Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive

Development
Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggests that intelligence changes as children
grow.
A child’s cognitive development is not just about acquiring knowledge, the child has to develop
or construct a mental model of the world.
Cognitive development occurs through the interaction of innate capacities (nature) and
environmental events (nurture), and children pass through a series of stages.
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development proposes 4 stages of development.

 Sensorimotor stage: birth to 2 years

 Preoperational stage: 2 to 7 years
 Concrete operational stage: 7 to 11 years
 Formal operational stage: ages 12 and up

The sequence of the stages is universal across cultures and follows the same invariant
(unchanging) order.
All children go through the same stages in the same order (but not all at the same rate).

How Piaget Developed the Theory

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 branched out on his own with a new set of assumptions about children’s intelligence:

 Children’s intelligence differs from an adult’s in quality rather than in quantity. This
means that children reason (think) differently from adults and see the world in different
ways.
 Children actively build up their knowledge about the world. They are not passive
creatures waiting for someone to fill their heads with knowledge.
  The best way to understand children’s reasoning was to see things from their point of
view.
Piaget did not want 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.

Piaget studied children from infancy to adolescence using naturalistic observation of his own
three babies and sometimes controlled observation too. From these, he wrote diary
descriptions charting their development.
He also used clinical interviews and observations of older children who were able to understand
questions and hold conversations.

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
Each child goes through the stages in the same order, and child development is determined by
biological maturation and interaction with the environment.

At each stage of development, the child’s thinking is qualitatively different from the other
stages, that is, each stage involves a different type of intelligence.

Stage Age Goal

Sensorimotor Birth to 18-24 months Object permanence

Preoperational 2 to 7 years old Symbolic thought

Concrete operational Ages 7 to 11 years Logical thought

Formal operational Adolescence to adulthood Scientific reasoning

 Stage Age Goal

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.

The Sensorimotor Stage - Ages: Birth to 2 Years

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

 Infant learns about the world through their senses and through their actions (moving
around and exploring their environment).
 During the sensorimotor stage, a range of cognitive abilities develop. These include
object permanence;
 self-recognition (the child realizes that other people are separate from them);
 deferred imitation; and representational play.
 They relate to the emergence of the general symbolic function, which is the capacity to
represent the world mentally
 At about 8 months the infant will understand the permanence of objects and that they
will still exist even if they can’t see them and the infant will search for them when they
disappear.
During this stage, the infant lives in the present. It does not yet have a mental picture of the
world stored in its memory therefore it does not have a sense of object permanence.
If it cannot see something then it does not exist. This is why you can hide a toy from an infant,
while it watches, but it will not search for the object once it has gone out of sight.
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.
Towards the end of this stage, the general symbolic function begins to appear where children
show in their play that they can use one object to stand for another. Language starts to appear
because they realize that words can be used to represent objects and feelings.
The child begins to be able to store information that it knows about the world, recall it and label
it.
The sensorimotor stage is the first of the four stages in Piaget’s theory of cognitive
development. It extends from birth to approximately 2 years and is a period of rapid cognitive
growth.
During this period, infants develop an understanding of the world through coordinating sensory
experiences (seeing, hearing) with motor actions (reaching, touching).
The main development during the sensorimotor stage is the understanding that objects exist
and events occur in the world independently of one’s own actions (“the object concept”, or
“object permanence“).
For example, if you place a toy under a blanket, the child who has achieved object permanence
knows it is there and can actively seek it. At the beginning of this stage, the child behaves as if
the toy had simply disappeared.
The attainment of object permanence generally signals the transition to the next stage of
development (preoperational).

