Republic of the Philippines

Western Mindanao State University

Pagadian External Campus
Bulatok, Pagadian City

PED 101- The Child and Adolescent Learner and the Learning Principle

Lesson 5 : Cognitive Development Theories

A. Cognitive Theory of Development -by Jean Piaget

A. Jean Piaget's Theory and Stages of Cognitive Development

Saul McLeod
Piaget's (1936) theory of cognitive development explains how a child constructs a
mental model of the world. He disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a fixed trait,
and regarded cognitive development as a process which occurs due to biological
maturation and interaction with the environment.
Piaget was employed at the Binet Institute in the 1920s, where his job was to
develop French versions of questions on English intelligence tests. He became intrigued
with the reasons children gave for their wrong answers to the questions that required
logical thinking. He believed that these incorrect answers revealed important differences
between the thinking of adults and children.
Piaget (1936) was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive
development. His contributions include a stage theory of child cognitive development,
detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a series of simple but
ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities.
What Piaget wanted to do was not to measure how well children could count,
spell or solve problems as a way of grading their I.Q. What he was more interested in
was the way in which fundamental concepts like the very idea of number, time,
quantity, causality, justice and so on emerged.
Before Piaget’s work, the common assumption in psychology was that children
are merely less competent thinkers than adults. Piaget showed that young children think
in strikingly different ways compared to adults.
According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically
inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent learning and knowledge are based.

Piaget's Theory Differs From Others In Several Ways:

▪ It is concerned with children, rather than all learners.
▪ It focuses on development, rather than learning per se, so it does not address learning
of information or specific behaviors.
▪ It proposes discrete stages of development, marked by qualitative differences, rather
than a gradual increase in number and complexity of behaviors, concepts, ideas, etc.

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 The goal of the theory is to explain the mechanisms and processes by which the
infant, and then the child, develops into an individual who can reason and think using
hypotheses. 
To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental
processes as a result of biological maturation and environmental experience.
Children construct an understanding of the world around them, then experience
discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their
environment.

There Are Three Basic Components To Piaget's Cognitive Theory:

1. Schemas (building blocks of knowledge).
2. Adaptation processes that enable the transition from one stage to another
(equilibrium, assimilation, and  accommodation).
3. Stages of Cognitive Development:

o sensorimotor,
o preoperational,
o concrete operational,
o formal operational.

Schemas
Imagine what it would be like if you did not have a mental model of your world. It
would mean that you would not be able to make so much use of information from your
past experience or to plan future actions.
Schemas are the basic building blocks of such cognitive models, and enable us
to form a mental representation of the world. Piaget (1952, p. 7) defined a schema as:
"a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are
tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning."

In more simple terms Piaget called the schema the basic building block of
intelligent behavior – a way of organizing knowledge. Indeed, it is useful to think of
schemas as “units” of knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world, including
objects, actions, and abstract (i.e., theoretical) concepts.
Wadsworth (2004) suggests that schemata (the plural of schema) be thought of
as 'index cards' filed in the brain, each one telling an individual how to react to incoming
stimuli or information.
When Piaget talked about the development of a person's mental processes, he
was referring to increases in the number and complexity of the schemata that a person
had learned.
When a child's existing schemas are capable of explaining what it can perceive
around it, it is said to be in a state of equilibrium, i.e., a state of cognitive (i.e., mental)
balance.
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 Piaget emphasized the importance of schemas in cognitive development and
described how they were developed or acquired. A schema can be defined as a set of
linked mental representations of the world, which we use both to understand and to
respond to situations. The assumption is that we store these mental representations
and apply them when needed.
For example, a person might have a schema about buying a meal in a
restaurant. The schema is a stored form of the pattern of behavior which includes
looking at a menu, ordering food, eating it and paying the bill. This is an example of a
type of schema called a 'script.' Whenever they are in a restaurant, they retrieve this
schema from memory and apply it to the situation.
The schemas Piaget described tend to be simpler than this - especially those
used by infants. He described how - as a child gets older - his or her schemas become
more numerous and elaborate.
Piaget believed that newborn babies have a small number of innate schemas -
even before they have had many opportunities to experience the world. These neonatal
schemas are the cognitive structures underlying innate reflexes. These reflexes are
genetically programmed into us.
For example, babies have a sucking reflex, which is triggered by something
touching the baby's lips. A baby will suck a nipple, a comforter (dummy), or a person's
finger. Piaget, therefore, assumed that the baby has a 'sucking schema.'
Similarly, the grasping reflex which is elicited when something touches the palm
of a baby's hand, or the rooting reflex, in which a baby will turn its head towards
something which touches its cheek, are innate schemas. Shaking a rattle would be the
combination of two schemas, grasping and shaking.

