Scribd
Upload
206 views5 pages

Jean Piaget'S Cognitive Development Theory

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who studied child development and proposed a theory of cognitive development. He observed that children's thinking changes as they mature through four distinct stages - sensory motor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. In each stage, children construct mental representations of the world called schemas through the processes of assimilation and accommodation, seeking equilibrium between what they know and what they experience. Piaget's theory helped explain how children's cognitive abilities emerge and become more complex over time.

Uploaded by

Shyam Kumar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
206 views5 pages

Jean Piaget'S Cognitive Development Theory

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who studied child development and proposed a theory of cognitive development. He observed that children's thinking changes as they mature through four distinct stages - sensory motor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. In each stage, children construct mental representations of the world called schemas through the processes of assimilation and accommodation, seeking equilibrium between what they know and what they experience. Piaget's theory helped explain how children's cognitive abilities emerge and become more complex over time.

Uploaded by

Shyam Kumar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 5

JEAN PIAGET’S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT THEORY

JEAN PIAGET (1896- 1980)

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of
cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology". Piaget
placed great importance on the education of children. He is also known as the father of Child Psychology.

He observed his own children for his studies. He presumed that every child born on this world acquires
knowledge of current environment, being in terms of exploring, discovery and constructing the stimulus
through his/her own activities. He also found that thinking systematically changes from one point of
development to other. As per Jean Piaget the development of thinking is made possible through certain
processes.

PROCESS OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Schemas: refers to the basic building blocks of thinking. They are the mental representations or
specific psychological structures helping a child to organize the ways of making sense of experience.

Eg: A child start constructing the schema of a dog from a picture book and comes to a conclusion that dog
has 2 ears, 4 legs, and a tail.

Child sees a dog in the park and observes it. He experiences disequilibrium, as his schema does not
include barking and the furry nature of dogs. This cognitive conflict or discomfort experienced while
constructing schema is called disequilibrium.

By his mothers reinforcement the child adds 2 more traits to the already formed schema that the dog is
furry and barks. i.e, Assimilation had taken place by resolving the disequilibrium and the child get the
state of equilibrium. Hence, assimilation refers to the process of adding new concept to the already
learnt concept or taking new information and incorporating it into the existing cognitive structures.

Cognitive equilibrium – it’s a comfortable state of the child in learning things. (Eg: dog -> ears, legs,
tails)

After that, by seeing a cat, the child addresses it as a dog since it has 2 legs, ears and tails. The mother
differentiates it to the child as a cat as it sounds meow and dog barks.
Now the child enters a state of disequilibrium and constructs a new schema of cat (+ meow). Once the
disequilibrium is resolved by getting a new perfect schema of cats the child gets back to the state of
equilibrium. i.e, the process of accommodation has acquired.

Accommodation: refers to a process of revising the learnt concept to fit the new information
received. Or changes in a cognitive structures to include new information.

Thus the child experience a state of cognitive or discomfort disequilibrium before each assimilation and
accommodation and return back to equilibrium once assimilation or accommodation had occurred.

The entire process of constructing schema leads to higher order cognitive system called
organization.

OR The tendency to create increasingly complex cognitive structures by the rearrangement of schemas
and exploring the links and associations between schemas, to develop a strongly interconnected cognitive
system.

STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Piaget’s theory argues that we have to conquer 4 stages of cognitive development as a result of the
cognitive processes.

1. Sensory motor stage (0-2 years)


In this stage, we develop through experience movement of our 5 senses. Our brain wants to see,
hear, taste, smell and touch as much as possible. 1st we start with simple reflexes and soon after
we develop our 1st habits. When 4 months older, we become aware of things beyond our own
body. Them as we get older we learn to do things intentionally. Toddlers explore the environment
with their senses and motor skills. Hence – sensory motor stage.
Piaget observed his own children. He noticed advanced development in thinking in each day.
Substages of this stage
Simple reflexs - 0-1 month
primary circular reaction - 2-4
secondary circular reaction - 4-8
Coordination of circular reaction - 8-12
Tertiary circular reaction - 12-18
Mental representation - 18-24

Simple reflexes – building blocks of intelligence.


Eg: infant sucks the nipple of the bottle when it is directly placed on the mouth. Later it starts
sucking when it is placed nearby. Hence, it starts to structure its experiences.

1-4 months – motor activities are centered on its own body. Eg: infant sucks its thumb by chance
initially. Later he searches for the thumb and tries to put a part of the into his mouth due to poor
coordination.

4-8 months – more focused on the environment. Motor activity involves the environmental
stimulus rather than self. Gradually, they intentionally repeat an action due to trigger a response
around them.
Eg: picking up a toy and putting it in his mouth. Shaking it to hear the sound.

8-12 – coordination of vision and manual action occur. The actions become more intentional and
goal directed. Eg: observes the toy carefully and dismantles it. Starts imitation.

12-18 – intentionally explore new outcomes or variation as they become familiar with the
properties of the object.
Eg: infant dropping and object from stairs. This stage sets a beginning to creativity.

18-24 – represent objects mentally by using primitive symbols. Use of these symbols makes him
to solve problems suddenly.
Certain other capacites are:-
Object permanence
Unable to posses the image of the object when hidden. By 18 months we understand that object
continues to exist even when we cant see them. We start becoming curious about everything. To
explore more we move, we learn to sit, crawl, stand, walk and even to run. This increases
physical mobility consequently leads to increased cognitive development.
Egocentrism:- we perceive the world only from our own point of view.

2. The pre operational stage (2-7)


 Operations: are mental actions that follow certain logical rules.
Pre operations means children at this stage are rigid in their thinking and limits to that
situation or thinking and hence they are capable of operations.
 Thinking is mainly categorized for symbolic functions and intuitive thoughts.
 We have lot of fantasies and believe objects are alive. As we are not able to apply.
 We learn to speak and understand that words, images and gestures are symbols for
something else
 Pretended play, which allows us to experience something new and learn a lot.
 At age 4, most of us become very curious and ask many questions. We want to know
everything.
 The ability to represent things mentally rapidly increases, thought the thought is not
logical.
 Ego centrism exists in this stage also
 Animistic thinking: attributes life to objects not alive. Giving human characteristics.

Three major inabilities that a preschooler goes through this stage but later develop in the succeeding
stages are:-

(1) Inability to conserve


The realization that certain physical characteristics of an object does not change even when there
is an observable change in their outward appearance.
Eg: same amount of liquid poured into containers of different shapes remains the same.
Eg: focus point is only the height of the container and liquid.
Pre schoolers inability to conserve characteristics another feature called centration: idea of
focusing only on one feature neglecting others.

(2) Irreversability:
Inability to reverse directions because they cannot follow the series of steps that allows to return
back to the starting point.
Eg: 2+5 = 7
7= 2+5
(3) Inability to classify things in hierarchy
do not posses the ability to organize objects as per their classes based on similarity.

3. Concrete operational stage (7- 12)


We finally discover logic and develop concrete cognitive operations, such as sorting objects in a
certain order.
 Conservation
 Reversibility
 Categorization
 Inductive reasoning
 Decentration
4. Formal operational stage (12+)
 Become formally operational
 We now have the ability to think more rationally about abstract concepts and hypothetical
events.
 Advanced cognitive abilities allow us to understand abstract concepts such as success and
failure, love and hate.
 Deeper understanding about our identity and mortality
 Understand people behave the way they behave and as a result become more compassionate.
 Deductive reasoning.
 Final stage of cognitive development
 Our new sense of identity now also creates ego centric thoughts and some starts to see an
imaginary audience.

You might also like