Theories Of Cognitive Development

The third stage is the Concrete Operational Stage, which occurs around age seven to age eleven. This stage marks the beginning of logical or operational thoughts for the child. Their thinking becomes less egocentric, and the child can now understand that although the appearance of something changes, the “thing” itself does not. For example, if a child decided to spread out a pile of blocks, they know there are still as many blocks as there were before, even though it looks different.

When we discuss the cognitive ability of a student, we are talking about the child 's intelligence or ability to learn. Piaget created four stages that describe a child 's cognitive development based on their age. The first stage is the sensorimotor stage in which a child experiences from birth to 2 years of age, and states that a child will learn by exploring their environment with their senses. The second stage of development is the preoperational stage and a child is between the ages of 2 and 7 years during this stage. In this stage, children can use symbols to mentally represent objects such as seeing the golden arches of a McDonald 's sign and associating it with food. Children in this stage also lack an understanding of conservation, centration

The sensorimotor stage infants develop their schemas through sensory and motor activities. Followed by the preoperational stage where children begin to think symbolically using words, to represent concepts. Next concrete operational stage children display many important thinking skills, like ability to think logically. Finally, formal operational stage young adolescences formulate their operations by abstract and hypothetical thinking. Piaget’s theory provides ample and insightful perspectives, so it remains the central factor of contemporary

Children develop cognition through two main stages that Jean Piaget theorized. The stages run from birth and infancy to school age children. Sensorimotor is the first stage and goes from birth to about the age of two. This stage implies that the children learn about the environment they live in and they learn this through the reflexes and movements they produce. They also learn that they are separate people from their parents and they can say goodbye to them and know they will come back. The second stage is called the preoperational stage. During this stage of development, children will learn how to incorporate symbols to represent objects. This is also the beginning of learning the alphabet and speech. The child is still very much egocentric at this point in time, but with the help of understanding educators, the child will grow appropriately onto the next stages of development. Finally, the children need to develop emotionally/socially.

Piaget claims that before the beginning of this stage, children 's ideas about different objects, are formed and dominated by the appearance of the object. For example, there appears to be more blocks when they are spread out, than when they are in a small pile. During the Concrete Operational Stage, children gradually develop the ability to 'conserve ', or learn that objects are not always the way that they appear to be. This occurs when children are able to take in many different aspects of an object, simply through looking at it. Children are able to begin to imagine different scenarios, or 'what if ' something was to happen. This is because they now have more 'operational ' thought. Children are generally first able to conserve ideas about objects with which they are most comfortable. Once children have learnt to conserve, they learn about 'reversibility '. This means that they learn that if things are changed, they will still be the same as they used to be. For example, they learn that if they spread out the pile of blocks, there are still as many there as before, even though it looks different!

According to Jean Piaget, and his stages of cognitive development, kids construct their knowledge of the world through reorganization and they move to higher levels of psychological functioning. Piaget looked at how kids think of themselves and their environment, when moving through each stage. In these stages, children select what they see and they interpret. In the preoperational stage, ranging from ages 2-7, children should have a mastery of language and use words to represent objects. In this stage, children cannot use developmental capacities systematically. They are quite egocentric,

This stage is known as the concrete operational stage, which is made up of children that fall in the age range of seven to eleven years old. During the concrete operational stage, children are able to think more logically and critically than they were able to while in an earlier stage of development, thus their symbolic thought is increasing. A nine-year-old would also display less egocentric characteristics. For example, in the previous mountain example, a nine-year-old would realize that an individual standing at a different point of the mountain would see the mountain from a perspective other than that of the nine-year-olds. The nine-year-old also no longer displays the effects of centration. However, the nine-year-old will have a hard time thinking abstractly; they will only understand concrete ideas. A key factor to this stage of development is conservation. Conservation is the ability to understand that an object stays the same even if superficial aspects are changed. For example, if a certain volume of water were to fill a small cup, and was then transferred into a larger cup, the nine-year-old would realize that the amount of water in the larger cup is the same as it was when it was in the smaller

