and make independent connections from the information
Key skills assessed	Identify, recall, repeat, memorize	Describe or distinguish	Infer or predict	In addition to infer or predict, interpret, judge, critique, or analysis
Types of anatomical information assessed	Basic definitions Facts Straightforward recall	Anatomical concepts Basic spatial organization Basic understanding of pathways, blood supply, and innervation	Interaction between two or more body systems Functional aspects of anatomical features beyond memorization	Interaction between two or more body systems and applying information to a potentially new situation Interpretation of anatomical images Potential to use clinical judgment
Type of question	MEM	DI	AR; MEM + AR; AC	AR + SP; ADI
Examples of questions	List the components of the cardiac conduction system and the cardiac innervation system	On a diagram or anatomical prosection, identify the distribution of the major vessels from the heart to the thoracic cavity and to the forelimbs and head	List the vascular shunts present in the embryo and explain anatomically and functionally what you think would happen if they did not disappear after birth	On a volume-rendered CT of a human bovine arch variant, determine anatomically whether the vascular pattern is like that of a bovine aortic arch or another species, and which one it most resembles and why?

Year	Total Average Score	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
2015/2016	3.23	4.31	3.05	2.90	2.76
2022/2023	4.11	3.73	4.04	4.20	4.50
2023/2024	4.71	4.15	4.81	4.23	5.66

		Cognitive Levels
		Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4
Year 2022/2023 n = 190	Attending to class n = 79 41.57%	4.40	4.90	4.80	5.70
Year 2022/2023 n = 190	Not attending to class n = 111 58.43%	3.10	3.20	3.70	3.30
Year 2023/2024 n = 180	Attending to class n = 125 69.44%	6.16	6.26	5.53	6.31
Year 2023/2024 n = 180	Not attending to class n = 55 30.56%	3.12	4.96	3.57	5.10

Survey on the Virtual Campus		2022/2023 (N = 34)	2023/2024 (N = 56)
How important it is for you to be able to use your anatomical knowledge and reasoning skills.	Not at all important	0%	0%
	Low importance.	2%	9%
	Moderately important	26%	14%
	Very important.	26%	55%
	Extremely important.	44%	20%
Of the following statements, mark the one that best describes your ability to formulate anatomical reasoning:	I have not been able to understand what anatomical reasoning is and what it is for	12%	25%
	I understand what anatomical reasoning is, but I still don’t know how to use it well to explain real problems.	62%	64%
	I understand what anatomical reasoning is and how to use it to explain real problems.	21%	7%
	I have learned to make anatomical reasoning and to use it to explain real problems.	6%	4%
In your opinion, was the amount of anatomical reasoning that was presented in class sufficient?	Yes	50%
	No	50%
With regard to the anatomical reasoning presented in class, do you think that they were appropriate for using the content of the lesson?	Yes	71%
	No	29%
With reference to the formative tests given in class and the solutions given by the teacher:	They were not helpful to learn.	21%	29%
	They helped me learn something.	47%	24%
	They helped me to learn quite a lot.	26%	9%
	They helped me to learn a lot.	6%	0%
At the discussion sessions	I have not learned to think or to use anatomical knowledge.		14%
	I have learnt to think and to use a little anatomical knowledge.		46%
	I have learnt to think and use anatomical knowledge.		29%
	I have learned to think and use anatomical knowledge quite a lot.		11%
	I have learned to think and use anatomical knowledge a lot.		0%
In reference to the effectiveness of group learning, please rate your experience with the group.	Not efficient		14%
	Low efficiency		29%
	Somewhat efficient		38%
	Quite efficient		12%
	Very efficient		4%

End of Year Survey		2022/2023 (N = 148)	2023/2024 (N = 140)
Did you find the video-flip useful for learning?	Yes	68%	46.5%
Did you find the video-flip useful for learning?	No	32%	53.5%
Of the following comments, tick all those that correspond to your experience with active learning in the theory class:	It is a new way of learning that was difficult for me to understand at first.	58%	68%
	It is a way of learning that is not new to me and I have felt comfortable doing it from the beginning.	5%	4%
	Active learning has helped me to think and solve problems.	25%	30%
	I found it a motivating and useful experience for my training as a veterinary professional.	17%	19%
	I have not been able to learn to think or reason anatomically so I consider it a waste of time.	50%	30%
	Nowadays it is not necessary to think because all the information is on Google.	1%	0%
What type of education do you prefer?	I prefer the teacher to be the only one to show and teach the contents to be studied.	52%	56.2%
What type of education do you prefer?	I prefer the teacher to explain and teach me to think and direct my learning.	48%	43.8%
To carry out the formative tests in the theory class	I prefer to solve them individually	5%
	I prefer to solve them in pairs	8%
	I prefer to solve them in a group of 3/4 partners	87%
Mark the degree of usefulness that the use of anatomical reasoning has had for you to understand the clinical cases.	I have not found it useful		8.6%
	I found it somewhat useful		35.9%
	I found it useful		38.1%
	I found it very useful		15.1%
	I think it’s absolutely useful		2.1%
Do you think it is important to learn to think in order to be a good veterinary professional?	Yes		100%
	No		0%
In relation to the effectiveness of group learning, please rate your experience with the group.	Not effective		18%
	Poorly effective		28%
	Something effective		38%
	Quite effective		12%
	Very effective		4%
For cognitive exercises, I prefer to work	In groups of 3–4 students	88%	90%
For cognitive exercises, I prefer to work	Individually	6%	4%

Comments from the Students, Academic Year 2022/2023 (N = 148)
GENERAL	VIDEO-FLIPPED PRECLASS	CLASSROOM-DISCUSSION SESSION

Comments from the Students, Academic Year 2023/2024 (N = 140)
GENERAL	VIDEO-FLIPPED PRECLASS	CLASSROOM-DISCUSSION SESSION

Academic Year	Comments and Students’ Opinions about the Active Learning Experience
2022–23 (n = 152)	Positive	76 49.66%	Expressing satisfaction	11 7.18%
	Positive	76 49.66%	With suggestions for improvement included	65 42.48%
	Negative	31 20.36%	Expressing dissatisfaction	26 17.18%
	Negative	31 20.36%	With suggestions for improvement included	5 3.26%
	Not taken into account	35 22.80%	Disagreement on methodology	18 51.43%
			Comment contradiction	15 42.85%
			Comment of a personal kind	2 5.72%
	Without comment			11 7.18%
2023–24 (n = 148)	Positive	60 40.54%	Expressing satisfaction	14 9.45%
	Positive	60 40.54%	With suggestions for improvement included	46 31.08%
	Negative	35 23.64%	Expressing dissatisfaction	29 19.59%
	Negative	35 23.64%	With suggestions for improvement included	6 4.05%
	Not taken into account	24 16.21%	Disagreement on methodology	10 6.75%
			Comment contradiction	9 6.08%
			Comment of a personal kind	5 3.37%
	Without comment			29 19.59%

The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.

