Piaget 's View Of An Active Process

A well-intentioned, but meddling, relative comes to visit the weekend before your child's first birthday, in April. She cautions you that you must be spoiling the child, because he hides behind your leg and clings to you when she tries to give him a hug, and he did not do this when she visited at New Year's. How will you explain what is happening with your child?

Piaget did think that assimilation was that of being able to insert new data easily into an existing mental folder. He also thought that assimilation and accommodation were part of a

To begin with, Piaget’s cognitive theory has four stages. According to Miller,2011 she states that Piaget described each stage and referred them to the ability of human understanding. First stage is the sensorimotor stage

Jean Piaget researched how the environment and personal experience plays a role in cognitive development for children (Case-Smith & O’Brien, 2010). Piaget established four concepts: adaptation, schema, assimilation, and accommodation (Case-Smith & O’Brien, 2010). Adaptation is described as the process of adjusting to one’s surroundings (Case-Smith & O’Brien, 2010). For example, 5-year-old Betty enters a birthday party full of laughing children. Betty may start smiling and clapping along with her peers.

Adaptation involves children changing their behavior to meet situation demands. Assimilation is showing that the child understands the relationship between concepts. Accommodation is the altering of previous concepts in the face of new information, such as knowing that fish are not the only animal in the ocean. The equilibrium concept is Piaget's term for the process that the human ability to adapt to changes in the world and understanding the difference between the real world and what we perceive.

“Piaget claimed that all organisms have an innate tendency to adapt to the environment.” Piaget also demonstrated the close relationship between organisation and adaptation (Miller, 2002). Piaget once said “Organisation is inseparable from adaptation: They are two complementary processes of a single mechanism...These two aspects of thought are in-dissociable: It is by adapting to things that thought organises itself and it is by organising itself that structures things” (Source: Miller, 2002). “Adaptation involves assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the process of fitting reality into ones current cognitive organisation[Schemas]... [and] Accommodation... refers to adjustments in cognitive organisation that result from the demands of reality”(Miller, 2002). Miller believed that accommodation happens because current structures that the mind already has in place have failed to understand or interpret a particular object or event in a satisfactory way. Assimilation and accommodation are very much closely related from birth to death (Miller,

A central concept in Piaget’s theory is that of the schema. It is defined as an internalized representation of the world or an ingrained and systematic pattern or thoughts, action, and problem solving. Our schemata are developed through social learning or direct learning. Both processes involve assimilation, which is

I find i kind of amusing when Piaget's periods of thinking have the final stage of theoretical reasoning and abstract thinking

The Critique of Piaget's Theories Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980) was a constructivist theorist. He saw children as constructing their own world, playing an active part in their own development. Piaget’s insight opened up a new window into the inner working of the mind and as a result he carried out some remarkable studies on children that had a powerful influence on theories of child thought. This essay is going to explain the main features and principles of the Piagetian theory and then provide criticism against this theory. Cognitive development refers to way in which a person’s style of thinking changes with age.

Piaget’s theory is that he believed it is in a child's nature to be curious about their surroundings, children want to grasp an understanding of what is going on around them, sometimes their ideas may or may not be correct. According to Piaget, “Assimilation which occurs when new experiences are readily incorporated into a child’s existing theories” (172). For example, this means that a child knows when the family dog barks and licks his face. When the child has the same experience at another house it makes sense because they child has already learned that theory of the dog.

Piaget believed that there were three processes involved in moving from one stage to the next these were assimilation accommodation and equilibrium. Assimilation is the process of converting new information so

Piaget had a phrase that said “Assimilation and Accommodation lead to Adaptation.” Assimilation is when a person fits his or her external information in with what he or she already knows. The change is external in this case. Accommodation is the exact opposite.

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.

The first difference is on the points of emphasis on the theory by the two psychologists. According to Vygotsky theory, more emphasis is on the culture as the main factor that affects cognitive development in human beings. However, Piaget theory contradicts this emphasis by maintaining his views that development happens in stages and the stages are universal, that means all children develop in the same way, that means environment, culture and social relationship have no effect on children development (Jones, & Reynolds, 1992). In summary, Piaget’s theory believes that there is uniform development of children across culture while, Vygotsky emphasizes every child different cognitive development depending on the social environment and culture.

Not everything can be assimilated into existing schemas, though, and the process of accommodation must be used. In accommodation, existing schemas are modified or new schemas are created to process new information. According to Piaget, cognitive development involves an ongoing attempt to achieve a balance between assimilation and accommodation that he termed equilibration. He formulated a theory that systematically describes and explains how intellect develops. The basis of his theory is the principle that cognitive development occurs in a series of four distinct stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations.