400 Journal (Ap Psychology)

Jean Piaget investigated how children think. According to Piaget, children’s thought processes change as they mature physically and interact with the world around them. Piaget believed children develop schema, or mental models, to represent the world. As children learn, they expand and modify their schema through the processes of assimilation and

Piaget suggests that development in children occurs in four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational.

Psychologist Jean Piaget developed the Piaget’s theory around the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. Piaget’s theory implies that cognitive growth advances in different stages, influenced by an instinctive need to know basis. The four stages of Piaget’s theory are, sensorimotor (birth to about two years old), preoperational (average two to seven years old), concrete operational (seven to eleven years old), and formal operational stage (eleven to undetermined years old).

Piaget’s theory was introduced by Jean Piaget who established four periods of cognitive development. The four stages are; Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal operational. The sensorimotor is the first stage and begins when the child is born and proceeds until the age of two years. The second stage is the preoperational stage and begins with the child is two years old and continues until the child reaches six years of age. The concrete stage is the third stage and begins when the child is six years old and proceeds until the age of 11 years old. The formal operational stage is the fourth stage and

Piaget claims that before the beginning of this stage, children 's ideas about different objects, are formed and dominated by the appearance of the object. For example, there appears to be more blocks when they are spread out, than when they are in a small pile. During the Concrete Operational Stage, children gradually develop the ability to 'conserve ', or learn that objects are not always the way that they appear to be. This occurs when children are able to take in many different aspects of an object, simply through looking at it. Children are able to begin to imagine different scenarios, or 'what if ' something was to happen. This is because they now have more 'operational ' thought. Children are generally first able to conserve ideas about objects with which they are most comfortable. Once children have learnt to conserve, they learn about 'reversibility '. This means that they learn that if things are changed, they will still be the same as they used to be. For example, they learn that if they spread out the pile of blocks, there are still as many there as before, even though it looks different!

Most of the criticism of Piaget’s work is in regards to his research methods. A major source of his inspiration for the theory was based on his observations of his own children. And because of this small sample group, people believe that it is difficult and incorrect to generalise his findings to a larger population. Similarly, many psychologists believe that Piaget underestimated the age which children could accomplish certain tasks and that sometimes children understand a concept before they are able to demonstrate their understanding of it. For example, children in the Sensorimotor stage may not search for a hidden object because their motor skills are not developed, rather than because they lack object permanence. This has been supported by evidence from Bower & Wishart (1972). They found that the way that an object is made to disappear influences the child’s response. As well as this, Piaget’s theory has been said to overestimate that every child and adult reaches the formal operational stage of knowledge development. Dasen (1994) claims that only a third of adults ever reach this stage.

Jean Piaget theory focuses on children and how they develop up to the age of twelve years old. I believe Piaget’s theory is true because he observed kids and say that once they see something that’s round like a ball, everything that is similar to that ball is going to be a ball even if it really isn’t a ball. Kids at a young age can’t figure out that an egg isn’t a ball, yes its round but its an egg is breakable. Piaget has four different stages of cognitive development. The first stage is sensorimotor which starts at birth up to the age of two. Sensorimotor is when infants use their senses and motor abilities to learn about the world around them, like grasping, pushing, tasting and anything similar. Sensorimotor is when infants keep grabbing their toes and eating them, or them laughing when they are playing “peek a-boo” with mom or dad. The second stage is preoperational which it starts at age two and ends at age

Piaget was a Swiss Psychologist and is most famous for his work and research on cognitive development. He put forward the Theory of Cognitive Development and key elements in this theory include the formation of “Schemas” and “organisation”. A “schema” is an individuals thoughts and beliefs about an object or event and “organisation” refers to the ability of the child to put stages of each period (eg. Sensori-Motor Period) into a logical order (Miller,

Piaget believe that children are active thinkers. He recognized that the mind develops through a series of irreversible stages. He also acknowledged that a child’s maturing brain builds schemas that are constantly assimilating and accommodating to the world around them. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is split into four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The sensorimotor stage occurs from birth to nearly two years of age. At this stage, infants learn about the world around them by sensing it and interacting within it. It is also in this stage that the idea of object permanence develops, that is, the awareness that things continue to exist even when they are not being observed. In my personal life, I am certain that in this stage of development I would have enjoyed peek-a-boo, because if I didn’t see it, to my developing mind, it wasn’t there at all. The second stage, preoperational, lasts from two years of age to seven years of

A central concept in Piaget’s theory is that of the schema. It is defined as an internalized representation of the world or an ingrained and systematic pattern or thoughts, action, and problem solving. Our schemata are developed through social learning or direct learning. Both processes involve assimilation, which is

The Formal Operational Stage of Piaget’s Cognitive Stages of Development is the stage that this child is in. This child was able to manipulate thoughts in his head, think creatively, and use abstract reasoning. These are all things a child of this age should be doing and he fits well into this stage of Piaget’s Cognitive

Most of the basic theories related to cognitive development in infancy and early childhood are based on Jean Piaget’s theories. He was a Swiss clinical psychologist known for his discoveries in child development. Piaget believed that children are born curious, they do experiments throughout their growing process to learn about the environment around them which is known as schemas. According to Piaget’s studies, the infants go through three main process to get a fully awareness of his/her surrounding environment, which are; Assimilation (when the baby learns to grab something, then she/he tries to grab other objects to see if it works) ,Accommodation (some objects can be lifted

During this stage the child starts to use symbolism so the development of language is very fast during this period, but they can not see other points of view, it is all from their own perception. Piaget believed that the child in this stage was not capable of logical thought (Lee and Gupta).

The preoperational stage is very important when explaining cognitive development. The preoperational stage is Piaget’s 2nd stage of development. It is a process that occurs from age 2-7. During this stage, children cannot break down messages and visuals so they will tend to only view issues from their point of view. For example, a tree could be taller to a child compared to an adult but because the child is in the preoperational stage they will assume that the adult imagines this the same way. Children will more than likely participate in role-playing games to which they will usually assume the role of the mother and father. The most viable part of this process would be that language development occurs. Children will not be able to use complex

Piaget’s theory also allowed us a way to accept and understand that children's cognitive behavior is intrinsically motivated. Social and other reinforcements do influence children's cognitive explorations but children learn because of the way they are built. In Piaget’s mind cognitive adapts to the environment through assimilation. Also accommodation is a type of biological adaptation (Flavell, 1996). According to Piaget in order to characterize cognitive development in humans we need to understand co-present in cognitive activity which is cognitive structure (Flavell, 1996). Piaget was the first psychologist to try explaining describing cognitive development. His argument is that intellectual advances are made through the equilibration process that has three steps: the first step is for the cognitive equilibrium to de at a low development level; then, cognitive disequilibrium has to be induced by discrepant or inassimilable phenomena and lastly cognitive equilibration has to be at a higher developmental level.