Jean Piaget's Theory Of Child Development

In the “Study of the Child: Theories of Development I” (Learning Seed, 1997), according to Vygotsky, the cognitive development in children is in direct relationship, and dependent on interaction with others. (Feldman 2010, pg. 20). Vygotsky believed to truly understand cognitive development; a child’s social and cultural experiences must be considered.

Children develop cognition through two main stages that Jean Piaget theorized. The stages run from birth and infancy to school age children. Sensorimotor is the first stage and goes from birth to about the age of two. This stage implies that the children learn about the environment they live in and they learn this through the reflexes and movements they produce. They also learn that they are separate people from their parents and they can say goodbye to them and know they will come back. The second stage is called the preoperational stage. During this stage of development, children will learn how to incorporate symbols to represent objects. This is also the beginning of learning the alphabet and speech. The child is still very much egocentric at this point in time, but with the help of understanding educators, the child will grow appropriately onto the next stages of development. Finally, the children need to develop emotionally/socially.

Today’s child development system, in many ways, has been heavily influenced by the work of Jean Piaget. We can observe the use of his ideas in a wide range of facilities and environments. Infant’s abilities vary incredibly between birth to two years. These differences can be found even in the period of a month. Piaget was intrigued by these differences; therefore, he used his vast knowledge on children to divide development into six stages known as Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage. Throughout his observations he used children that he spent a large amount of time with, his very own children.

The cognitive developmental theory comes from the work and research done by Jean Piaget which we believe is an empiricist approach which goes hand and hand with Piaget’s constructive approach. Empiricism is a theory that states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. The constructive approach is viewed as children discovering all knowledge about the world through their own learning and knowledge. According to Piaget, children pass through these stages at different times in their lives and cannot skip a stage which causes them to be seen as invariant.

The field of child development has been greatly influenced by Jean Piaget’s cognitive-development theory. According to this theory, as a child’s brain develops and their knowledge increases they transition through four cognitive developmental stages, sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage greatly contributes to the cognitive development in children. The main area in the preoperational stage is make-believe play. Piaget believed that when children have make-believe playtime they are exercising and enhancing newly required representational schemes. Make-believe play is very important in children’s development because it gives a child the opportunity to engage in problem-solving, communication, and empathy. Make-believe play also encourages imagination and creativity.

Jean Piaget was a behavioral scientist who is best known for his creating of The Stages of Development. He developed an incredible understanding for child development. Piaget was able to create and put into words how a child can progress in their cognitive development. He concluded that a child goes through four main stages of cognitive development. The first stage is the Sensorimotor stage, which occurs between the ages of 0-2. The second stage is the Preoperational stage, occurring between 2-6 years old. The next stage is the Concrete Operational

Piaget considered the most critical factor in a child’s cognitive development to be interaction with peers. Piaget observed that children are most challenged in their thinking when they are with peers as they are all on equal footing and are freer to confront ideas than when interacting with adults. Piaget used the word ’schema’ to show the meaning of a child’s conclusions or thoughts and he felt that learning was a continuing process, where children need to adapt their original ideas if a new piece of information contradicted their conclusions. Piaget proposed as a child develops, so does their thinking and between birth and adulthood a person will go through four stages of cognitive development. Sensorimotor Period: which lasts from birth to around 2 years

Jean Piaget’s four stages of development explain the stages of the average cognitive development from childhood through adulthood. These four stages involve reasoning, intellectual capacity, and judgment. The four stages include the Sensorimotor Stage, the Preoperational Stage, the Concrete Operational Stage, and the Formal Operational Stage. Piaget recognized that some children may go through these stages at various ages, and children might even show signs of going through more than one stage at once. However, Piaget claimed that children will always go through these stages in a consecutive order and that all stages of development indicate an increasingly intricate comprehension of the world (Benaroch, 2014)

From a fertilized egg cell developing into an embryo, then into a foetus ,living in the mother's womb for nine months, then a baby was finally delivered and soon will learnt about his surrounding initially as a child.

“When you teach a child something, you forever take away his chance of discovering it for himself.” These words were articulated by one of the most influential figures in the area of childhood intelligence, specifically developmental psychology. Jean Piaget was a Swiss clinical psychologist who is well known for his work pertaining to child development. Similar to Freud and Skinner, Piaget believed in order to understand human behavior, you have to start with understanding how children function, grow and learn. Piaget spent ample years studying the behaviors and thought processes of children, analyzing the origins and development of intelligence and how it shapes our current and future behaviors. According to Piaget, intelligence is

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 is one of the pioneers to child development, he was an important factor in the growth, development and one of the most exciting research theorists in child development. A major force in child psychology, he studied both thought processes and how they change with age. He believed that children think in fundamentally different ways from adults.. Piaget’s belief is that all species inherit the basic tendency to organize their lives and adapt to the world that’s around them, no matter the age. Children develop schemas as a general way of thinking or interacting with ideas and objects in the environment. Children create and develop new schemas as they grow and experience new things. Piaget has identified four major stages of cognitive development which are: sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operations, and formal operations. According to the text here are brief descriptions of each of Piaget’s stages:

Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development was divided into schemas, adaptation processes, and stages of development. Schemas can be described as the building blocks of knowledge which allow us to development mental models of our environment. The adaptation processes are divided into equilibrium, assimilation, and accommodation. His stages of development were further split into four components of its own; sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Before Piaget, many assumed in a society that children were on equal grounds with adults in terms of reasoning and even to some extent, logical thinking. Piaget introduced his theory which essentially describes the active development of a child’s understanding of the world which disproved previous assumptions. The general understanding of this theory is that as their bodies grew their minds did as well.

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.