Key Features

Sub-Stages: Development & Examples

The sensorimotor stage of development can be broken down into six additional sub-stages
including simple reflexes, primary circular reactions, secondary circular reactions, coordination
of reactions, tertiary circular reactions, and early symbolic thought.
Reflex Acts
The first substage (first month of life) is the stage of reflex acts. The neonate responds to
external stimulation with innate reflex actions.
For example, if you brush a baby’s mouth or cheek with your finger it will suck reflexively.
Primary Circular Reactions
The second substage is the stage of primary circular reactions. The baby will repeat pleasurable
actions centered on its own body.
For example, babies from 1 – 4 months old will wiggle their fingers, kick their legs and suck their
thumbs. These are not reflex actions. They are done intentionally – for the sake of the
pleasurable stimulation produced.
Secondary Circular Reactions
Next comes the stage of secondary circular reactions. It typically lasts from about 4 – 8 months.
Now babies repeat pleasurable actions that involve objects as well as actions involving their
own bodies.
An example of this is the infant who shakes the rattle for the pleasure of hearing the sound that
it produces.
Co-ordinating Secondary Schemes
The fourth substage (from 8 – 12 months) is the stage of coordinating secondary schemes.
Instead of simply prolonging interesting events, babies now show signs of an ability to use their
acquired knowledge to reach a goal.
For example the infant will not just shake the rattle, but will reach out and knock to one side an
object that stands in the way of it getting hold of the rattle.
Tertiary Circular Reactions
Fifth comes the stage of tertiary circular reactions. These differ from secondary circular
reactions in that they are intentional adaptations to specific situations. The infant who once
explored an object by taking it apart now tries to put it back together.
For example, it stacks the bricks it took out of its wooden truck back again or it puts back the
nesting cups – one inside the other.
Symbolic Thought
Finally, in substage six there is the beginning of symbolic thought. This is transitional to the pre-
operational stage of cognitive development. Babies can now form mental representations of
objects.
This means that they have developed the ability to visualize things that are not physically
present. This is crucial to the acquisition of object permanence – the most fundamental
achievement of the whole sensorimotor stage of development.

The Preoperational Stage - Ages: 2 – 7 Years

The pre-operational stage is one of Piaget’s intellectual development stages. It takes place
between 2 and 7 years. At the beginning of this stage the child does not use operations, so the
thinking is influenced by the way things appear rather than logical reasoning.
A child cannot conserve which means that the child does not understand that quantity remains
the same even if the appearance changes.
Furthermore, the child is egocentric; he assumes that other people see the world as he does.
This has been shown in the three mountains study.
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

 Toddlers and young children acquire the ability to internally represent the world through
language and mental imagery.
 During this stage, young children can think about things symbolically. This is the ability to
make one thing, such as a word or an object, stand for something other than itself.
 A child’s thinking is dominated by how the world looks, not how the world is. It is not yet
capable of a logical (problem-solving) type of thought.
 Moreover, the child has difficulties with class inclusion; he can classify objects but
cannot include objects in sub-sets, which involves classifying objects as belonging to two
or more categories simultaneously.
 Infants at this stage also demonstrate animism. This is the tendency for the child to think
that non-living objects (such as toys) have life and feel like a person.
 By 2 years, children have made some progress toward detaching their thought from the
physical world. However, have not yet developed logical (or “operational”) thought
characteristics of later stages.

Thinking is still intuitive (based on subjective judgments about situations) and egocentric
(centered on the child’s own view of the world).

Key Features

Centration
Centration is the tendency to focus on only one aspect of a situation at one time. When a child
can focus on more than one aspect of a situation, at the same time, they have the ability to
decenter.
During this stage, children have difficulties thinking about more than one aspect of any situation
at the same time; and they have trouble decentering in social situation just as they do in non-
social contexts.

Egocentrism
Egocentrism refers to the child’s inability to see a situation from another person’s point of view.
The egocentric child assumes that other people see, hear, and feel exactly the same as the child
does.
In the developmental theory of Jean Piaget, this is a feature of the preoperational child.
Childrens” thoughts and communications are typically egocentric (i.e., about themselves).

Play
At the beginning of this stage, you often find children engaging in parallel play. That is to say,
they often play in the same room as other children but they play next to others rather than with
them.
Each child is absorbed in their own private world, and speech is egocentric. That is to say the
main function of speech at this stage is to externalize the child’s thinking rather than to
communicate with others.
As yet, the child has not grasped the social function of either language or rules.

