Jean Piaget 's Theory Of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development proposes that the developmental process of a child is the result of their brains maturity, their nervous system, and environmental factors. He believes the foundation of a child's ability to learn is through discovery learning (Gordon & Browne, 2016). Piaget suggests that a child’s logic of thinking is different from that of an adults. Children’s cognitive performance is directly related to the stage of development that they are in currently. Additionally, these stages are divided into sub-stages to provide greater insight into a child’s cognitive growth process. The initial stages of development is considered a difficult point to try to determine a child’s developmental

Piaget’s work countered the common assumption of children’s cognitive development in psychology. Before the work of Piaget everyone thought that children didn’t think as well as adults, and given from Piaget’s ideas it was found that children think in completely different ways when comparing them to adults (McLeod, 2015), genetically inherited and evolved were the two mental structure believed by Piaget that children had, these two ideas are what

Jean Piaget is a famous developmental psychologist who was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland (Presnell, 1999). He was the first psychologist to do an organized study of cognitive development and before his studies, it was commonly thought that children were less capable thinkers than adults. After doing many observations on his own three children and other kids, he has concluded that children think in differing ways than adults (McLeod, 2009). Piaget was seeking to find how children think about the world at different points in their development and how systematic changes occur in their thinking (Santrock, 2015). He developed the theory of cognitive development that states, “children actively construct their understanding of the world and go

Piaget believed there were four stages in a child’s cognitive development and sub stages within these stages. These stages have been the object of debate since Piaget introduced them and are still continuously debated. All of the stages are very concrete and large scale. They don’t account for children at a particular age who are behind or ahead. Piaget underestimated the capability of children to do particular things earlier than he predicted. However, Piaget overestimated the ability of younger children to understand the words used by adults and the implications of their actions. Piaget’s stages help schools to understand that children develop in different ways and hopefully provide schools with different, more stimulating ways to educate students. The four stages have provided a basis for child development, spurred other child psychologists into proving his theories incorrect and created the first step in the understanding of cognitive development.

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.

Throughout history, many brilliant minds have made impactful contributions in Psychology which have shaped our understandings of the human mind and our behaviors. Jean Piaget was by no means an exception. Piaget was a clinical psychologist known for his pioneering work in child development. He was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development. Over the course of his later career in child psychology, he identified four stages of mental development that took into account young people 's development from basic object identification to highly abstract thought. This paper will focus on Piaget’s life history and personality, as well as his theory on the cognitive developmental stages, its purpose, and its applications during his lifetime and now.

The first stage of Jean Piaget’s Cognitive development is the Sensorimotor Period. This stage is the earliest of cognitive growth. The Sensorimotor stage happen within the first two years of a child’s life. During this stage children are only aware of what is in front of them. They primarily focus what is in their possession at the moment, what they can get into, and their physical environment.

Children grow, learn, and develop as individuals throughout their lifespan. Not only do they physically change, but also they mentally mature. Jean Piaget researched and created four stages of cognitive development to describe how children’s thinking patterns change as they become older (Grison, Heatherton, and Gazzaniga, 2015). He describes their shifts in thinking into sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages.

Jean Piaget was a psychologist who believed that children progressed through different stages of cognitive development. He stated that the four stages of cognitive development, are ‘critical’ to children’s progress. The four distinct stages that Piaget suggested were: The sensorimotor stage 0-2 years, The preoperational stage which involves children ages 2-7 years, The concrete operational stage that includes children aged 7-11 years and The formal operational stage 11 years+. Piaget named this theory, The Stage Theory (Piaget, J. 1951 The Child’s Conception of the world.

Jean Piaget was a theorist who focused on mental processes of children (Rathus & Longmuir, 2015, p. 10). He inquired into the processes of how children understand the world and in what ways they think, apply their logic and their problem- solving ability (Rathus & Longmuir, 2015, p. 10). Piaget considered children as natural physicists who want to actively learn and control their world (Rathus & Longmuir, 2015, p. 10). He used concepts such as schemes, adaptation, assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration to explain cognitive development (Rathus & Longmuir, 2015, p. 11). Piaget identified the cognitive processes of children in an orderly sequence of four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational (Rathus

Jean Piaget’s theory of Cognitive Development represents children as explorers of the environment, trying to make sense of their world, and in doing this, they discover new things and adapt to this world they live in. There are three basic components to Piaget’s theory; adaptation, schemas, and stages of cognitive development. Adaptation refers to adjusting to the demands of the environment, through such things as coping with challenges, problem solving and improving their way of thinking. Assimilation (incorporating some outside event into one’s way of thinking), accommodation (changing or modifying an existing schema to make sense of new or different information) and disequilibrium (state of cognitive conflict occurring when one’s experience is contradicted by their way of thinking) are the processes that enable adaptation to occur. Schemas are the basic building blocks for thinking and organising information. According to Piaget, there are three types of schemas; behavioural (mental representations of physical actions), symbolic (language-based representations of objects and events) and operational (mental action or manipulation used to solve a problem or for logic reasoning). Piaget proposed that all children experience growth in cognitive development in a four-stage sequence; sensorimotor (infancy or 0-2 years), preoperational (preschool/early primary school or 2-7 years), concrete operational

Piaget became particularly interested in children and their development while working at Binet’s IQ laboratory in Paris (1921). (Presnell, 1999) During that time he started to study children and the way they reason. He wanted to understand how we, as humans, come to know what we know. (McLeod, 2009) Piaget’s theory breaks down children’s learning into four main stages.

The first stage, the sensorimotor stage, takes place from birth to two years. Piaget divided this stage into six substages. As an infant, I was always hungry. I was bottle fed, so I had to develop a simple reflexive behavior, such as sucking the nipple of the bottle. Simple reflexes refer to the first month after a child is born. At around two or three months old I experienced a primary

Jean Piaget is considered to be very influential in the field of developmental psychology. Piaget had many influences in his life which ultimately led him to create the Theory of Cognitive Development. His theory has multiple stages and components. The research done in the early 1900’s is still used today in many schools and homes. People from various cultures use his theory when it comes to child development. Although there are criticisms and alternatives to his theory, it is still largely used today around the world.

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.