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Martín-Alguacil, N.; Avedillo, L. Student-Centered Active Learning Improves Performance in Solving Higher-Level Cognitive Questions in Health Sciences Education. Int. Med. Educ. 2024 , 3 , 346-362. https://doi.org/10.3390/ime3030026

Martín-Alguacil N, Avedillo L. Student-Centered Active Learning Improves Performance in Solving Higher-Level Cognitive Questions in Health Sciences Education. International Medical Education . 2024; 3(3):346-362. https://doi.org/10.3390/ime3030026

Martín-Alguacil, Nieves, and Luis Avedillo. 2024. "Student-Centered Active Learning Improves Performance in Solving Higher-Level Cognitive Questions in Health Sciences Education" International Medical Education 3, no. 3: 346-362. https://doi.org/10.3390/ime3030026

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Enhancing cognitive dimensions in gifted students through future problem-solving enrichment programs

Open access
Published: 09 September 2024
Volume 5 , article number 248 , ( 2024 )

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Khaled Elballah 1 ,
Norah Alkhalifah 2 ,
Asma Alomari 2 &
Amal Alghamdi 2

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This study has undertaken a scrutiny of research pertaining to enrichment programs based on future problem-solving skills, aimed at enhancing the cognitive dimensions of gifted students between the years 2010 and 2023. The study used a sample of 10 studies; 3 correlational studies and 7 quasi-experimental studies. The study employed the descriptive-analytical approach by following a meta-analysis method. The study aimed to discern the effectiveness of enrichment programs based on future problem-solving skills in developing the cognitive dimensions of the gifted. The study's findings have indicated a significant impact of enrichment programs based on future problem-solving skills in the development of the cognitive dimensions of the gifted, as per both correlational and quasi-experimental designs. Moreover, statistically significant differences were found related to the variables of educational level and gender in accordance with both correlational and quasi-experimental designs. The study also advocates the need for further research in this domain to facilitate the generalization of the novel findings of this study within the gifted field.

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1 Introduction

The special needs of gifted students and the challenges they encounter compel us to offer them tailored education that aligns with their potential. According to relevant literature, numerous programs and practices are employed in educating gifted students. In recent years, gifted education has witnessed substantial growth in programs, providing students with various enrichment opportunities. Among these opportunities are enrichment programs that come in various forms, often interactive and centered around higher-order thinking skills. This allows students requiring additional intellectual stimulation to remain engaged and interested in their classrooms [ 3 ]. Enrichment programs focusing on future problem-solving skills are a significant component of gifted education. Many studies have called attention to such problem-based programs. Given the challenges faced by modern societies due to rapid and continuous changes, gifted individuals in the twenty-first century find it imperative to possess future problem-solving skills. These skills involve individuals actively exploring the future by connecting the past with the present, attempting to anticipate the future based on current information and data, and creating current and future solutions to these issues. Future thinking is an active process encompassing all situations, involving planning toward future objectives, passing through stages of imagination, prediction, visualization, planning, and decision-making [ 2 ].

Enrichment programs centered on future problem-solving skills focus on enhancing cognitive processes, such as creative thinking, critical thinking, future-oriented thinking, imaginative thinking, and motivation for achievement. These programs are suitable for experienced students and support the educational process interactively. Their curriculum encompasses essential steps that students should follow when solving future problems. These steps start with identifying future challenges, selecting the most prominent challenges, generating solutions and ideas, setting criteria and applying them, and conclude with developing an action plan, equipping students with the tools and strategies to address these problems [ 48 ]. In this regard, [ 20 , 33 ] underline the significance of future problem-solving enrichment programs in gifted education, emphasizing that it represents a novel and captivating approach for gifted students to enhance their self-efficacy, acclimate to higher-order thinking skills, and cultivate their creative self. This, in turn, improves their creative thinking, mitigates the potential for boredom and monotony, and broadens their knowledge while introducing them to new areas of interest. Johnsen [ 28 ] posits that gifted education programs must prioritize offering rich experiences characterized by depth, challenge, and flexibility. They should challenge the capabilities of gifted students and develop their higher-order thinking skills, focusing on holistic development of their mental, skill-based, emotional, and independent thinking capacities in problem-solving situations. Such characteristics can be found in enrichment programs that revolve around genuine future problems to nurture these skills.

Regarding research, several studies have directed their attention to exploring future problem-solving competencies. For instance, [ 20 ] assert the effectiveness of enrichment programs centered on future problem-solving in enhancing students' creative self-efficacy. Additionally [ 7 ], affirms the effectiveness of an enrichment program based on the Kolb model in developing problem-solving skills among gifted students in the cognitive dimensions.

On another side, studies have examined the characteristics of gifted students participating in future-thinking problem-based programs [ 55 ]. Conducted a study that revealed that children participating in a program based on diverse future-thinking skills acquired the ability for profound observation, extensive general knowledge, exceptional verbal, logical, detailed, and creative thinking, and a flexible approach to problem-solving. Despite the positive impact identified by numerous previous studies in the context of future problem-solving programs, there have been variations, particularly concerning gender, educational level, and other skills, as evidenced by the findings of certain studies [ 11 ]. Furthermore, this methodological approach has not garnered significant attention from researchers in Arab countries, despite the researchers' affirmation of the importance of sequential analyses [ 47 ]. Emphasize that Meta analyses can provide unique contributions to the field of gifted education. Firstly, the results are reliable, stemming from replicable methodological steps [ 25 ]. Secondly, by summarizing the current state of evidence, Meta analyses offer researchers the opportunity to place their insights within the larger context. Thirdly, Meta analyses allow researchers to examine the effects of a large number of independent variables and potential influences simultaneously [ 45 ]. Asserts that Meta analyses are a more comprehensive method for conducting program evaluations in gifted education, as it enables the study of a wide array of independent and moderating variables simultaneously, facilitating a better understanding of the results of various studies.