Symbolic Representation
The early preoperational period (ages 2-3) is marked by a dramatic increase in children’s use of
the symbolic function.
This is the ability to make one thing – a word or an object – stand for something other than
itself. Language is perhaps the most obvious form of symbolism that young children display.
However, Piaget (1951) argues that language does not facilitate cognitive development, but
merely reflects what the child already knows and contributes little to new knowledge. He
believed cognitive development promotes language development, not vice versa.

Pretend (or symbolic) Play

Toddlers often pretend to be people they are not (e.g. superheroes, policeman), and may play
these roles with props that symbolize real life objects. Children may also invent an imaginary
playmate.
“In symbolic play, young children advance upon their cognitions about people, objects and
actions and in this way construct increasingly sophisticated representations of the world”
(Bornstein, 1996, p. 293).
As the pre-operational stage develops egocentrism declines and children begin to enjoy the
participation of another child in their games and “lets pretend “ play becomes more important.
For this to work, there is going to be a need for some way of regulating each child’s relations
with the other and out of this need we see the beginnings of an orientation to others in terms
of rules.

Animism
This is the belief that inanimate objects (such as toys and teddy bears) have human feelings and
intentions. By animism Piaget (1929) meant that for the pre-operational child the world of
nature is alive, conscious and has a purpose.
Piaget has identified four stages of animism:
1. Up to the ages 4 or 5 years, the child believes that almost everything is alive and has a
purpose.
2. During the second stage (5-7 years) only objects that move have a purpose.
3. In the next stage (7-9 years), only objects that move spontaneously are thought to be
alive.
4. In the last stage (9-12 years), the child understands that only plants and animals are
alive.
Artificialism
This is the belief that certain aspects of the environment are manufactured by people (e.g.,
clouds in the sky).
Irreversibility
This is the inability to reverse the direction of a sequence of events to their starting point.

The Three Mountains Task

Jean Piaget used the three mountains task (see picture below) to test whether children were
egocentric. Egocentric children assume that other people will see the same view of the three
mountains as they do.
According to Piaget, at age 7, thinking is no longer egocentric, as the child can see more than
their own point of view.
Aim: Piaget and Inhelder (1956) wanted to find out at what age children decenter – i.e. become
no longer egocentric.
Method: A child is shown a display of three mountains; the tallest mountain is covered with
snow. On top of another are some trees, and on top of the third is a church. The child stands on
one side of the display, and there is a doll on the other side of it.
The child was allowed to walk round the model, to look at it, then sit down at one side. A doll is
then placed at various positions on the table.
The child is shown pictures of the scene from different viewpoints and asked to select the view
that best matched what the doll can “see”.

The child is then shown 10 photographs of the mountains taken from different positions, and
asked to indicate which showed the doll’s view.
Piaget assumed that if the child correctly picked out the card showing the doll’s view, s/he was
not egocentric. Egocentrism would be shown by the child who picked out the card showing the
view s/he saw.
Findings – Typically a four years old child reports what can be seen from her perspective and not
what can be seen from the doll’s perspective.
Six years old were more aware of other viewpoints but still tended to choose the wrong one.
This shows egocentrism as the child assumed that the doll “saw” the mountains as he did
Four year-olds almost always chose a picture that represented what they could see and showed
no awareness that the doll’s view would be different from this.
Six year-olds frequently chose a picture different from their own view but rarely chose the
correct picture for the doll’s point of view. Only seven- and eight-year-olds consistently chose
the correct picture.
Conclusion – At age 7, thinking is no longer egocentric as the child can see more than their own
point of view.
Evaluation – It has been suggested that Piaget’s tasks at this stage may have underestimated the
child’s abilities due to a number of factors, including complicated language, unfamiliar
materials, lack of context, and children misinterpreting the experimenter’s intention.
More recent studies have attempted to ask questions more clearly and to present situations to
which children can relate more easily.

