Piaget Cognitive Development

During the Sensorimotor stage (between birth and the age of two), Piaget claims that sensory and motor skills are developed, as well as claiming that infants are unable to grasp object permeance until eighteen to twenty-four months; Piaget argued that if a child could not see the item, it no longer existed to them. When the child’s age was between nine and ten months, more experiments were done into object permeance, resulting in the 'a not b ' test, in which one object was hidden underneath an item, and then switched. Despite the obvious difference in sizes underneath the two objects, the child would still believe the item to be under where it was originally found. Furthermore, Aguiara and Baillargeon (2002), suggested the violation of expectation; using the example of a doll moving between two opaque objects and reappearing in the centre – the child will then be surprised, as to them the object had no longer existed.

Most of the criticism of Piaget’s work is in regards to his research methods. A major source of his inspiration for the theory was based on his observations of his own children. And because of this small sample group, people believe that it is difficult and incorrect to generalise his findings to a larger population. Similarly, many psychologists believe that Piaget underestimated the age which children could accomplish certain tasks and that sometimes children understand a concept before they are able to demonstrate their understanding of it. For example, children in the Sensorimotor stage may not search for a hidden object because their motor skills are not developed, rather than because they lack object permanence. This has been supported by evidence from Bower & Wishart (1972). They found that the way that an object is made to disappear influences the child’s response. As well as this, Piaget’s theory has been said to overestimate that every child and adult reaches the formal operational stage of knowledge development. Dasen (1994) claims that only a third of adults ever reach this stage.

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.

Piaget believe that children are active thinkers. He recognized that the mind develops through a series of irreversible stages. He also acknowledged that a child’s maturing brain builds schemas that are constantly assimilating and accommodating to the world around them. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is split into four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The sensorimotor stage occurs from birth to nearly two years of age. At this stage, infants learn about the world around them by sensing it and interacting within it. It is also in this stage that the idea of object permanence develops, that is, the awareness that things continue to exist even when they are not being observed. In my personal life, I am certain that in this stage of development I would have enjoyed peek-a-boo, because if I didn’t see it, to my developing mind, it wasn’t there at all. The second stage, preoperational, lasts from two years of age to seven years of

My childhood in terms of Piagets cognitive development stages have went well I’m now in the 12 through adulthood range which is the formal operational stage. This stage is where thinking about hypothetical scenarios and processing abstract thoughts begin. The abstract logic is potential for mature moral reasoning .

My favorite stage of cognitive development is the sensorimotor or primitive stage. This is my favorite because I believe the child learns the most at this stage. The child will learn how to communicate with others, study their environment, as well as many simple problem-solving skills. During the sensorimotor stage, Piaget focuses more on sensations and actions. For example, babies like to play rattles because they give off a loud noise or sensation and they have to shake their arm, which is an action. While Piaget focuses more on sensations and actions, Vygotsky believes that this stage is similar to animals; young children learn through radical learning.

Piaget believed that human development involves a series of stages and during each stage new abilities are gained which prepare the individual for the succeeding stages. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the differences between two stages in Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory—the preoperational stage and concrete operational stage. Cognitive development refers to how a person constructs thought processes to gain understanding of his or her world through the interaction of genetic and learned factors. The development of new cognitive structures (mental maps or schemas) will be a result of the individual's ability to adapt through mental processes such

It is mindboggling to reflect on how much things change as we grow up. Our life’s circumstances, our preferences, our hobbies, our goals… it really is endless. From infancy to old age our views on the way we see the world and what motivates us to succeed are constantly changing. Positive encouragement, play time, love, money, popularity and success are just a handful of ideas that I think of when considering what motivates a person to do their best. However, we rarely think about cognitive development as a source of motivation. I am interested in researching the development of what motivates humans and how it may change throughout the lifespan.

Boundless. “Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development.” Boundless Psychology. Boundless, 27 Jun. 2014. Retrieved 05 Apr. 2015 from https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/human-development-14/theories-of-human-development-70/piaget-s-theory-of-cognitive-development-270-12805/

The second educational belief grounded in Piaget’s theory is individual differences. Piaget’s theory asserts that children go through all the same developmental stages; however they do so at different rates* because of this teachers should put more effort to arrange classroom activities for groups of children and individuals rather than for the whole class group. Also because individual differences are

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.

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.

Next, the "pre-operational stage" is the second stage of Piaget’s theory. This stage lasts from around 2 - 7 years. In this stage, Piaget proposed that a child fails to understand the concept “conservation” - the belief that things remain constant in terms of number, quantity and volume irrespective of variations in appearance. In experiments to test number conservation, Piaget showed the child two sets of checkers, which had exactly the same number of checkers in each set. He then changed one of the checker sets, keeping the same amount of checkers in it, so that it was only different in appearance. When the experiment ended, the results showed that the children believed that the sets were of different quantity, thereby, proving Piaget’s theory factual. (Piaget 1952)

On Piaget's task for conservation of length, Piaget shows the subject two pencils equal in length and subject knows the pencils are the same length. But once one of the pencils is moved longer than the other one, the subject fails to recognize that they were the same. Piaget's task for conservation for liquid, he shows the young child two identical glasses, then he pours the same amount of water both glasses. The subject knows that the two glasses of water are equal. But if water from one glass is poured into a longer thinner glass, the subject couldn’t comprehend this glass contains the same amount of water as the original two identical glasses. Piaget's explains that children's thinking is "perception bound" in preoperational stage, so they can’t focus their attention on two aspects of the new glass, they were attentive only to one aspect which is that one glass is taller than the other two; failing to realize the taller glass had the same amount of liquid.

Educational Implications of Piaget’s Theory. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is well-known and provides a basic understanding of the cognitive process and how children