1.1 Research questions

This study employed a meta-analytic approach to synthesize findings concerning problem-solving skills in the domain of gifted education. The purpose was to address the following inquiries:

What is the effect size average of the impact of enrichment program interventions based on future problem-solving skills for gifted students in fostering their cognitive dimensions, according to correlational designs?

To what extent does the effect size average of the impact of enrichment program interventions targeting future problem-solving skills for gifted students vary in terms of their cognitive dimension development according to correlational designs, as a result of participant type (males, females, both) and educational level (elementary, middle, high school)?

To what extent does the average magnitude of the impact of enrichment program interventions targeting future problem-solving skills for gifted students vary in terms of their cognitive dimension development according to quasi-experimental designs, as a result of participant type (males, females, both) and educational stage (elementary, middle, high school)?

1.2 Significance of the study

The significance of this study resides in its substantive contribution to the field of gifted education research, mitigating the rare of studies employing such analytical methodologies. Furthermore, it answers the clarion call voiced by numerous scholars in the Arab world regarding the importance of conducting meta-analytical studies within the educational field [ 1 ]. This study will play a pivotal role in the realization of the directives set forth by the American Psychological Research Guide, which underscores the criticality of employing meta-analysis as an adjunctive statistical method for scrutinizing statistical significance. Through this meta-analysis, we shall elucidate the effective factors upon the education of gifted students. Consequently, it will bestow unparalleled contributions to the field of gifted education by means of descriptive multivariate analyses, which proffer a more comprehensive evaluation of gifted education programs. They empower researchers to scrutinize a wide spectrum of independent variables and moderating variables concurrently [ 50 ].This study will serve as the cornerstone upon which plans for the development and activation of the roles of gifted care programs in fostering cognitive dimensions are constructed. This is because any developmental blueprints hinge upon a comprehensive portrayal of the existing reality from all its facets. Moreover, this study will offer guidance for future research endeavors and inquiries into enrichment program typologies.

1.3 Research terminologies

1.3.1 meta-analysis.

This study uses the meta-analysis methodology, defined as statistical analysis for a comprehensive spectrum of research findings. Its principal objective resides in the synthesis of abstracts or information extracted from an expansive body of research, with the overarching intention of fostering cohesion among studies that share a common thematic concern. This methodological approach serves to facilitate a more profound understanding of the rapid proliferation of antecedent research endeavors. The nomenclature employed to signify meta-analysis has demonstrated a degree of lexical diversity, encompassing designations such as transcendental analysis and meta-analysis [ 15 ].

1.3.2 Enrichment programs

Enrichment programs, as defined by [ 6 ], refer to an assemblage of educational programs used by educators to nurture the development of students' competencies. These proficiencies encompass a varied spectrum, including cognitive aptitudes, social skills, and other skills that enhance the educational experiences of students.

1.3.3 Future problem-solving skills

Future problem-solving, as elucidated by [ 4 ], draws upon Torrance's (2003) definition of this term, characterizing it as the acumen employed for the analysis and formulation of strategies directed at the resolution of problems, challenges, or difficulties, and undefined obstacles projected to manifest in the future, extending over a temporal future of no less than twenty-five years.

1.3.4 Gifted students

The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) has defined gifted and talented students as those who perform—or can perform—at higher levels than others of the same age, experience, and environment in one or more areas. These talented people must modify their educational experience to learn and achieve their potential. Furthermore, gifted and talented students can have the following features:

They come from all ethnic and cultural groups and from all economic classes.

It requires obtaining adequate educational opportunities to achieve their potential.

May have learning and processing disorders that require specialized intervention and adaptation.

Need support and guidance to develop socially, emotionally and in different areas [ 35 ].

1.3.5 Cognitive dimensions

Cognitive dimensions, as expounded by [ 9 ], encompass an array of concepts, ideas, and systematically organized mental operations resident within a child's cognitive consciousness. These operations discriminate the cognitive realm and are predicated upon skills such as recall, categorization, and decision-making. These skills, in turn, are rooted in the skills of thinking, conceptualization, and organizational aptitude.

1.4 Study procedures

1.4.1 study design.

The study used the descriptive-analytical approach applying the meta-analysis method, as it was suitable for the nature of this study. Meta-analysis is considered an advanced approach for comprehensive summarization of previous studies and research. It significantly contributes to the interpretation of the huge literature that extends beyond the confines of academia. It is a descriptive-analytical methodology aimed at extracting underlying findings from multiple outcomes derived from individual studies with specific attributes. This involves conducting a survey of studies related to the subject matter of the study, examining their theoretical framework, as well as the research problem, hypotheses, procedures, and results. Subsequently, criteria were established for selecting studies that warrant reanalysis and the appropriate decisions [ 19 ].

1.4.2 Study sample

The sample comprised ten research articles published between 2010 and 2023 in diverse international journals.

Shokraneh [ 45 ] recommended documenting the strategies and steps employed in meta-analysis to facilitate repetition or new updates for meta-analysis. In this study, the analytical strategies and steps adopted were as follows:

2.1 Firstly, data collection

Studies published between 2010 and 2023 were included, using a two-stage process. The first stage involved conducting computer-based research using the following keywords: "gifted," "gifted education programs," "gifted education," "gifted student," "thinking skills," "future problem-solving skills," "gifted programs," "cognitive dimensions," "cognitive resilience," "decision-making," "achievement," and "metacognition." Studies that included these keywords in their titles or abstracts were initially selected and individually reviewed to identify additional references.