The Concrete Operational Stage - Ages: 7 – 11 Years

By the beginning of the concrete operational stage, the child can use operations ( a set of logical
rules) so he can conserve quantities, he realises that people see the world in a different way
than he does (decentering) and he has improved in inclusion tasks. Children still have difficulties
with abstract thinking.
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
During this stage, children begin to thinking logically about concrete events.
Children begin to understand the concept of conservation; understanding that, although things
may change in appearance, certain properties remain the same.
During this stage, children can mentally reverse things (e.g. picture a ball of plasticine returning
to its original shape).
During this stage, children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other
people might think and feel.
The stage is called concrete because children can think logically much more successfully if they
can manipulate real (concrete) materials or pictures of them.
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.
But operational thought only effective here if child asked to reason about materials that are
physically present. Children at this stage will tend to make mistakes or be overwhelmed when
asked to reason about abstract or hypothetical problems.
The concrete operational stage is the third stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
This period lasts around seven to eleven years of age, and is characterized by the development
of organized and rational thinking. In the concrete operational stage, children acquire the
rudiments of logical reasoning, and display skills of reversibility, decentration and other skills of
conservation. However, children in this stage can only solve problems if they apply them to
actual objects or events.

Children gain the abilities of conservation (number, area, volume, orientation), reversibility,
seriation, transitivity and class inclusion.
However, although children can logically solve problems, they are typically not able to think
abstractly or hypothetically. They cannot solve problems when they are in the abstract.
Piaget (1954a) considered the concrete stage a major turning point in the child’s cognitive
development because it marks the beginning of logical or operational thought.
The child is mature enough to use logical thought or operations (i.e., rules) but can only apply
logic to physical objects (hence concrete operational).
Conservation
Conservation is the understanding that something stays the same in quantity even though its
appearance changes. This can apply to aspects such as volume, number, area, etc.
To be more technical conservation is the ability to understand that redistributing material does
not affect its mass, number, volume or length.
For example, Piaget and Szeminska (1952) showed that children below 7 or 8 years of age often
believed that lengthening rows of counters (by
spreading them out) increased the number and squashing balls of plasticine flat reduced
their volume.
In Piaget’s standard procedure he asked the child a pre and a post transformation question.
He asked whether two instances (e.g. rows of counters or beakers of liquid) were the same or
different both before and after a change was made totheir physical appearance (e.g. by
spreading out the counters or pouring the liquid into a taller vessel).
By around seven years the majority of children can conserve liquid, because they understand
that when water is poured into a different shaped glass, the quantity of liquid remains the
same, even though its appearance has changed. Five-year-old children would think that there
was a different amount because the appearance has changed.
Conservation of number (see video below) develops soon after this. Piaget (1954b) set out a
row of counters in front of the child and asked her/him to make another row the same as the
first one. Piaget spread out his row of counters and asked the child if there were still the same
number of counters.
Most children aged seven could answer this correctly, and Piaget concluded that this showed
that by seven years of age children were able to conserve number.
Some forms of conservation (such as mass) as understood earlier than others (volume). Piaget
used the term horizonal decalage to describe this (and other) developmental inconsistencies.

The Formal Operational Stage - Ages: 12 and Over

The formal operational period begins at about age 11. As adolescents enter this stage, they gain
the ability to think in an abstract manner, the ability to combine and classify items in a more
sophisticated way, and the capacity for higher-order reasoning.
Adolescents can think systematically and reason about what might be as well as what is (not
everyone achieves this stage).. This allows them to understand politics, ethics, and science
fiction, as well as to engage in scientific reasoning.
Adolescents can deal with abstract ideas: e.g. they can understand division and fractions
without having to actually divide things up, and solve hypothetical (imaginary) problems.

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

 Concrete operations are carried out on things whereas formal operations are carried out
on ideas. Formal operational thought is entirely freed from
 physical and perceptual constraints.
 During this stage, adolescents can deal with abstract ideas (e.g. no longer needing to
think about slicing up cakes or sharing sweets to understand division and fractions).
 They can follow the form of an argument without having to think in terms of specific
examples.
 Adolescents can deal with hypothetical problems with many possible solutions. E.g. if
asked ‘What would happen if money were abolished in one hour’s time? they could
speculate about many possible consequences.
  From about 12 years children can follow the form of a logical argument without
reference to its content. During this time, people develop the ability to think about
abstract concepts, and logically test hypotheses.

