Inside the mind of a two-year-old: Cognitive development of curious toddlers
My two-year-old cousin knows all the words to his favorite Beatles songs, can distinguish a seaplane from a commercial airplane high up in the sky, and knows how to corral his family’s chickens back into their coop.
Every time I get to play with him or talk to him during a car ride, it’s amazing to see the observations he makes and hear what’s on his mind. It always makes me wonder: what’s going on inside his toddler brain?
The first several years of life are crucial for brain development — over a million new neural connections are formed every second, and the brain quadruples in size by age six. From developing the ability to differentiate sounds like their native language, to interpreting and recognizing faces, many important sensory cues begin to develop before the age of one. These are later complemented by early language skills and more complex cognitive functions.
Piaget’s Cognitive Theory aims to explain the mechanisms behind how infants and children grow to possess reasoning skills.
Much of what we understand about early cognitive development can be credited to Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget. His 1936 Theory of Cognitive Development laid the groundwork for understanding how a child mentally understands the world and how early education can supplement this process. The theory focused on early child development and the use of basic mental structures for all future learning and knowledge.
Built with three components, Piaget’s Cognitive Theory aims to explain the mechanisms behind how infants and children grow to possess reasoning skills. First, Piaget identified schemas — linked mental representations of the world that function as the building blocks of knowledge. By constantly developing new schema, we can create a system to organize information and relate it to different pieces of the world. As a child develops, their schema increase and become more complex, improving their perception of the world and creating the tools needed to understand or react to a situation.
Next, Piaget focused on the idea that intellectual growth requires both assimilation and accommodation for a child to adapt to the world. Assimilating uses schema to deal with a new situation, whereas accommodation occurs when existing schema doesn’t work in a situation and needs to be changed. Both of these pieces help develop acquired schema to a point of equilibrium where they can apply to most situations.
Finally, Piaget outlined four stages of cognitive development. Starting at the sensorimotor stage — from birth to age two — infants are able to evolve from using reflexes like sucking to learning intentional movements like reaching for a bottle. They also learn object permanence, understanding that objects exist even if hidden, by building upon the schema they have for that object.
From ages two to seven, as children move into the pre-operational stage, they become egocentric and are unable to understand any viewpoint other than their own. This is where a lot of pretend play starts to occur, as their brain starts to develop symbolism and imagination.
Many adults don’t realize how cognizant toddlers are of their surroundings.
In the concrete operational stage from ages 7–11, children experience a huge turning point in their cognitive development. Here, they begin to develop logical thought and preliminary problem-solving skills.
Another important concept gained here is conservation — understanding that even if the appearance of something changes, its quantity is still the same. This is often exemplified with a glass of milk that gets poured into a taller, skinnier glass. Before this stage, a child would think that there was more milk in the skinny glass. However, once they’re able to develop conservation, a child understands that it’s the same amount of milk that was in both glasses.
Piaget’s last stage of cognitive development is the formal operational stage from 11–16 years and into adulthood. This is where children begin to develop abstract thoughts and use complex problem-solving in their day-to-day lives.
Many adults don’t realize how cognizant toddlers are of their surroundings. Even infants understand that a person’s behavior is correlated with their emotions. Reading these social cues helps an infant to make sense of the world, store those schema, and use them to inform their future decisions and observations.
For my cousin, I can see his growing use of symbolism and imagination and I can only wonder what story he’s telling as he pushes his trains around their track. I’ve witnessed him applying his egocentric views to those around him — if he’s eating ice cream, then I too, should be eating ice cream. And I can continue to watch his motor skills grow as he feeds himself, tells me about school or sings a song, and runs after his chickens.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2012). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1114783109