Manual searches were conducted across several journals, with articles related to gifted students, including but not limited to the Journal of Secondary, Journal for the Education of the Gifted, Roeper Review, Gifted Child Quarterly, Gifted Education, Journal of Advanced Academics, Journal of King Saud University, Journal of Umm Al-Qura University, International Journal of Educational Research at the United Arab Emirates University, Educational Journal at Taif University, and Dar Al-Mandhuma Database. Additionally, searches were conducted on the Google Scholar scientific researcher database, ERIC database, and the Google search engine. The previous search results yielded a total of 288 research articles. In the second stage, criteria for including studies in the current research were applied, resulting in a reduction to ten research articles.

2.2 Secondly, inclusion and exclusion criteria

The study applied inclusion criteria based on the following guidelines:

Selection of studies published between 2010 and 2023 in Arabic and foreign journals.

Selection of complete studies (open-access journals).

Selection of studies with clearly defined correlational or quasi-experimental methodologies.

Selection of studies that explicitly stated the sample size.

Selection of studies that employed educational tests as Pearson correlation coefficients, "t-tests," and "F-tests."

Selection of studies with available statistical data indicating the relationship between the interventions of enrichment programs based on future problem-solving skills for gifted students and the development of their cognitive dimensions or their impact (correlation coefficients, sample size, mean, standard deviation). The previous studies were examined, resulting in the inclusion of ten studies investigating the impact of enrichment program interventions based on future problem-solving skills for gifted students and the development of their cognitive dimensions, according to the criteria specified above. It is to be noted that articles removed during the systemic process included the duplicated articles, articles identified as ineligible for the research by the automation tools and other articles that were removed for some other reasons such as missing information or bad quality of the articles or irrelevant to the study topic. It is also important to note that 41 articles were excluded from the analysis because of the missing information or bad quality of the articles or irrelevant to the study topic.

3 PRISMA flow diagram of the systematic search

Figure 1 describes the process stages used to select the articles used in this research. It is to be noted that two sources have been used in the process of selecting of data namely articles from databases and registrars. Furthermore, it is to be noted that articles removed during the systemic process included the duplicated articles, articles identified as ineligible for the research by the automation tools and other articles that were removed for some other reasons such as missing information or bad quality of the articles or irrelevant to the study topic.

PRISMA flow diagram of the systematic search

Table 1 describes the studies in the research sample included in the meta-analysis.

3.1 Thirdly, the encoding of study characteristics

A coding protocol was established to reflect information regarding the principal attributes of the study, experimental conditions if applicable, and the participants and samples. The features of the outcomes [ 21 ]. Consequently, the encoding of the modified variables in the present study stands as follows:

3.1.1 A—Study design

The encoding of the study design was categorized into:

Correlational research: If these studies investigate the correlational relationship between interventions of enrichment programs for gifted students and the development of their cognitive dimensions.

Quasi-experimental research: If these studies explore the impact of enrichment programs based on future problem-solving skills for gifted students in developing their cognitive dimensions.

3.1.2 B—Participant type

The encoding of participant type was categorized as (males, females, males and females together).

3.1.3 C—Educational level

The encoding of educational stage was categorized as (elementary, middle, secondary).

3.2 Fourthly, data analysis strategy

The study used effect size criteria provided by [ 17 ], and in accordance with that, the effect size is categorized as follows: from 0 to 0.10 weak, from 0.11 to 0.30 modest, from 0.31–0.50 moderate, from 0.51to 0.80 large, and represents greater than 0.81 as very large.

Furthermore, the common effect size of previous studies was calculated by determining the model used and represented by the random or fixed-effects model, which is determined by the test of heterogeneity that detects whether the observed variance in effect sizes (Q) significantly differs from the variance due to sampling error [ 21 ]. Accordingly, it is necessary to find the value of Q and compare it to the degree of freedom value (df = n-1) in the Chi-square value tables as follows: If the value of Q is less than the Chi-square value, it is interpreted that the effect sizes of the studies are homogeneous, and the common effect size is calculated according to the fixed-effects model. However, if the value of Q is greater than the Chi-square value, it is interpreted that the effect sizes of the studies are not homogeneous, and the common effect size is calculated according to the random-effects model.

In the current study, the random-effects model was used to align with the study's objectives, and the test of heterogeneity was conducted, as well as the application of categorical moderator analysis to examine whether the common effect size of enrichment programs based on future problem-solving skills for gifted students in the development of their cognitive dimensions showed significant differences based on study type, participant type, and educational stage. Moreover, it was determined whether the moderator was significant based on the level of significance value (Q) in the light of the random-effects model.

3.3 Fifthly, effect size calculation

The effect size in quasi-experimental studies was calculated as the difference between the means of the experimental and control groups divided by the common standard deviation. Additionally, Pearson's correlation coefficient was used as a measure of effect size for correlational studies.

3.4 Sixthly, publication bias assessment

Publication bias refers to the irregular representation of studies published in the literature, resulting from a higher probability of publishing studies with significant effects. This bias can influence the results of meta-analysis [ 42 ]. Researchers in meta-analysis studies have examined a set of peer-reviewed scientific studies published in journals, although there are similar studies that have not had the opportunity to be published in those journals for one reason or another, raising doubts about the possibility of bias in the results they reach. Hence, the importance of assessing publication bias becomes evident. For this purpose, Egger's regression test was used, which is a test of regression analysis for non-symmetrical funnel plot. It relies on the value "t" and its significance, so if the "t" value is not significant, it indicates no bias.

3.5 Seventhly, heterogeneity assessment

Heterogeneity analysis is a common approach in meta-analysis. It examines the likelihood of observing the variation displayed by effect sizes if sampling error is what makes them different [ 21 ]. In the current research, heterogeneity was evaluated using the Cochran's Q test, and the I 2 statistic [ 27 ]. The Q statistic follows a Chi-square distribution with degrees of freedom (n-1), while the I 2 statistic represents a percentage of the total variation across studies attributed to heterogeneity rather than chance. The test also examines the null hypothesis of homogeneity, stating that all studies evaluate the same effect [ 27 ].