This stage sees the emergence of scientific thinking, formulating abstract theories and
hypotheses when faced with a problem.
The formal operational stage begins at approximately age twelve and lasts into adulthood. As
adolescents enter this stage, they gain the ability to think in an abstract manner by
manipulating ideas in their head, without any dependence on concrete manipulation (Inhelder
& Piaget, 1958).
In the formal operational stage, children tend to reason in a more abstract, systematic, and
reflective way. They are more likely to use logic to reason out the possible consequences of each
action before carrying it out.
He/she can do mathematical calculations, think creatively, use abstract reasoning, and imagine
the outcome of particular actions.
An example of the distinction between concrete and formal operational stages is the answer to
the question “If Kelly is taller than Ali and Ali is taller than Jo, who is tallest?”
This is an example of inferential reasoning, which is the ability to think about things which the
child has not actually experienced and to draw conclusions from its thinking.
The child who needs to draw a picture or use objects is still in the concrete operational stage,
whereas children who can reason the answer in their heads are using formal operational
thinking.

Formal Operational Thought

Hypothetico-Deductive Reasoning
Hypothetico-deductive reasoning is the ability to think scientifically through generating
predictions, or hypotheses, about the world to answer questions.
The individual will approach problems in a systematic and organized manner, rather than
through trial-and-error.

Abstract Thought
Concrete operations are carried out on things whereas formal operations are carried out on
ideas.
The individual can think about hypothetical and abstract concepts they have yet to experience.
Abstract thought is important for planning regarding the future.

Schemas

Piaget claimed that knowledge cannot simply emerge from sensory experience; some initial
structure is necessary to make sense of the world.
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.
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.
Operations are more sophisticated mental structures which allow us to combine schemas in a
logical (reasonable) way.
As children grow they can carry out more complex operations and begin to imagine hypothetical
(imaginary) situations.
Apart from the schemas we are born with schemas and operations are learned through
interaction with other people and the environment.
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.
Examples of Schemas
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 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.

The Process Of Adaptation

Piaget also believed that a child developed as a result of two different influences: maturation,
and interaction with the environment. The child develops mental structures (schemata) which
enables him to solve problems in the environment.
Adaptation is the process by which the child changes its mental models of the world to match
more closely how the world actually is.
Adaptation is brought about by the processes of assimilation (solving new experiences using
existing schemata) and accommodation (changing existing schemata in order to solve new
experiences).
The importance of this viewpoint is that the child is seen as an active participant in its own
development rather than a passive recipient of either biological influences (maturation) or
environmental stimulation.
When our existing schemas can explain what we perceive around us, we are in a state of
equilibration. However, when we meet a new situation that we cannot explain it creates
disequilibrium, this is an unpleasant sensation which we try to escape, this gives the motivation
for learning.
According to Piaget, reorganization to higher levels of thinking is not accomplished easily. The
child must “rethink” his or her view of the world. An important step in the process is the
experience of cognitive conflict.
In other words, the child becomes aware that he or she holds two contradictory views about a
situation and they both cannot be true. This step is referred to as disequilibrium.

