Essay on Piaget Theory of Cognitive Development

These experiments seem to agree with Piaget’s theory that children from the ages of two and six cannot understand conservation. However, some believe that this was inaccurate and that simple changes to Piagets’ initial experiments would have different outcomes and children can grasp conservation at the pre-operational stage. As described by Oates et al. (2005), Donaldson argued that children could operate at higher levels than Piaget predicted. They made changes to the conservation of liquid experiment so that it would make more sense to children. They observed forty children and instead of using water they used pasta shells and were told that they were going to use these in a competitive game. After the children agreed that the two beakers had the same amount of pasta shells, the experimenter pointed out that there was a chip on the rim of one beaker. The beaker was then changed to a wider one and the pasta shells were poured into it. The children were asked if they had the same amount of shells or were they different and this time 70 per cent of children said that they were the same. This would suggest that children could conserve from the age of four as long as it made sense to the child. Having a logical reason

Piaget's Theory of cognitive development consists of four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. A 3-year-old preschooler falls into the preoperational stage and a 9-year-old student falls into the concrete operational stage. By definition, the preoperational stage is being able to think beyond the here and now, but being unable to perform mental transformations. The concrete operational stage is described as being able to perform mental transformations, but only on concrete objects. A child would move from the preoperational stage to the concrete operational stage once they master conservation tasks and organization skills.

When we discuss the cognitive ability of a student, we are talking about the child 's intelligence or ability to learn. Piaget created four stages that describe a child 's cognitive development based on their age. The first stage is the sensorimotor stage in which a child experiences from birth to 2 years of age, and states that a child will learn by exploring their environment with their senses. The second stage of development is the preoperational stage and a child is between the ages of 2 and 7 years during this stage. In this stage, children can use symbols to mentally represent objects such as seeing the golden arches of a McDonald 's sign and associating it with food. Children in this stage also lack an understanding of conservation, centration

There are some significant theories which is beneficial even today. Researchers still utilize and take advantage from some of them and do their researches based upon these theories. Piaget's ''theory of Cognitive development'' is one of them.While there are some benefits and advantages to use this theory to explain cognitive development,there are some problems showed up about this theory over time. This essay examines problems with Piaget's theory. Firstly explains theory,than focuses on what the results of the research are about problems and why they are become problem for Piaget's theory.

The study of conservation task by Piaget typically yields the result that children at a certain age group exhibit certain understanding of conservation. A child younger than 7 or 8 is incapable of understanding the basis of conservation (Piaget & Inhelder, 1974). Piaget’s theory suggests that a child’s understanding of conservation marks a transitional period in their development where cognitive perceptions change from pre-operational to operational (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). Conservation is defined as the knowledge that appearance may change but quantity and weight or number remain unchanged in a child’s mind despite transformations such as changing the object’s shape, sectioning it into pieces or displacing it into different containers (Siegal, 2003). Piaget himself has found out that the conservation of certain variables is not achieved together at the same time (Flavell, 1963). According to Flavell (1963), Piaget’s subject’s showed that conservation of matter is common at 8 to 10 years of age, weight at 10 to 12 and volume only at 12 years onwards. Piaget’s study of conservation of number yielded similar results when administered to children of age 4 to 7 (Flavell, 1963).

The task was appropriate to compare the two children. My experiment is to test children’s ability to conserve liquid, and according to Piaget, children that have not entered the concrete operational stage tend to fail to conserve liquid. People can easily see the differences of logical reasoning between children in these two different stages. The concrete operational stage is Piaget 's third stage of children’s cognitive development. In this stage,

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

Jean Piaget is famous for his principles of cognitive development from birth throughout childhood. He outlined the different stages that “cognitive capacities” appear (Feist et al., 2015). He made his theories based on his observation of his children. He divided the cognitive development from birth through adolescence into four stages: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational stages. Sensorimotor stage covers ages 0-2 when infants use their senses to learn about their surroundings. Based on Piaget’s observations, young children sense the world through manipulation, and “object performance” is the main illustration of sensorimotor stage of cognitive development in young children (Feist et al., 2015). Ages 2-5 correspond to the preoperational stage which thinking process is developed in children.