3.6 Data analysis

The researchers of the current study used the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) V.3.3.07 software to analyze the data extracted from previous studies (n = 10).

4.1 First question results

“What is the effect size average of the impact of enrichment program interventions based on future problem-solving skills for gifted students in fostering their cognitive dimensions, according to correlational designs?"

To answer this question, the researchers used the following:

The heteroscedasticity test was employed to ascertain whether the observed variability in effect sizes within the research and study sample significantly deviated from the expected variability attributable to sampling error. This determination was crucial in identifying the appropriate model for aggregating effect sizes, as illustrated in Table 2 .

Table 2 clearly demonstrates the outcome of the heterogeneity test, which attests to its statistical significance (P = 0.037). The observed value stands at Q = 10.39 with degrees of freedom df = 2, markedly exceeding the critical Chi-squared (X 2 ) table value at a 95% confidence level. Furthermore, the heterogeneity ratio index (I 2 = 80.14%) underscores a substantial degree of heterogeneity among the various studies, indicating a dearth of common effect size. This, in turn, suggests a marked incongruity among the studies. Given the considerable variation in effect sizes across different studies, it is imperative to subject them to analysis in accordance with the random effects model. In this model, the common effect is construed as the mean value of these respective effects [ 16 ].

Moreover, the tabulated data in Table 2 unveil that the common effect size, as posited by the random effects model, is estimated at 0.531 with a standard error of 0.004 and a 95% confidence interval spanning from 0.317 to 0.694. This estimate is consistent with the characterization of a substantial effect size, as delineated by [ 17 ]. Consequently, the influence of enrichment programs tailored for intellectually gifted students, particularly concerning the development of their cognitive dimensions through the utilization of a correlational design, is indeed of considerable large.

In the assessment of publication bias, researchers employed the regression analysis test by Egger, yielding a coefficient "t" (1.15), with one degree of freedom, with P value of 0.455. This value bears no statistical significance, signifying the absence of publication bias.

4.2 Second question results

“To what extent does the effect size average of the impact of enrichment program interventions targeting future problem-solving skills for gifted students vary in terms of their cognitive dimension development according to correlational designs, as a result of participant type (males, females, both) and educational level (elementary, middle, high school)”

To answer this question the researchers used Analysis of Modified Variables, as follows:

The researchers employed a modified analysis to discern whether the impact of enrichment program interventions on the cognitive dimensions of gifted students varies depending on the type of participants (males, females, both), and the educational level (primary, middle, secondary). This revelation is elucidated through Table 3 .

It is evident from Table 3 that statistically significant disparities in the effect size of enrichment program interventions on the cognitive dimensions of gifted students are attributed to the gender of the participants (males, females, both), in favor of females (P = 0.004), and the educational stage (primary, middle, secondary), in favor of the secondary level (P < 0.001).

4.3 Third question results

“What is the effect size average of the impact of enrichment program interventions based on future problem-solving skills for gifted students in fostering their cognitive dimensions, according to quasi-experimental designs?”

An assessment of heterogeneity test was employed to ascertain whether the observed variability in effect sizes within the research and study sample significantly deviated from the expected variability attributable to sampling error. This determination was crucial in identifying the appropriate model for aggregating effect sizes, as illustrated in Table 4 .

Table 4 reveals that the heterogeneity test results signify significance (< 0.001 = p). The value (Q = 139.1) is accompanied by degrees of freedom (6), surpassing the critical Chi-squared value (X 2 ) and indicating a 95% confidence interval. Moreover, the heterogeneity ratio (I 2 = 96%) indicates a substantial degree of heterogeneity among studies. This suggests that the research and study samples do not share a common effect size, highlighting their inherent heterogeneity. Given the variation in effect sizes across studies, it is imperative to analyze them according to the random-effects model, where the common effect is the average of these effects [ 16 ]. Furthermore, Table 4 demonstrates that the common effect size, according to the random-effects model, is 0.745 with a standard error of 0.003 and a 95% confidence interval ranging from 0.436 to 0.789. This places the common effect size within the realm of substantial effect sizes, as indicated by [ 17 ]. Consequently, the impact of enrichment programs for gifted students on cognitive dimensions development, employing a quasi-experimental design, is large.

Publication Bias Assessment: The researchers employed Egger's regression analysis test, yielding a "t" value of 0.3211 with degrees of freedom (5) at a p- value 0.7623. This statistically non-significant value suggests an absence of publication bias.

4.4 Fourth question results

“To what extent does the average magnitude of the impact of enrichment program interventions targeting future problem-solving skills for gifted students vary in terms of their cognitive dimension development according to quasi-experimental designs, as a result of participant type (males, females, both) and educational stage (elementary, middle, high school)?”

To answer this question, the researchers used the Analysis of the modified variables: Researchers employed modified analysis to discern whether the effect of enrichment program interventions for gifted students on the development of their cognitive dimensions differs depending on the type of participants (males, females, males and females together), and the academic stage (primary, intermediate, secondary). This is evident from Table 5 ,

It is apparent from Table 5 that there are statistically significant differences in the average effect size according to the type of participants (males, females, males and females together), in favor of both males and females together (P < 0.001). Additionally, statistically significant differences were found according to the academic level (primary, intermediate, secondary) in favor of the secondary level (P = 0.001).