Jean Piaget (1952; see also Wadsworth, 2004) viewed intellectual growth as a process of
adaptation (adjustment) to the world. This happens through assimilation, accommodation, and
equilibration.
To get back to a state of equilibration we need to modify our existing schemas, to learn and
adapt to the new situation.
This is done through the processes of accommodation and assimilation. This is how our
schemas evolve and become more sophisticated.
Assimilation
Piaget defined assimilation as the cognitive process of fitting new information into existing
cognitive schemas, perceptions, and understanding. Overall beliefs and understanding of the
world do not change as a result of the new information.
Assimilation coccurs when the new experience is not very different form previous experiences
of a particular object or situation we assimilate the new situation by adding information to a
previous schema.
This means that when you are faced with new information, you make sense of this information
by referring to information you already have (information processed and learned previously)
and try to fit the new information into the information you already have.
For example, 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).
For example, a baby learns to pick up a rattle he or she will then use the same schema
(grasping) to pick up other objects.
Accommodation
When the new experience is very different from what we have encountered before we need to
change our schemas in a very radical way or create a whole new schema.
Psychologist Jean Piaget defined accommodation as the cognitive process of revising existing
cognitive schemas, perceptions, and understanding so that new information can be
incorporated.
This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed
to deal with a new object or situation.
In order to make sense of some new information, you actual adjust information you already
have (schemas you already have, etc.) to make room for this new information.
For example, a baby tries to use the same schema for grasping to pick up a very small object. It
doesn’t work. The baby then changes the schema by now using the forefinger and thumb to
pick up the object.
Also, a child may have a schema for birds (feathers, flying, etc.) and then they see a plane, which
also flies, but would not fit into their bird schema.
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”.
Equilibration
Piaget believed that all human thought seeks order and is uncomfortable with contradictions
and inconsistencies in knowledge structures. In other words, we seek “equilibrium” in our
cognitive structures.
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).
Piaget believed that cognitive development did not progress at a steady rate, but rather in leaps
and bounds. Equilibration is the force that 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.
Equilibration is a regulatory process that maintains a balance between assimilation and
accommodation to facilitate cognitive growth. Think of it this way: We can’t merely assimilate
all the time; if we did, we would never learn any new concepts or principles.
Everything new we encountered would just get put in the same few “slots” we already had.
Neither can we accommodate all the time; if we did, everything we encountered would seem
new; there would be no recurring regularities in our world. We’d be exhausted by the mental
effort!
Applying Piaget’s Theory To The Classroom

Think of old black and white films that you’ve seen in which children sat in rows at desks, with
ink wells, would learn by rote, all chanting in unison in response to questions set by an
authoritarian old biddy like Matilda!
Children who were unable to keep up were seen as slacking and would be punished by
variations on the theme of corporal punishment. Yes, it really did happen and in some parts of
the world still does today.
Piaget is partly responsible for the change that occurred in the 1960s and for your relatively
pleasurable and pain free school days!

“Children should be able to do their own experimenting and their own research.
Teachers, of course, can guide them by providing appropriate materials, but the
essential thing is that in order for a child to understand something, he must construct it
himself, he must re-invent it. Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from
inventing it himself. On the other hand that which we allow him to discover by himself
will remain with him visibly”.

Piaget (1972, p. 27)

Critical Evaluation
Support
The influence of Piaget’s ideas in developmental psychology has been enormous. He changed
how people viewed the child’s world and their methods of studying children.
He was an inspiration to many who came after and took up his ideas. Piaget’s ideas have
generated a huge amount of research which has increased our understanding of cognitive
development.
Piaget (1936) was one of the first psychologists 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.
His ideas have been of practical use in understanding and communicating with children,
particularly in the field of education (re: Discovery Learning). Piaget’s theory has been applied
across education.
According to Piaget’s theory, educational programmes should be designed to correspond to the
stages of development.