Assimilation and Accommodation

Jean Piaget (1952; see also Wadsworth, 2004) viewed intellectual growth as a process
of adaptation (adjustment) to the world. This happens through:

 Assimilation

– Which is using an existing schema to deal with a new object or situation.

 Accommodation

– This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs
to be changed to deal with a new object or situation.

 Equilibration

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 This is the force which moves development along. Piaget believed that
cognitive development did not progress at a steady rate, but rather in leaps and
bounds.

Equilibrium occurs when a child's schemas can deal with most new information
through assimilation. However, an unpleasant state of disequilibrium occurs when
new information cannot be fitted into existing schemas (assimilation).

Equilibration is the force which drives the learning process as we do not like to be
frustrated and will seek to restore balance by mastering the new challenge
(accommodation). Once the new information is acquired the process of
assimilation with the new schema will continue until the next time we need to make
an adjustment to it.

Example of Assimilation
A 2-year-old child sees a man who is bald on top of his head and has long frizzy
hair on the sides. To his father’s horror, the toddler shouts “Clown, clown” (Siegler et al.,
2003).

Example of Accommodation
In the “clown” incident, the boy’s father explained to his son that the man was not
a clown and that even though his hair was like a clown’s, he wasn’t wearing a funny
costume and wasn’t doing silly things to make people laugh.
With this new knowledge, the boy was able to change his schema of “clown” and make
this idea fit better to a standard concept of “clown”.

Piaget's 4 Stages of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move
through four different stages of intellectual development which reflect the increasing
sophistication of children's thought
His theory focuses on understanding how children acquire knowledge regarding
fundamental concepts such as object permanence, number, categorization,
quantity, causality, and justice.
Piaget's four stages of cognitive development include:
1. Sensorimotor: Birth to ages 18-24 months.
2. Preoperational: Toddlerhood (18-24 months) through early childhood (age 7).
3. Concrete operational: Ages 7 to 11 years.
4. Formal operational: Adolescence to adulthood.
Each child goes through the stages in the same order, and child development is
determined by biological maturation and interaction with the environment.

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 Although no stage can be missed out, there are individual differences in the rate
at which children progress through stages, and some individuals may never attain the
later stages.
Piaget did not claim that a particular stage was reached at a certain age -
although descriptions of the stages often include an indication of the age at which the
average child would reach each stage.
Sensorimotor Stage (Birth - 2 years)
The main achievement during this stage is object permanence - knowing that an
object still exists, even if it is hidden.
It requires the ability to form a mental representation (i.e., a schema) of the object.

Preoperational Stage (2 - 7 years)

During this stage, young children can think about things symbolically. This is the
ability to make one thing - a word or an object - stand for something other than itself.
Thinking is still egocentric, and the infant has difficulty taking the viewpoint of others.

Concrete Operational Stage (7 - 11 years)

Piaget considered the concrete stage a major turning point in the child's cognitive
development because it marks the beginning of logical or operational thought.
This means the child can work things out internally in their head (rather than
physically try things out in the real world).
Children can conserve number (age 6), mass (age 7), and weight (age 9).
Conservation is the understanding that something stays the same in quantity even
though its appearance changes.

Formal Operational Stage (11 years and over)

The formal operational stage begins at approximately age eleven and lasts into
adulthood. During this time, people develop the ability to think about abstract concepts,
and logically test hypotheses.

Educational Implications
Piaget (1952) did not explicitly relate his theory to education, although later
researchers have explained how features of Piaget's theory can be applied to teaching
and learning.
Piaget has been extremely influential in developing educational policy and
teaching practice. For example, a review of primary education by the UK government in
1966 was based strongly on Piaget’s theory. The result of this review led to the
publication of the Plowden report (1967).

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 Discovery learning – the idea that children learn best through doing and actively
exploring - was seen as central to the transformation of the primary school curriculum.
'The report's recurring themes are individual learning, flexibility in the curriculum, the
centrality of play in children's learning, the use of the environment, learning by discovery
and the importance of the evaluation of children's progress - teachers should 'not
assume that only what is measurable is valuable.'
Because Piaget's theory is based upon biological maturation and stages, the
notion of 'readiness' is important. Readiness concerns when certain information or
concepts should be taught. According to Piaget's theory children should not be taught
certain concepts until they have reached the appropriate stage of cognitive
development.
According to Piaget (1958), assimilation and accommodation require an active
learner, not a passive one, because problem-solving skills cannot be taught, they must
be discovered.
Within the classroom learning should be student-centered and accomplished
through active discovery learning. The role of the teacher is to facilitate learning, rather
than direct tuition. Therefore, teachers should encourage the following within the
classroom:
 Focus on the process of learning, rather than the end product of it.
 Using active methods that require rediscovering or reconstructing "truths."
 Using collaborative, as well as individual activities (so children can learn from
each other).
 Devising situations that present useful problems, and create disequilibrium in
the child.
 Evaluate the level of the child's development so suitable tasks can be set.