Research on the Cognitive & Moral Development Theories of Jean Piaget & Lawrence Kohlberg

THE PREOPERATIONAL STAGE: GROWTH OF SYMBOLIC ACTIVITY Some time between the ages of 18 and 24 months, According to Piaget, children develop the ability to form mental representations of objects and events. At the same time, language develops, as well as the beginning of thinking in words. These developments mark the transition into the preoperational stage. During this stage, which lasts up until about age seven, children are capable of doing many task they could not perform earlier. For example, they begin make-believe play which includes enacting familiar routines.

Piaget’s theory was introduced by Jean Piaget who established four periods of cognitive development. The four stages are; Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal operational. The sensorimotor is the first stage and begins when the child is born and proceeds until the age of two years. The second stage is the preoperational stage and begins with the child is two years old and continues until the child reaches six years of age. The concrete stage is the third stage and begins when the child is six years old and proceeds until the age of 11 years old. The formal operational stage is the fourth stage and

The preoperational stage is when infants become older, young children and they are able to think in a more symbolic way. In this stage children start to learn the difference between real and make believe, past and future. They tend to have more of an imagination as they grow older. Children in the preoperational stage still are not completely logical with their thinking. They go more off intuition. Do more of what they want to do, not what is the best thing to do. They are still too young to grasp the concept of cause and effect. They also do not understand time and comparison yet.

During the ages of two to seven, the child would be in the preoperational stage. This involves the child having an egocentric

Jean Piaget investigated how children think. According to Piaget, children’s thought processes change as they mature physically and interact with the world around them. Piaget believed children develop schema, or mental models, to represent the world. As children learn, they expand and modify their schema through the processes of assimilation and

Piaget developed the theory of stage development; he had based his theories on his children by carrying out detailed observations where he came up with four stages in each process. But he believed a child had to be at a certain age to learn something or they simply couldn’t learn it or know it. I believe he underestimated children’s abilities and knowledge. The first stage was called sensorimotor stage- in this stage children learnt through using their 5 senses, touch, taste, smell, seeing and hearing. He believe they understood that the

The first of the four stages, sensorimotor, occurs from birth to the time the child is two years old. The preoperational stage begins when the child is about two years old and continues until the child is seven. The next stage, and also the stage in which Pelzer is in during a greater part of this memoir, is the concrete operational stage. This stage continues until the child is roughly eleven years old. The final stage lasts into adulthood. This stage is called formal

In Piaget's first stage of development, the sensorimotor period, which occurs from birth until the age of two, deals with infants discovering the world through their five senses; the infants learn also through applying their motor skills and polishing them. They can also only distinguish things that are present--which are able to be seen, touched, or heard--and ends when the infant can create mental representations in their minds of those objects.

Piaget believe that children are active thinkers. He recognized that the mind develops through a series of irreversible stages. He also acknowledged that a child’s maturing brain builds schemas that are constantly assimilating and accommodating to the world around them. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is split into four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The sensorimotor stage occurs from birth to nearly two years of age. At this stage, infants learn about the world around them by sensing it and interacting within it. It is also in this stage that the idea of object permanence develops, that is, the awareness that things continue to exist even when they are not being observed. In my personal life, I am certain that in this stage of development I would have enjoyed peek-a-boo, because if I didn’t see it, to my developing mind, it wasn’t there at all. The second stage, preoperational, lasts from two years of age to seven years of

The Concrete Operational Stage (7-11): - A this stage the child can operate objects and understand them providing they can se them and/or are holding them. The child can count, spell, read etc. Although the child still needs some objects i.e. fingers, toys to count there is still a need for visual assistance. The child is developing a less egocentric perspective.

Boundless. “Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development.” Boundless Psychology. Boundless, 27 Jun. 2014. Retrieved 05 Apr. 2015 from https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/human-development-14/theories-of-human-development-70/piaget-s-theory-of-cognitive-development-270-12805/

Piaget’s stages of development are broken into stages of growth to bridge the connection between cognitive and biological development. According to Piaget, there are four stages to cognitive development; Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operations and Formal Operations. In the sensorimotor stage, children form babies to two years old, experience and gather information by using the five senses.

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.

In the first, or sensorimotor, stage (birth to two years), knowledge is gained primarily through sensory impressions and motor activity. Through these two modes of learning, experienced both separately and in combination, infants gradually learn to control their own bodies and objects in the external world. Toward the end of Piaget¡¦s career, he brought about the idea that action is actually the primary source of knowledge and that perception and language are more secondary roles. He claimed that action is not random, but has organization, as well as logic. Infants from birth to four months however, are incapable of thought and are unable to differentiate themselves from others or from the environment. To infants, objects only exist when they are insight

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