The sensorimotor stage occurs from birth to two years of age; during this stage children use their senses and movements to discover their world. For example, as a baby shakes his or her raddle, they discover their actions cause the raddle to make a sound. During this stage children also develop object permanence, an understanding that objects continue to exist even when they can’t see them. For example, a baby raddle that’s covered by a blanket continues to exist even if the baby can’t see it. In the preoperational stage, children age two to seven, learn language development, use symbols when participating in make believe play, and are egocentric. For example, children may use an empty box to symbolize a car when playing and may expect other

In Piaget’s studies, he lists four stages that children go through in development. Starting at birth, a child goes through sensorimotor development. Sensorimotor development is often found through schemes that are based largely on behaviors and perceptions (Ormrod, 2012, p. 153). Throughout this stage, a child will acquire objects permanence and symbolic thought. Words spoken by those around the child begin to have a meaning such as milk, eat, or toy. Children begin experimenting with activities by touching objects, throwing toys, and sticking items in their mouth that is around them. The preoperational stage often emerges around the age of two. This change occurs while children are rapidly developing language and the symbolic thought it enables. Children during this stage can now think and talk about things beyond their immediate experiences. Language and intuitive thought are both acquired abilities during this stage. The vocabulary grows along with the grammatical structure of sentences. The thought processes begin to be based on intuition. For example, a two year old may remember touching a hot iron in the past so they realize when seeing the iron again, they do not need to touch it. They know the iron is hot without being able to grasp the concept of cause and effect in any situation. Between the ages of six and seven, a child goes through the concrete operational

The sensorimotor stage is for the first two years of a child's life. In this stage, he believes that children's knowledge is developed through their senses (Pound, 2011). The preoperational stage is from those aged two to around six. In this stage, Piaget said that young children begin to use symbolic logic to understand things like their environment. They can understand that one thing may stand for something other than itself, and their growing imagination helps them understand that (McLeod, 2015).

We also become more active by discovering how to move our bodies, and discovering our abilities. What develops at this stage in life is object permanence we do not recognize objects exist even if we are not able to see them. The second stage is from two to seven years (2-7), the toddlerhood stage known as preoperational, the mental operation when children start to develop in pretend and play, and use symbols to represent things. We learn how to walk and talk and are egocentric, we do not understand that others have a different point of view than we do. In this stage we are able to develop memory which helps us understand the difference between the past and present. Yet we cannot understand complex concepts such as cause and effect, and comparison. The third stage is the concrete operational stage which is between ages seven and eleven (7-11), at this stage we develop and demonstrate logical and concrete reasoning. We are able to discover and realize that thoughts and feelings are unique and that each individual is different. The last and final stage is the formal operational stage which is from age eleven to adulthood. It involves reasoning, logic and understanding. At this stage we become capable of finding solutions to problems, and understand more about the world and how it works. For Piaget to discover under which stage a person falls he used a famous conversion task

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

In psychology, cognitive development is the process that allows people to know, understand and think about the world (Feldman, 2012). It studies how children process and gain information at a particular age and how learning mechanisms change and evolve over time. There are many theories among parents, teacher and physicians of how children grow and develop. Piaget, Erikson, Skinner and Vygotsky are all developmental theorists who studied child development. Theorists have their own ideas of cognitive development. However, some build off the others theories. The four different developmental theorists bring important ideas to the development of children. Some important ideas are the aspects of family and society. Other important ideas include culture, psychosocial and physical influences. This paper focuses on the theorist Piaget, Erikson, Skinner and Vygotsky and who brought what ideas to the psychology of cognitive development in children.

In the sensorimotor stage the child discovers the environment through physical actions such as sucking, grabbing, shaking and pushing. During these first two years of life children realize objects still exist, even if it is out of view. This concept is known as object permanence. Children in the preoperational stage develop language skills, but may only grasp an idea with repeated exposure. As Piaget describes in the next stage, children draw on knowledge that is based on real life situations to provide more logical explanations and predictions. Lastly, in the formal operational stage children use higher levels of thinking and present abstract ideas.

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