Assess The Prevalence Of Piaget 's Cognitive Principles Among Pre Operational Children

Jean Piaget is a key figure for development, focusing on cognitive constructivism – that being that we must learn from experience and development, building on knowledge that has already been developed. The strengths and weaknesses of Piaget 's cognitive development theory will be discussed.

The child I observed for the project was my five year old cousin. The activity I observed her doing is playing dress up. She likes to dress up as batgirl, wear capes, and dress up as Elsa from Frozen because they both have brown hair. This is a prime example Piaget’s preoperational state of cognitive development. This stage is described as when a child uses symbolic thinking, use of proper syntax and grammar to express full concepts. When she comes to our house she also enjoys riding her bike, coloring, playing games, and playing at the park. My mom helps her make homemade play doe; this allows her to learn how to make things. The combinations of those activities are good for intellectual, emotional, and physical growth.

Jean Piaget developed a systematic study of cognitive development. He conducted a theory that all children are born with a basic mental structure. He felt that their mental structure is genetically inherited and their learning evolved from subsequent learning and knowledge. Piaget’s theory is different from other theories and he was the first to study a child’s learning by using a systematic study of cognitive development. His theory was only concerning the learning of children, their development and not how they learn. He proposed stages of development marked more by qualitative differences than by a gradual increase in number and complexities of behavior or concepts. His goal for his theory was to explain the mechanisms a child uses from the infant stage to the growing child who develops into a thinking and reasoning individual when reasoning and using hypotheses. His theory was that cognitive development was how the brain reorganized mental processes over time due to biological maturation and the experiences they have in an environment. The three basic components to Piaget’s cognitive theory is schemas, adaption processes that allow the child to transition from one stage to another, and the four different stages of development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational.

My child’s name is Rose Marie Gutierrez. She is Mexican American and lives with both of her parents. Rose also has a little sister, Hope, that is three years younger than her. We all live together in a decent neighborhood. Rose and her sister get along just fine, although they do experience natural sibling arguments at times. Rose’s father and I have not had a perfect relationship and we separated for two years when Rose was ten. We got back together for the kids when Rose entered middle school, but sometimes still fight.

During this stage the child is beginning to use languages, and their imagination is developing. One technique of teaching during this stage would be to use imagery, props, and have short instruction. The teacher would need to use a kinesthetic type of learning environment and get the student involve with learning.

My childhood in terms of Piagets cognitive development stages have went well I’m now in the 12 through adulthood range which is the formal operational stage. This stage is where thinking about hypothetical scenarios and processing abstract thoughts begin. The abstract logic is potential for mature moral reasoning .

According to Piaget adolescent are in formal operational stage. The cognitive development in comparison to physical development is less visible. However, cognitive development greatly influences the way adolescent think about themselves, peers, relationship and the world around them. The adolescents in formal high school education enter into Piaget’s final stage of formal operations which results in the development of abstract thinking.

It is mindboggling to reflect on how much things change as we grow up. Our life’s circumstances, our preferences, our hobbies, our goals… it really is endless. From infancy to old age our views on the way we see the world and what motivates us to succeed are constantly changing. Positive encouragement, play time, love, money, popularity and success are just a handful of ideas that I think of when considering what motivates a person to do their best. However, we rarely think about cognitive development as a source of motivation. I am interested in researching the development of what motivates humans and how it may change throughout the lifespan.

In this paper, Piaget’s Stages of cognitive development will be briefly explained, and I will explain where my cousin, Laura, is according to these stages. The real names of people discussed in this paper have been protected by not using their real names, so their personal information is confidential. My fifteen year old cousin Laura has been through many changes, and I have watched the rapid transformation in her personality, attitude, and way of thinking all in the past few years.

What are the major challenges to Piaget's theory of cognitive development and what aspects still have value?

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development is a theory built upon stages in the development of children. Each stage in this theory pertains to specific age ranges, and involves cognitive achievements and limitations distinct to that age. The theory attempts to depict how children understand the world throughout their development. Though the theory follows an age range with certain the theory itself should not always be seen as concrete (Bibace, 2013). Piaget’s theory of cognitive development can be used in classrooms around the world to have an underlying understanding of a child’s development based on their age. Piaget’s theory can also be used to help identify developmental delay in children compared to their peers at similar ages

           Natural observation of children can lend an insight into Piaget’s stages of development, which is the method chosen for this study. For this observation two children were selected, one male and one female. Subject A is a Caucasian male, approximately 3 years of age, who has middle-class parents, and a stay at home mom; Subject B child is a Caucasian female, also approximately 3 years of age, has middle-class parents, and a mother who works part-time. According to Piaget’s theory, these two subjects are in the preoperational stage. The preoperational stage is a time of complex thinking and reasoning, during this time,

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development consists of four stages, these stages include the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. When a person transitions from stage to stage they go through assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium.

Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980) conducted a research study of his own children to the stages of cognitive development. The research that Piaget conducted indicated that the children were an organism that has the tendency to grasps to certain environments. He also suggested that children tend to go through the same stages of development and there seem to be no individual differences. The stages that Piaget used to conduct his research were the sensorimotor stage (0-2), the pre-operational stage (2-7), the concrete operational stage (7-11), and the formal operational stage (11-15).

     Cognitive development is defined as gradual orderly changes by which mental processes become more complex and sophisticated, or the scientific study of how human beings develop in certain orderly stages as they get older. The actual study of cognition refers to the process of knowing; it is the study of all mental activities related to acquiring, storing, and using knowledge (Microsoft, 2001, p.3). How we as humans develop cognitively has been thoroughly observed and researched by Jean Piaget. He was a cognitivist: he believed that our environment stimulates us to learn on our own (make our own intelligence).