5 Discussion

The primary aim of the present study was to conduct a rigorous analysis with the intent of elucidating the impacts of enrichment program interventions on the development of prospective problem-solving skills and the cognitive dimensions within a cohort of gifted students. This was achieved through the employment of both correlational and quasi-experimental research designs, with the purpose of unveiling the moderating factors intrinsic to these effects. For this purpose, a total of ten research inquiries were subjected to scrutiny, encompassing three correlational studies and seven quasi-experimental investigations conducted from 2010 to 2023. The ensuing discourse will center upon the findings pertaining to each of the study's research questions, which are as follows:

This section starts with the first question enquiring about the effect size average of the impact of enrichment program interventions based on future problem-solving skills for gifted students in fostering their cognitive dimensions, according to correlational designs. The results, in response to this question, have determined that the common effect size, as per the random-effects model, attains a value of 0.531 with a standard error of 0.004 and 95% confidence intervals (0.317, 0.694). This effect size, for future problem-solving program interventions, resides within the realm of substantial effects, in accordance with what [ 17 ] has elucidated. Consequently, the influence of future problem-solving program interventions on the development of cognitive dimensions in gifted students, utilizing the correlational design, is indeed large. Researchers expound that future problem-solving programs are efficacious in the cultivation of cognitive dimensions among gifted students, guiding them towards success in both their personal and professional lives. It is noteworthy that education specialists must direct enrichment programs to meet the needs of gifted students in this field and design programs commensurate with the knowledge and skills of gifted students at various educational stages. Moreover, these programs must be oriented toward enhancing critical and creative thinking skills among gifted students in both academic and non-academic domains, while providing the requisite resources to accomplish these objectives. Interest in the development of future problem-solving programs for gifted students is steadily increasing, as problem-solving is deemed an exceedingly crucial skill in the modern age. Cognitive dimensions for problem-solving skills encompass critical and creative thinking, idea and problem analysis, theoretical and practical thinking, and the ability to make appropriate decisions [ 24 , 46 ]. Research suggests that future problem-solving programs contribute to the development of critical and creative thinking capabilities among gifted students. Indeed, [ 8 ] study demonstrated that enrichment programs for future problem-solving assist gifted students in developing their analytical and critical thinking skills, thereby enhancing their academic performance. Future problem-solving programs also aid in the development of theoretical and practical thinking. A study conducted in 2021 revealed that enrichment programs for future problem-solving help gifted students enhance their ability to analyze problems theoretically and practically, thereby enabling them to make sound decisions in diverse situations [ 54 ]

Furthermore, the current study's findings align with those conducted by [ 43 ], which showed that enrichment programs for future problem-solving facilitate gifted students in developing their ability to make appropriate decisions, thereby assisting them in achieving success in their personal and professional lives.

Then, we discuss the second question enquiring about the extent to the effect size average of the impact of enrichment program interventions targeting future problem-solving skills for gifted students vary in terms of their cognitive dimension development according to correlational designs, as a result of participant type (males, females, both) and educational level (elementary, middle, high school. To respond to this question, researchers used a modified analysis to discern whether the impact of future problem-solving intervention programs for gifted students on the cultivation of their cognitive dimension skills, as per correlational designs, indicated statistically significant differences in effect size attributed to the participant variables (males, females, males and females together), favoring the female participants, and the educational stage (elementary, middle, secondary), favoring the secondary stage. Researchers expound upon these findings by acknowledging the divergent aptitudes and requirements of gifted students across various educational stages. Indeed, students in the lower echelons may necessitate a greater emphasis on fundamental skills, while those in the higher echelons yearn for more substantial challenges. The nature of talent also varies among students participating in enrichment programs, with some demonstrating academic inclinations and others displaying artistic or socio-emotional proclivities. These differences significantly influence their responses to program interventions. The enrichment programs exhibit variances in terms of content, session duration, resource availability, and the expertise of supervisors, all of which contribute to disparities in the magnitude of the effect. Thus, disparities in the effect size of enrichment programs can be attributed to multiple variables related to the nature of the students, program content, and methodologies, as elucidated by experimental designs in this domain. Studies conducted in this domain [ 5 , 56 ] have demonstrated the pivotal role played by participant characteristics in determining the effect size of enrichment programs on the cognitive dimensions of gifted students. Results have shown statistically significant differences in the effect size of enrichment programs in favor of females. This might be attributed to gender disparities in educational interests, proclivities, and career aspirations, all of which influence the responses of gifted students to enrichment program interventions. Regarding the educational stage, studies [ 32 , 38 ] have indicated substantial variations in the effect size of enrichment programs across different educational stages. It has been revealed that the secondary stage yields superior results in the development of cognitive dimensions in gifted students compared to other stages. This can be attributed to variations in academic achievement levels and cognitive maturity among different educational stages, which impact the responses of gifted students to enrichment program interventions.

Enrichment programs for gifted students aim to provide educational opportunities that transcend standard curricula and intellectually challenge advanced learners. The effectiveness of such programs has been the subject of diverse research studies. Many studies have shown that participation in enrichment programs positively impacts the academic performance of gifted students. Research conducted by [ 29 ] found that students who participated in enrichment programs exhibited higher academic achievements, increased motivation, and enhanced critical thinking skills compared to their non-participating peers. Enrichment programs often offer opportunities for gifted students to explore their talents and develop advanced skills in specific fields. Research conducted by [ 39 ] elucidated that specialized enrichment programs focusing on specific areas such as mathematics, science, or the arts can accelerate learning and develop expertise.

The third question enquiring about the effect size average of the impact of enrichment program interventions based on future problem-solving skills for gifted students in fostering their cognitive dimensions, according to quasi-experimental designs, is then discussed. Hence, to address this question, an analysis of heterogeneity was employed to discern whether the observed variability in the research sample exhibited significant disparities beyond the anticipated variance due to observational error. The findings unequivocally elucidate the significant influence of enrichment programs for gifted students on the cultivation of their cognitive dimensions. These programs center their focus on stimulating critical and imaginative thinking in gifted students, who are the quintessence of cognitive evolution. They proffer challenges that nurture their loftier intellectual capacities and kindle unconventional problem-solving approaches and innovative ideation, thereby augmenting their cognitive capital [ 26 , 44 ]. Furthermore, these educational initiatives encompass projects and experiential learning activities, affording students the opportunity to construct knowledge through practical application. The enrichment programs hone gifted students' acquisition of advanced cognitive skills, encompassing critical thinking, problem resolution, and decision-making, thereby impacting the evolution of their cognitive dimensions [ 40 , 41 ]. Researchers elucidate that enrichment programs for gifted students wield a formidable influence on the augmentation of their cognitive dimensions. These programs are geared toward nurturing critical and creative thinking, which constitute the bedrock of cognitive development. They instill challenges designed to foster higher mental faculties, stimulating students to employ alternative methods in problem-solving and conceiving fresh ideas, thereby amplifying their cognitive endowment.

