Piaget's View Of Equilibrium Essay

Piaget’s (1936/1953) stages of cognitive development. In his theory of cognitive development, Piaget (1936/1953) asserted that children have a natural ability to construct meaning about the world around them. Piaget (1952) believed that children build their knowledge of the world around them using schema, which he defined as “a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning” (p. 7). In other words, schema act as blocks of knowledge on which children build their capacity to understand the world around them. Piaget (1952) supposed that all individuals seek to exist in a state of equilibrium, in which their schema and environment are balanced and they can

| in Piaget's theory, the inability of the young child to mentally reverse an action

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 was a Swiss Psychologist and is most famous for his work and research on cognitive development. He put forward the Theory of Cognitive Development and key elements in this theory include the formation of “Schemas” and “organisation”. A “schema” is an individuals thoughts and beliefs about an object or event and “organisation” refers to the ability of the child to put stages of each period (eg. Sensori-Motor Period) into a logical order (Miller,

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is the theory I will be using to analyse my first significant experience. According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, during childhood and adolescence, a child constructs an understanding of their environment by organising information into schemas, a schema is basically a group of ideas about an object or an experience. If the individual comes across an inconsistency, or an object or an experience that is unfamiliar, their cognitive balance is upset and they begin to seek cognitive balance, this process of seeking balance is called equilibration. They achieve this equilibration through Adaptation, by either

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

This incident shows that a child's strong feelings can cause events to occur. Piaget believes that one's ideas or desires, influences physical events. Not only do children believe in the

piagete core idea is that running force behind our intelleectual progression is an uncesing struggle to make sense of our experience. that matyring brain builds schemas.

During this time period, the infant is in Piaget’s sensorimotor period (James, Nelson, & Ashwill, 2013). During this phase of development, the infant’s early response to stimuli and the outside world is based on the infant’s reflexes. As the infant’s development progresses, thinking and behaviors become more sophisticated and complex. During this phase, infants are primarily concerned with themselves and exhibit egocentric behavior. In addition, infants learn the concept of “object permanence.” The infant initially believes that, because he cannot see an object, it does not exist. However, as the child develops, he or she realizes that an object doesn’t fail to exist simply because it cannot be seen.

Piaget introduces the concept of equilibration in cognitive development. Heather demonstrates this concept because of the high confidence she displays while talking about a particular topic. According to Piaget’s theory, one develops a scheme or plan to tackle finding balance within other events, such is noted as equilibrium (Woolfolk, p. 46). For example, Heather in the first video was interviewed on where the stars go in the daytime, she responds quickly, indicating assurance that she knows the correct answer. This would fit her existing scheme of stars still being present in the sky, but we cannot see them because of the daytime.

Piaget felt that a baby is an active and curious organism, that reaches out and seeks to regulate a balance between assimilation and accommodation. This balance is what Piaget describes as equilibrium.

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.

Jean Piaget studied processes, and how children change with age. Piaget’s ideas are what serve as our guide to cognitive theory because of his extensive studies, and thoroughness of his work. He became the foremost expert on development of knowledge from birth to adulthood. Being that he was an expert on such a wide variety of ages shows how much studying he did in his lifetime. He studied children, and became fascinated with children’s incorrect responses. That really shows me that Piaget thought differently, because normally, we would focus on children giving the right answers, and being pleased or excited with that. Focusing on the children’s wrong answers, he noticed that the children gave similar kinds of wrong answers at certain ages. Because of this, Piaget launched a lifelong study of intelligence, and he believed that children think in fundamentally different ways from adults.

The concept of equilibrium and disequilibrium are important to the four stages of development. Equilibrium is achieved through balance and successful stage transition while disequilibrium is the opposite. In achieving this balance the child “adjust his or her thinking (schema) to resolve conflict” (Powell & Kalina, 2009, p. 241). According to Piaget, assimilation occurs when knowledge matches children’s schemas and accommodation occurs when children change their schemas to fit new knowledge.