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

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.

Jean Piaget 's hypothesis of cognitive development proposes that kids move through four unique phases of mental development. His hypothesis centers around understanding how children acquire knowledge, as well as on understanding the nature of intelligence. As children interact with their general surroundings, they constantly include new learning, expand upon existing knowledge, and adapt already held plans to oblige new information. To better understand the things that occur during the cognitive development, it is vital first to look at a couple of the vital thoughts and ideas

According to Piaget (1957), cognitive development was a continuous restructuring of mental processes due to varied situations and experiencing the world and maturing biologically. His view of cognitive development would have us look inside a child’s head and glimpse the inborn process of change that thinking goes through. “He was mainly interested in the biological influences on “how we come to know’” (Huitt and Hummel, 2003). Piaget’s views helps us to have appropriate expectations about children’s mental abilities during different periods of development, especially in terms of logical-mathematical intelligence, and that it was our ability as humans to think abstractly that differentiated us (Science and Cognitive Development). There are three elements of Piaget’s cognitive development theory: schemas, the adaptation process and stages of development. Schemas are basically mental templates of knowledge that individuals use to help make sense of the world around them. The adaptation process which allows for the transition from one stage to another, including assimilation, accommodation and equilibrium and the stages of development in which each child must pass through.

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.

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 native abilities by intelligence testing, learning theory grew

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development was based around his belief that children will develop their intelligence through a series of stages: Sensorimotor (birth – 2yrs), Preoperational (2-7yrs), Concrete Operational (7-11yrs) and Formal Operational (11+). He believed these stages to be invariant, the same stages taking place in a fixed order, and universal, the same for every child regardless of their background or culture. (McLeod, 2015)

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.

Cognition is a complex idea, making it difficult to describe. Hooper and Umansky (p. 307, 2014) define cognitive development as an individual’s ability to translate objects and events into a symbolic form that can be stored in the brain. Cognition can be measured with perceptual and conceptual skills. Perceptual skills are the connection between the senses and experiences. Conceptual skills are higher level processing, such as, making decisions and problem solving (Hooper and Umansky, 2014).

Jean Piaget 's theory of cognitive development gives a broader way of explaining the way of how the process of thinking is developed, based off of different age groups. He became interested in how organisms adapt and conform to its environment. He believe that it was labelled as intelligence. He observed these behaviors by controlling them through schema or schemes. In other words, Piaget organized experiments that are based off of intellectual properties of thinking (McLeod, 2009). This is also where he describes two processes that are used in the conformity of an individual. Assimilation, which is the process of using the environment to change it into previous cognitive structures; and Accommodation, which is the process of changing these cognitive structures in order to accept that specific item or object for the environment (Feldman, 2013). The theory is broken up into four stages. Sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational. We focus on the pre-operational and concrete operational stages of the cognitive development theory.

There have been many people that have made huge contributions to the school of psychology. Perhaps one of the most influential theorists was Jean Piaget. Piaget was a philosopher, biologist, educationalist, and psychologists. He decided to study the many ways in which children develop knowledge. He made many contributions to his theories on the cognitive development stages. Cognitive development is the process of acquiring intelligence an increasingly advance thought and problem-solving ability from infancy to adulthood (Oakley 2004). It was Piaget who first noted that children learned difficulty than adults do in the ways in which they thought about and interpreted the world (Oakley 2004). He’s ideas were that adults did not simply know more than children, but that their knowledge of the world was structured differently. Piaget suggested that children at different stages of their development thought about and interpreted their world in many different ways (Oakley 2004). There are three main principals of Piaget’s theory along with the four stage of cognitive development that will be discussed in the paper below. Thanks to Piaget, the theory of cognitive development has made a significant impact in the way that teachers teach in the classroom today.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Freudian psychology was changed with the initiation of the empirical methods to study the human behavior. Psychologist and philosopher Jean Piaget empirically verified, moving towards the cognitive development theory to provide the new perspective to the individual in getting awareness about the developmental stages of the children. Just like Freud, Piaget thought that human development could only be described in stages. On the other hand, Piaget did not believe the learning and growth are linked with the repressed sexuality that Freud empathized. Piaget has given the cognitive developmental theory by having the experiment of the children, adolescents and young adults to

Many people have contributed to the study of Psychology. One of these great contributors is Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist. He is mostly known for his theory of cognitive development. Jean Piaget used his own life as well of the lives of his own children to develop this theory. He believed that the thought process between children and adults were different and thus that began the process of Cognitive Development.

Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development Very briefly describe Piaget’s stages of cognitive development and explain what he meant by saying that young children are egocentric. Use experimental evidence to consider this claim. Cognitive development is what psychologists talk about when discussing a child’s intellectual growth. Jean Piaget (1896 to 1980), a Swiss psychologist developed a theory of cognitive development, which is still much discussed and critiqued today. Providing a firm building block to all work done in the study of child development and the concept that young children are egocentric.

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.