These programs hinge upon skills-based learning, affording gifted students opportunities to construct knowledge through experiential acquisition. They train students in the acquisition of elevated cognitive skills such as critical thinking and problem resolution, which significantly contribute to the enhancement of their cognitive dimensions. For these reasons, a multitude of studies have demonstrated the efficacy of enrichment programs in advancing the cognitive dimensions of gifted students.

The study's results concur with several extant research endeavors, much like the study conducted by [ 30 , 34 ], which evinced that the enrichment training program substantially facilitated the acquisition of critical thinking and problem-solving skills among gifted students. A study by [ 34 ] revealed a marked increase in the levels of critical and creative thinking among gifted students. The findings of a study by [ 31 ] demonstrated that enrichment programs significantly contributed to the enhancement of cognitive thinking skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving, among gifted students.

Finally, this result related to question four, enquiring of to what extent the average magnitude of the impact of enrichment program interventions targeting future problem-solving skills for gifted students vary in terms of their cognitive dimension development according to quasi-experimental designs, as a result of participant type (males, females, both) and educational stage (elementary, middle, high school is discussed. To respond to this question, researchers undertook an elucidation of results, which unveiled statistically significant discrepancies in the mean effect size upon participant type (males, females, males and females together), favoring both males and females jointly. Furthermore, statistically meaningful distinctions about the educational level (elementary, middle, secondary) were unearthed, favoring the secondary level.

The findings in these studies revealed statistically significant disparities in the mean magnitude of the impact based on participant type and educational level. Concerning participant type, studies discovered disparities in the impact size of enrichment programs in favor of both males and females jointly, indicating that enrichment programs can be beneficial to both genders alike. Researchers expound this by suggesting that gifted individuals in the realm of sciences, such as critical and creative thinking, foster within themselves the zeal and enthusiasm to further their learning in this domain. The enrichment program proffers a diverse array of educational enriching activities, thus aiding in honing the students' skills in various scientific fields. The selection of students partaking in the enrichment program is contingent upon their distinguished prowess in the sciences, signifying their aptitude to assimilate and apply advanced scientific concepts more effectively. Regarding educational level, studies [ 14 , 22 ] found disparities in the impact size of enrichment programs in favor of the secondary level, implying that enrichment programs may be more efficacious in nurturing the cognitive abilities of gifted students in subsequent educational stages. This may be attributable to variations in mental and educational maturity levels and interests across educational stages.

This can be expounded upon by positing that gifted students possess greater experience in various academic subjects and exhibit higher levels of mental and intellectual maturity, rendering them more adept at comprehending and applying complex concepts and skills offered in enrichment programs.

Additionally, the educational interests of gifted students evolve across educational stages, as they become more specialized in specific fields and develop particular skills. Hence, enrichment programs that concentrate on these fields and skills may be more effective in enhancing their intellectual capacities [ 36 ]. These findings align with the study conducted by [ 23 ] to evaluate the effectiveness of the enrichment program employed by high school students in advancing their athletic intelligence and sports thinking. The results demonstrated significant enhancements in the levels of athletic intelligence and sports thinking among students who participated in the enrichment program. They also concur with a study by [ 8 ] assessing the efficacy of the enrichment program utilized by elementary and middle school students in improving their scientific skills. The study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the scientific enrichment program in enhancing the levels of scientific, intellectual, and creative thinking among gifted students in elementary and middle schools. The results of the enrichment program were assessed using scientific intelligence and scientific and creative thinking assessments, and the results of students who participated in the enrichment program were compared with those of a group of students who did not participate. The results indicated that the enrichment program achieved positive results in improving the levels of scientific intelligence and scientific and creative thinking in students.

6 Conclusion

In this study, the researchers analyzed the outcomes of previous research published between the years 2010 and 2023. These works delved into the future problem-solving skills within the domain of nurturing the gifted. This analysis was conducted via the meta-analysis approach, which hinges on the examination of results from prior studies, coupled with quantitative evaluation through various statistical procedures. These include impact assessment, magnitude assessment, and control of potential publication bias. After thorough examination of databases and journals, as many as 288 studies relevant to the study's title and objectives were identified. Studies that did not align with the prescribed study criteria were excluded, resulting in a reduction of the studies to ten. The study primarily focused on ascertaining the effectiveness of interventions pertaining to future problem-solving programs in developing the cognitive dimensions of gifted students. This evaluation was conducted according to correlational and quasi-experimental designs. Furthermore, the investigation sought to determine the average variance in the impact size of these future problem-solving interventions on the development of cognitive dimensions among gifted students, categorized by participant gender (male, female, and mixed) and academic stage (primary, middle, and secondary). The study's findings in this regard indicated that the effectiveness of future problem-solving program interventions, under both correlational and quasi-experimental research designs, demonstrated a high degree of effectiveness. As for the examination of the average variance in the impact size of future problem-solving program interventions on the development of cognitive dimensions, considering the participant type and academic stage, the results displayed disparities based on the research designs. Studies adopting correlational research designs pointed to differences based on academic stage, favoring the secondary stage, and gender-based differences favoring females concerning participant type. On the other hand, studies employing quasi-experimental research designs showed variations based on academic stage consistent with the findings from correlational research, favoring the secondary stage. However, concerning the participant type, there were statistically significant differences favoring both males and females.

7 Recommendations

In light of the findings derived, the researchers proffer the following suggestions:

Studies of this nature, as pursued in the current research, are exceedingly scarce in the realm of gifted education, and their outcomes cannot be universally extrapolated. Hence, an imperative requirement manifests for the execution of further investigations to validate result precision.

Those entrusted with the formulation of enrichment programs for the gifted ought to be rooted in the cultivation of future problem-solving competencies, while taking into account a multitude of factors, notably their alignment with the age bracket, gender, and societal cultural context. It has been observed that differential impact surfaces across the more advanced developmental stages.

8 Future proposed studies

Future studies suggest that meta-analysis studies are needed to reveal the effect of future problem-solving skills on other variables (psychological, social, and emotional) through experimental and correlational designs. It is also recommended that more meta-analysis studies on enrichment programs based on future problem-solving on studies published in peer-reviewed journals to clarify the effect of culture and form a clear picture of the results.