The thinking pattern of a 3 year old according to Piaget’s Theory would be preoperational stage, which is from 2 years to 7 years. In the preoperational stage children are able to think beyond the here and now, but egocentric and unable to perform mental transformations. Children in this stage can use language, drawings, and objects as representation of ideas. A child pretending to be a fireman and pretending their bike is a fire truck with a hose to put out fires is an ability to differentiate that imaginary role from actual roles. Clear advances in thinking characterize the preoperational stage but Piaget believed a set back in this stage was egocentrism, an inability to see the world from others point of view, conservation tasks prove this

Preoperational thinking is characterized by a child’s inability to understand and conceptualize the way in which things work within the world (Belsky, 2016). This stage of development is best understood by examining Piaget’s famous conservation tasks. During this stage of cognitive development, children are unable to understand that two identical amounts of mass or liquid can represented differently (Schiff & Saarni, 1976). Piaget believed that the transition from preoperational to concrete operational thinking occurred gradually between the ages of 5 and 7 (Belsky, 2016). At age 8, Piaget believed children reached the concrete operational thinking stage and can now step back and view the world with a greater degree of rationality (Belsky, 2016). The foundation of Piaget’s theory is that the child himself is the driver of cognitive development and that he must move through the stages on his own (van Geert,

Similar to the concept of irreversibility is the inability to conserve. Piaget shows two similar glasses full of water to children. The children understand that they two glasses are identical, and therefore have the same amount of water. However, after pouring the water from one glass onto another taller or wider glass, the children do not perceive that mass stays the same, even though shape changes. At this stage children also begin to categorize;

The concrete operational stage occurs between seven and fourteen years of age, children are capable of reasoning in a logical way, organize and classify objects in a hierarchical manner, and understand people have different thoughts, emotions and opinions. Central to this stage is conservation, the capability to understand that objects can change in some shape or form but remain the same. For example, a cup of milk poured into a square container remains the same cup of milk when poured into a round container. The final stage in Piaget’s theory is the formal operational stage, which occurs from fourteen years of age into adulthood. During this stage people are able to think logically and understand abstract concepts.

Jean Piaget was a cognitive theorist and “psychologist who identified stages of mental development, and established the fields of cognitive theory and developmental psychology” (biography.com, n.d.) who was born on August 9th, 1896 in Neuchatel, Switzerland. Jean Piaget’s three children influenced his work as he used them in his case studies of child development. He graduated from the University of Neuchatel graduated in 1916 when he was twenty years old, then went on to get his doctorate of Biology at the age of 22. Piaget’s cognitive theory is made up of 3 components; schemas; adaptation processes and the four stages of development. The first component to his cognitive theory is the four stages of child development, the sensorimotor stage (birth – 2 years) which involves learning through motor actions, the preoperational stage (2 years – 7 years) which involves children developing intelligence by

Jean Piaget is one of the most influential theorists in cognitive development and he argues that children pass through the same sequence of stages when it comes to this developmental domain. This paper will begin with a general overview of Jean Piaget’s beliefs when it comes to children’s cognitive development and the basics of his four stages. Next, an in depth look will be taken at each of the stages followed by defining the Piagetian ideas of adapting in the world through assimilation, accommodation, and disequilibrium that may results. These ideas will be accompanied by examples and significance to the classroom. I will conclude with a summary of all the points previously discussed.

Cognition is a series of mental processes including attaining, loading, recovering and using information. The changes involved throughout the human lifespan from the perspective of cognition is studied as cognitive development. Jean Piaget is the developmental psychologist who introduced the theory of cognitive development (Wood, Wood & Boyd, 2006). According to Rardin and Moan (1971), there are four stages in children’s cognitive development that are formulated by Piaget, namely the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and lastly formal operational (refer to Figure 1 in Appendix 1).