Jean Piaget and Cognitive Psychology

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

These include the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational and lastly the formal operational stage, all of which have set and specific age groups. The sensorimotor stage spans from birth till two years of age, This is when infants learn and explore primarily with their senses and movement. The preoperational stage spans from 2 years of age to 7, during this stage infancy comes to an end and a language development occurs. The concrete operational stage starts at 7 years of age and lasts till 12, throughout this stage children are able to truly think logically and can imagine the consequences of an event happening without it actually happening. Lastly the formal operational stage includes ages 12 and older, This is the final stage of development and involves the understanding of complex thought processes and increased sophistication. Thus Piaget concluded that a 12 year old or older would be able to pass formal operations where as a child younger than 12 simply could

Cognitive development is defined as the growth of mental faculties from birth to adult age. This

Piaget considered the process of equilibrium an important factor in the cognitive growth and development of a child.(Piaget , 1952) This was the ground were he was criticize because he said that children must be allowed to do their own learning(Piaget,1952). Lourenco & Machado (1996)in defense of Piaget theory realized that Piaget has took into consideration the fact that humans progressively develop or mature to higher states of cognitive development and realized that children acquire knowledge transmitted by parents, teachers ,and books, Piaget called this "social transmission." Piaget believed that when a child hears contradictory statements that challenge established schemes, equilibrium is disturbed. Piaget called such a disruption in equilibrium cognitive conflict or disequilibrium. When children experience cognitive conflict they set out in search of an answer that will enable them to achieve states of equilibrium.(Lourenco & Machado,1996)

The preoperational stage is when infants become older, young children and they are able to think in a more symbolic way. In this stage children start to learn the difference between real and make believe, past and future. They tend to have more of an imagination as they grow older. Children in the preoperational stage still are not completely logical with their thinking. They go more off intuition. Do more of what they want to do, not what is the best thing to do. They are still too young to grasp the concept of cause and effect. They also do not understand time and comparison yet.

The sensorimotor stage infants develop their schemas through sensory and motor activities. Followed by the preoperational stage where children begin to think symbolically using words, to represent concepts. Next concrete operational stage children display many important thinking skills, like ability to think logically. Finally, formal operational stage young adolescences formulate their operations by abstract and hypothetical thinking. Piaget’s theory provides ample and insightful perspectives, so it remains the central factor of contemporary

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).

At the centre of Piaget's theory is the principle that cognitive development occurs in a series of four distinct, universal stages, each characterized by increasingly sophisticated and

“According to Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development, it states that all children go through specific stages as their brain matures. It also stated that these stages are completed in a fixed order within all children, according to their range of age (Atherton).” In other words, one cannot expect a two month old baby to solve simple math problems as that of a five year old. There are four stages in which Piaget grouped the development of a child according to their age groups, in which children interact with people and their environment. The sensorimotor stage (birth until age 2) children use their senses to explore their environment. During this stage, children learn how to control objects, although they fail to understand that these objects if not within their view continue to exist. The preoperational stage (2 until age 7) children are not able to see other's viewpoints other than their own. In other words, if the same amount of water is poured into a short wide glass and then a tall thin glass the child will perceive that the taller glass has more water because of the height. The concrete operational stage (7 until 12) children begin to think logically, but only with a practical aid. The last stage of Piaget’s cognitive theory is the formal operation stage (12 through adulthood) in which children develop abstract thinking and begin to think logically in their minds (Piaget).

In this paper, I will provide examples to distinguish between a 3-year-old preschooler and a 9-year-old student and their thinking patterns. To help with this, I will be using Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Piaget developed the idea that children must pass through several different stages in order to get to the sophisticated thinking of adulthood. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development consisted of four stages: the sensorimotor (birth-2 years of age), pre-operational (2-7 years of age), concrete operational (7-11 years of age), and formal operational (11 years-adulthood). Therefore, this paper will distinguish between a 3-year-old preschooler in the pre-operational stage and a 9-year old student in the concrete operational

Children who are in the formal operation stage of developmenthave the ability to think logically and abstractly meaning then can tackle higher level problems. They can also reason in the theoretical sense letting them comprehend matters from an outside environment. According toPiaget this the ultimate stage of development, it enables them to grasp foreign concepts as long although they will still need to revise their knowledge base from previously learnt material. Piaget claims that this way of thinking was as powerful as it would get and can be improved via practicing and continuing the

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.

Cognitive development is the development of thought processes, including remembering, problem solving, and decision-making, from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. Historically, the cognitive development of children has been studied in a variety of ways. The oldest is through intelligence tests. An example of this is the Stanford Binet Intelligence Quotient test. IQ scoring is based on the concept of mental age, according to which the scores of a child of average intelligence match his or her age. IQ tests are widely used in the United States, but they have been criticized for defining intelligence too narrowly. In contrast to the emphasis placed on a child¡¦s natural abilities by

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

The first stage of Piaget’s development theory is the sensorimotor stage which takes place in children most commonly 0 to 2 years old. In this stage, thought is developed through direct physical interactions with the environment. Three major cognitive leaps in this stage are the development of early schemes, the development of goal-oriented behavior, and the development of object permanence. During the early stages, infants are only aware of what is immediately in front of them. They focus on what they