9 Limitations of the study

Like any other study, this research has some limitations. For example, the study targeted only the previous literature available in Arabic and English, ignoring her studies conducted in different languages, which may have some biases. It is to be noted that the studies related to males were very few compared to those about females or both sexes. The study included only those with open sources due to the difficulties in accessing non-open source articles. Furthermore, while searching, about 32 reports were not retrieved, which might have some influence on the study findings.

Data availability

The data used to support the findings of this study are available upon request. However, please note that the data for this article were generated as part of a project funded by King Faisal University. Due to the nature of the funding and to protect intellectual property rights, the data cannot be shared without prior permission from King Faisal University.

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This work was supported by the Deanship of Scientific Research, Vice President for Graduate Studies and Scientific Research, King Faisal University, Saudi Arabia [Grant No. 241554].

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Contribution: The contributions of each author to the research paper are as follows: Khaled Elballah—Formal Analysis—Funding Acquisition Norah Alkhalifah—Investigation.—Research Methodology Asma Alomari—Conceptualization—Data Curation Amal Alghamdi—Project Administration—Resources—Software.

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Elballah, K., Alkhalifah, N., Alomari, A. et al. Enhancing cognitive dimensions in gifted students through future problem-solving enrichment programs. Discov Sustain 5 , 248 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-024-00470-5

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Cognitive Development
Cognitive development refers to changes with age in human ontogeny in mental processes and abilities, that is, the development of higher mental processes such as problem solving, reasoning, conceptualizing, classifying, and planning, as well as more basic processes such as perception and language. Although modern developmental psychology ...
How to Promote Cognitive Development: 23 Activities & Games
Memory, Concentration, and Matching games are fun and easy activities for kids to play to encourage cognitive development. 11. Stroop effect games. Stroop effect activities involve reading a word written in a different color or saying the color of the ink and not the actual word. It requires focus and attention.
Vygotsky's Theory of Cognitive Development
Cognitive development is a socially mediated process in which children acquire cultural values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society.
The Sweet Spot: When Children's Developing Abilities, Brains, and
Thus, 5-year-olds' more limited cognitive abilities seem to aid their problem-solving when devising more unconventional, creative solutions. Finally, ongoing cognitive development can also explain age-related changes in children's ability to remember goal-irrelevant information.
Cognitive Developmental Milestones
Cognitive milestones represent important steps forward in a child's development. Cognitive development refers to how children think, learn, explore, remember, and solve problems. Historically, babies were often thought of as simple, passive beings. Prior to the 20th century, children were often seen simply as miniature versions of adults.
Piaget's Stages: 4 Stages of Cognitive Development & Theory
Initiative versus guilt (3-6 years) Industry versus inferiority (6 years-puberty) Identity versus identity confusion (puberty-young adulthood) Not all of the developmental stages in Erikson's theory correspond to the cognitive stages proposed by Piaget. For example, Piaget's preoperational stages overlap with the second and third ...
Theories of cognitive development: From Piaget to today
Jean Piaget, by the scope, depth and importance of his work, is undoubtedly the major figure of twentieth-century psychology. As Flavell, Miller, and Miller wrote in their textbook about theories of development: "theories of cognitive development can be divided into B. P. (Before Piaget), and A. P. (After Piaget), because of the impact of his ...
Supporting Cognitive Development: Experiences and Activities
This lesson describes how you can engage children in activities to promote cognitive development and address the individual needs of all learners. Lesson Navigation. 1. ... Opportunities for exploration and problem solving are tied with the physical world, the life sciences, earth and the environment. A fallen bird's nest, the illumination of ...
Problem Solving
The major cognitive processes in problem solving are representing, planning, executing, and monitoring. The major kinds of knowledge required for problem solving are facts, concepts, procedures, strategies, and beliefs. Classic theoretical approaches to the study of problem solving are associationism, Gestalt, and information processing.
Cognitive control, intentions, and problem solving in skill learning
Cognitive control uses highly generalised representations and problem solving methods which are an inefficient means for producing the specialised responses of skill (Anderson, 1982). In other words, cognitive control is specialised for reasoning, not action control, and it is a clumsy tool to use for action control.
Problem-Solving Strategies and Obstacles
Several mental processes are at work during problem-solving. Among them are: Perceptually recognizing the problem. Representing the problem in memory. Considering relevant information that applies to the problem. Identifying different aspects of the problem. Labeling and describing the problem.
Problem-solving: Why is it important and how to practice it
Practicing problem-solving can help your child overcome challenges, try flexible ways of thinking, and become more confident and independent in the process. Problem-solving skills are also crucial to your child's cognitive development. They encourage your child's brain to make new connections and process information in new ways.
Problem Solving
12 months —Your baby uses more purposeful levels of problem solving and is no longer limited to what is immediately in front of her. She can now push a toy aside to choose another one. Problem Solving is an important component in the cognitive development of your Infant Whole Child used by parents, teachers, babysitters and child carers.
Full article: Productive Problem-Solving Behaviors of Students with
Frameworks for Mathematical Problem Solving. One widely accepted and useful definition of a mathematical problem is that a problem exists when the procedure for solving the task is unknown to the solver, the number of solutions is uncertain, and the task requires critical thinking (Schoenfeld, Citation 2011).Word problems are a type of problem that are frequently found in classroom instruction.
Student-Centered Active Learning Improves Performance in Solving Higher
Student-centered active learning (SCAL) shifts the focus from the teacher to the student. Implementing SCAL requires the development of new forms of assessment beyond memorization and comprehension. This paper aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of SCAL by analyzing student performance at different cognitive levels. In flipped classrooms, students completed tasks with varying cognitive demands.
Enhancing cognitive dimensions in gifted students through future
This study has undertaken a scrutiny of research pertaining to enrichment programs based on future problem-solving skills, aimed at enhancing the cognitive dimensions of gifted students between the years 2010 and 2023. The study used a sample of 10 studies; 3 correlational studies and 7 quasi-experimental studies. The study employed the descriptive-analytical approach by following a meta ...