Piaget’S Cognitive Developmental Theory States That Children

The third operation within the Pre-operational stage is ‘Class Inclusion’. This is when children begin to understand classification, for example, Dalmatians, Greyhounds and Spaniels would be ably classed as dogs. Children who had not reached this stage would struggle with the concept that categories may be divided into subsets, for example, a dog is also an Animal. However, a study by Sugier and Svetner (2006) found children as young as 5 to have an understanding of class inclusion, when presented with a class inclusion test, whereas Piaget believed this wouldn’t happen until the child is 7 years old.

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.

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.

“According to Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development, it states that all children go through specific stages as their brain matures. It also stated that these stages are completed in a fixed order within all children, according to their range of age (Atherton).” In other words, one cannot expect a two month old baby to solve simple math problems as that of a five year old. There are four stages in which Piaget grouped the development of a child according to their age groups, in which children interact with people and their environment. The sensorimotor stage (birth until age 2) children use their senses to explore their environment. During this stage, children learn how to control objects, although they fail to understand that these objects if not within their view continue to exist. The preoperational stage (2 until age 7) children are not able to see other's viewpoints other than their own. In other words, if the same amount of water is poured into a short wide glass and then a tall thin glass the child will perceive that the taller glass has more water because of the height. The concrete operational stage (7 until 12) children begin to think logically, but only with a practical aid. The last stage of Piaget’s cognitive theory is the formal operation stage (12 through adulthood) in which children develop abstract thinking and begin to think logically in their minds (Piaget).

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.

The next stage is at the age of 7-11 years old. This stage is known as the concrete operational stage. This stage is when the children learn the idea of conservation. What is conservation? This is where you take two identical cups and pour the same amount of water into each of the identical cups. Then you ask the child which glass contains the most amount of water? The child will respond with the answer that bother glasses contain the same amount of water. Then right away without waiting grab a small fat glass and a tall skinny glass. Fill both of the glasses up with the identical glasses of the same amount of water in to the small fat glass and then the tall skinny glass. Ask the child now which glass contains the most amount of water.

They can now realise that they can reverse their thought process and when water is poured into a different beaker they automatically realise that in actual fact the amount of water is the same as before. They will also be able to process differet information at the same time in order to figure out a task- as in this case when it came to height and width of the new beaker. At this stage, though children will only be able to think of actual objects and events, for example if 4 children were given 4 cars of different sizes and asked to put them in size oredr from smallest to biggest they would be able to do it, but if asked to think about their parents cars and then put them in size order they would be unlikely to be able to do it. At this age and stage of a childs thinking they tend to use what is called inductive logic, this is where they can figure out the principles of real life experiences that they come across in life. The next stage would be the Deductive

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.

Children depend on concrete representations and “think” with concrete materials. Children in this stage enjoy accelerated language development . They are very egocentric in thought and action and therefore tend to internalize events. Children think everything has a reason or purpose . Children are perceptually bound and therefore make judgement based primary on how thing work.

During the ages of seven to eleven years, concrete operations begin. Children develop the capacity to think analytically, but only when they can refer to actual objects and use hands-on activities. Then they begin to internalize some tasks and they don’t depend on what they have seen.. They become capable of reversing operations. For example, they understand that 2 + 1 is the same as 1 + 2. When real situations are presented, they are beginning to understand others’ points of view.

In this stage children begin to learn and discover the world that is around them while they are developing their motor skills and reflexes (Siegler, 2005, p.29). In this stage children discover the world through their own ‘feel’ and ‘touch’. All of the reflexes they are discovering are natural skills/reflexes that a newborn is born with. They keep these for a short period as they develop more fully in later stages. Following the sensorimotor stage, comes the preoperational stage. Children who are at this stage in development are only able to see the world through one perspective. They miss an abundance of key details that an older child may have caught (Siegler, 2005, p.30). The next stage that a child goes through is known as the concrete operational stage. In this stage children have begun to develop the ability to have and perceive different perspectives, but they still continue to have trouble understanding and dealing with abstract situations (Siegler, 2005, p.29). The final stage in Piaget’s Stages of Development theory is the formal operational stage. At this stage of development adolescents and adults should be able to understand and apply abstract theories and ideas. They can also create and reason with things that are not ‘real’, they understand complex ideas that might not make perfect logical sense (Siegler, 2005, p.30).

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,

Logical thinking at this stage accelerates. Children begin to question and put thoughts together. Such as how does Santa Claus visit everyone in the world in one night? Or how does he get into the house we have no fireplace? Children are school age at this stage and begin learning foreign concepts and display this new found knowledge thinking they know more than their parents. However, children struggle with abstract concepts at this stage. The need of proof is constant the ability to see or touch something as proof of its validity. A concept such as freedom as an example is hard to understand. Concrete concepts is what children understand at this age. Objects, written rules, and real things is what children really understand at this

In the concrete operational stage between the ages of seven and twelve, children become capable of logical thought, they also start to be able to think abstractly. However they are best suited to visible or concrete objects and things they can see (Lee and Gupta). Once the child has reached the formal operations stage from twelve years onwards it becomes more practiced at abstract processing, carrying out problem solving systematically and methodically thus completing the cognitive development process.

The first stage of Piaget’s development theory is the sensorimotor stage which takes place in children most commonly 0 to 2 years old. In this stage, thought is developed through direct physical interactions with the environment. Three major cognitive leaps in this stage are the development of early schemes, the development of goal-oriented behavior, and the development of object permanence. During the early stages, infants are only aware of what is immediately in front of them. They focus on what they