Piaget Versus Vygotsky: Child Development--Competing theories on how children develop, either independently or through interacting with others.

Every adult alive has developed from a simple cognitive to a more advanced one, but accepted theories that explain how this occurs are still at odds with one another. The major disagreements are about whether changes are brought about as primarily a result of the child working out solutions to problems internally, or changes in the individual are the result of negotiations between the child and the external world. Two of the more notable theories, …

…prescriptive thought being embedded in language is the Japanese word watashi to indicate either "I" or "we". There are words in the language to precisely distinguish between I and we, but they are rarely used. Vygotsky's theory is inherently cross-cultural in its design because it centers on the notion that culture is a variable in the development of children's cognitive abilities. Piaget's research methods are dated and his testing methods were biased in many instances.