Criticisms
Are the stages real? Vygotsky and Bruner would rather not talk about stages at all, preferring to
see development as a continuous process. Others have queried the age ranges of the stages.
Some studies have shown that progress to the formal operational stage is not guaranteed.
For example, Keating (1979) reported that 40-60% of college students fail at formal operation
tasks, and Dasen (1994) states that only one-third of adults ever reach the formal operational
stage.
The fact that the formal operational stage is not reached in all cultures and not all individuals
within cultures suggests that it might not be biologically based.
According to Piaget, the rate of cognitive development cannot be accelerated as it is based on
biological processes however, direct tuition can speed up the development which suggests that
it is not entirely based on biological factors.
Because Piaget concentrated on the universal stages of cognitive development and biological
maturation, he failed to consider the effect that the social setting and culture may have on
cognitive development.
Cross-cultural studies show that the stages of development (except the formal operational
stage) occur in the same order in all cultures suggesting that cognitive development is a product
of a biological process of maturation.
However, the age at which the stages are reached varies between cultures and individuals which
suggests that social and cultural factors and individual differences influence cognitive
development.
Dasen (1994) cites studies he conducted in remote parts of the central Australian desert with 8-
14-year-old Indigenous Australians. He gave them conservation of liquid tasks and spatial
awareness tasks. He found that the ability to conserve came later in the Aboriginal children,
between aged 10 and 13 (as opposed to between 5 and 7, with Piaget’s Swiss sample).
However, he found that spatial awareness abilities developed earlier amongst the Aboriginal
children than the Swiss children. Such a study demonstrates cognitive development is not
purely dependent on maturation but on cultural factors too – spatial awareness is crucial for
nomadic groups of people.
Vygotsky, a contemporary of Piaget, argued that social interaction is crucial for cognitive
development. According to Vygotsky the child’s learning always occurs in a social context in co-
operation with someone more skillful (MKO). This social interaction provides language
opportunities and Vygotsky considered language the foundation of thought.
Piaget’s methods (observation and clinical interviews) are more open to biased interpretation
than other methods. Piaget made careful, detailed naturalistic observations of children, and
from these he wrote diary descriptions charting their development. He also used clinical
interviews and observations of older children who were able to understand questions and hold
conversations.
Because Piaget conducted the observations alone the data collected are based on his own
subjective interpretation of events. It would have been more reliable if Piaget conducted the
observations with another researcher and compared the results afterward to check if they are
similar (i.e., have inter-rater reliability).
Although clinical interviews allow the researcher to explore data in more depth, the
interpretation of the interviewer may be biased.
For example, children may not understand the question/s, they have short attention spans, they
cannot express themselves very well and may be trying to please the experimenter. Such
methods meant that Piaget may have formed inaccurate conclusions.
As several studies have shown Piaget underestimated the abilities of children because his tests
were sometimes confusing or difficult to understand (e.g., Hughes, 1975).
Piaget failed to distinguish between competence (what a child is capable of doing) and
performance (what a child can show when given a particular task). When tasks were altered,
performance (and therefore competence) was affected. Therefore, Piaget might have
underestimated children’s cognitive abilities.
For example, a child might have object permanence (competence) but still not be able to search
for objects (performance). When Piaget hid objects from babies he found that it wasn’t till after
nine months that they looked for it.
However, Piaget relied on manual search methods – whether the child was looking for the
object or not.
Later, research such as Baillargeon and Devos (1991) reported that infants as young as four
months looked longer at a moving carrot that didn’t do what it expected, suggesting they had
some sense of permanence, otherwise they wouldn’t have had any expectation of what it
should or shouldn’t do.
The concept of schema is incompatible with the theories of Bruner (1966) and Vygotsky
(1978). Behaviorism would also refute Piaget’s schema theory because is cannot be directly
observed as it is an internal process. Therefore, they would claim it cannot be objectively
measured.
Piaget studied his own children and the children of his colleagues in Geneva in order to deduce
general principles about the intellectual development of all children. Not only was his sample
very small, but it was composed solely of European children from families of high socio-
economic status. Researchers have therefore questioned the generalizability of his data.
For Piaget, language is seen as secondary to the action, i.e., thought precedes language. The
Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978) argues that the development of language and thought
go together and that the origin of reasoning is more to do with our ability to communicate with
others than with our interaction with the material world.

Please refer next page for revision when you’re ready!

REVISION
1. What are the four stages of Piaget’s Theory?

2. What are the strengths of Piaget’s theory?

3. What are some of the weaknesses of Piaget’s theory?

4. What are Piaget’s concepts of schemas?

5. Explain the following terms;

 Assimilation

 Accommodation

 Egocentrism

 Object Permanence

 Animism

 Conservation

 Equilibrium