Piaget 's Theory Of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget is a key figure for development, focusing on cognitive constructivism – that being that we must learn from experience and development, building on knowledge that has already been developed. The strengths and weaknesses of Piaget 's cognitive development theory will be discussed.

Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory describes the way that people collect and categorise information to make sense of their surroundings (Woolfolk & Margetts 2013, p. 81). Piaget’s theory is known as constructivist as it is based on the idea that people are active in their own learning (Institute for Inquiry 2017). The theory is based around the idea that a thinking process change and develop from birth to adulthood. According to Piaget, there were four influences involved in the changes that thinking undertakes. These influences included biological maturation, activity, social experiences and equilibration (Kamii 1985, p. 574). He also identified four stages in which people cognitively developed: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete

Jean Piaget, was a trained biologist who was employed at the Binet Institute, where his main job was to develop a French version of an intelligence test. Piaget was very interested in the reason why children would give wrong answers to questions which called for some type of logical thinking. It was believed by Piaget that these wrong answers showed some very drastic differences between the way children and adults both thought ( McLeod, 2015), this is where his theory of Cognitive Development came in, Piaget’s work is described as being the origins of thinking or genetic epistemology (McLeod, 2015), Genetics is where one studies the origins of something. Epistemology discusses the categories of thinking, basically, it shows the properties of structural intelligence. Piaget’s Cognitive Development theory branched off into three different branches, the first one being Schema, the Adaption Process that allow transitions from one stage to another, and finally the four Stages of Development

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.

When talking about human development, we are referring to the growth of humans in all aspects throughout their life. In this essay, I will be discussing two types of human development. Cognitive development, which is to do with the ability to think, remember and reason, and Social development, which involves relationships and interactions in the world around the individual. I will focus on how they relate to two significant experiences in my life and how these experiences were critical to my development as a learner. I will do this by analysing these experiences through Piaget’s theory of cognitive development including key concepts of equilibration, adaptation and former-operation cognitive stage, and Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems theory including key concepts of the microsystem, mesosystem, and macrosystem.

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.

Piaget, Erikson, Skinner and Vygotsky all have similarities and differences within their approaches in regards to cognitive development. Firstly, Piaget’s theory of cognitive development describes the changes in logical thinking of children and adolescents. Piaget suggested that children proceed through four stages that are based on maturation and experience. Piaget managed numerous intelligence tests to children and this led to him becoming interested in the types of faults children of different ages were most probable to make. Piaget hypothesized that cognitive development proceeds in four genetically determined stages that always follow the same sequential order (Developmental and Learning Theories, 2011). The four stages in Piaget theory are the Sensorimotor stage (infancy), the Pre-operational stage (Toddler and Early Childhood), the Concrete operational stage (Elementary and early adolescence), and the Formal operational stage (Adolescence and adulthood). Furthermore, Piaget’s theory is guided by assumptions of how learners interact with their environment and how they integrate new knowledge and information on existing knowledge. In brief, Piaget proposed that children are active learners who build knowledge from their environments and they learn through assimilation and accommodation, and complex cognitive development occurs through equilibration (Developmental and Learning Theories, 2011). Piaget also believed that the interaction with physical and social

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.

It is never too early to begin teaching orientation and mobility skills to an infant. Without early intervention, a child may lack the awareness and therefore initiative to move their bodies and explore their environment independently. Early intervention of orientation and mobility skills is the catalyst to encourage sensory and motor development, self-concept, as well as cognitive, social and language development. A future life of independence is dependent on these critical developmental skills.

The physical development of grade 5 children are as expected as what was described in the theories, girls are taller than boys, and they gain more privacy as they pay more attention to their own hygiene (Hockenberry, 2014a). Piaget’s cognitive development theory also mentions that the third stage is characterized by remarkable cognitive growth as children’s development of language and acquisition of basic skills accelerate dramatically (Jenkins, 2013). Children did sums and minus, read books and write homework. One boy summarized the content of a comic book to me in an organized and detailed language without any assistance. As a nursing student, my intervention based on the theories and observations will focus on teaching them skills of listening,

What are the major challenges to Piaget's theory of cognitive development and what aspects still have value?

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.

For this paper I will be exploring Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget, theorized that children progress through four key stages of cognitive development that change their understanding of the world. By observing his own children, Piaget came up with four different stages of intellectual development that included: the sensorimotor stage, which starts from birth to age two; the preoperational stage, starts from age two to about age seven; the concrete operational stage, starts from age seven to eleven; and final stage, the formal operational stage, which begins in adolescence and continues into adulthood. In this paper I will only be focusing on the

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.