Cognitive Development According to Piaget Essay

Cognitive developmental theories provide a framework for understanding about how children act and perceive the world. However, every theory has both strengths and weaknesses. A certain theory may explain one aspect of cognitive development very well, but poorly address or completely ignore other aspects that are just as important. Two well known theories of cognitive development are Piaget’s stage theory and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. As I plan to be a pediatric nurse, these two theories will be evaluated based on how applicable they are to the field of nursing.

Psychologist Jean Piaget was the first to make a study surrounding the theory of cognitive development. The interesting thing about Piaget’s way of studying was that he was more concerned about how children’s thoughts got to the answer in relation to their IQ rather than simply their ability to answer a question correctly.

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.

Piaget (1936) was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development; contributing a theory of child cognitive development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a series of simple but ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities (McLeod, 2009). Analysing of this information indicates that Piaget undertook multiple educational studies, which undoubtedly helped with the creation of his theory. Questions could be asked in relation to this theory, for example, what were the specifics of these theories and how do they support child development? The theory can be implemented into teaching practices however there maybe strength and weaknesses as a result.

When looking at the cognition infancy stage of birth to age 2 that is considered the sensorimotor stage. Within the sensorimotor stage children are learning though observation

The first stage is called the Sensorimotor stage. It occupies the first two years of a child's life, from birth to 2 years old. It is called the Sensorimotor stage because in it children are occupied with sensing things and moving them. From these activities they learn what makes things happen, what the connections are between actions and their consequences. They learn to grasp and hold and what happens when they let go.

According to Piaget (1929, 1954, 1963), the process of adaptation helps us to understand how a child constructs his/her world. Taking Piaget's theory of Cognitive Development with particular focus on the Sensori-Motor stage of development, I am going to discuss how understanding this stage might influence me when working with a baby as a nursing student in the future.

When talking about human development, we are referring to the growth of humans in all aspects throughout their life. In this essay, I will be discussing two types of human development. Cognitive development, which is to do with the ability to think, remember and reason, and Social development, which involves relationships and interactions in the world around the individual. I will focus on how they relate to two significant experiences in my life and how these experiences were critical to my development as a learner. I will do this by analysing these experiences through Piaget’s theory of cognitive development including key concepts of equilibration, adaptation and former-operation cognitive stage, and Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory including key concepts of the microsystem, mesosystem, and macrosystem.

The second sub-stage is primary circular reactions that occur around one to four months of age. In this stage infants start to organize schemes for sensory and motor activities, actions are voluntarily repeated, but the infant actions are still centered on bodily experiences and instinct satisfaction. The third sub-stage is when the baby starts to focus on the external world and secondary circular reactions; this happens around four to eight months. Babies also develop schemes for repeating actions with interesting effects on things and people in the world during this sub-stage. The fourth sub-stage is coordinating the secondary circular reactions around eight to twelve months. In this stage infants can organize a series of mental structures for various actions and develop intentionality of behavior, they can separate schemes for means and ends, and facilitate the accomplishment of simple goals. The fifth sub-stage is when the external-oriented attention generates and tertiary circular reactions, this is from twelve to eighteen months. Around this time infants grow into toddlers and they seek discovery of new information about how things and people work. The final/sixth sub-stage is pretty important and several development milestones occur, this is eighteen to twenty four months. In this sub-stage object permanence is acquired and toddlers understand objects continue to exist independent from self-generated actions and sensory experiences. (Petrill,

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.

Piaget, Erikson, Skinner and Vygotsky all have similarities and differences within their approaches in regards to cognitive development. Firstly, Piaget’s theory of cognitive development describes the changes in logical thinking of children and adolescents. Piaget suggested that children proceed through four stages that are based on maturation and experience. Piaget managed numerous intelligence tests to children and this led to him becoming interested in the types of faults children of different ages were most probable to make. Piaget hypothesized that cognitive development proceeds in four genetically determined stages that always follow the same sequential order (Developmental and Learning Theories, 2011). The four stages in Piaget theory are the Sensorimotor stage (infancy), the Pre-operational stage (Toddler and Early Childhood), the Concrete operational stage (Elementary and early adolescence), and the Formal operational stage (Adolescence and adulthood). Furthermore, Piaget’s theory is guided by assumptions of how learners interact with their environment and how they integrate new knowledge and information on existing knowledge. In brief, Piaget proposed that children are active learners who build knowledge from their environments and they learn through assimilation and accommodation, and complex cognitive development occurs through equilibration (Developmental and Learning Theories, 2011). Piaget also believed that the interaction with physical and social

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

The three adaptive processes for cognitive development are assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium. These are three agents

For this paper I will be exploring Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget, theorized that children progress through four key stages of cognitive development that change their understanding of the world. By observing his own children, Piaget came up with four different stages of intellectual development that included: the sensorimotor stage, which starts from birth to age two; the preoperational stage, starts from age two to about age seven; the concrete operational stage, starts from age seven to eleven; and final stage, the formal operational stage, which begins in adolescence and continues into adulthood. In this paper I will only be focusing on the

Jean Piaget, a cognitivist, believed children progressed through a series of four key stages of cognitive development. These four major stages, sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational, are marked by shifts in how people understand the world. Although the stages correspond with an approximate age, Piaget’s stages are flexible in that if the child is ready they can reach a stage. Jean Piaget developed the Piagetian cognitive development theory. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development proposes that a child’s intellect, or cognitive ability, progresses through four distinct stages. The emergence of new abilities and ways of processing information characterize each stage. Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of mental development. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.