Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget’s theory is about nature and how human intelligence develops. It is mainly known as the development stage theory, and it deals with how one acquires, constructs, and uses knowledge. The method of cognitive development based primarily on how a person makes sense of the world. The primary process is of making sense of what is happening is by gathering and organizing the information acquired. The theory opposes the idea that intelligence is a fixed trait. The approach acknowledges that cognitive development is a process that takes place due to interaction with the environment and biological development.

Piaget viewed intellectual growth as a process of adaptation that takes place through assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration. Assimilation refers to how a person will perceive and adapt to new information. The process involves fixing the latest information in the preexisting schema. Through assimilation, the new data gets fixed into old ideas (Meadows,2017). Accommodation involves taking new information form the environment and altering the old thoughts to create room for the latest information. Accommodation occurs when the existing schema is not working as required, and therefore, a new one is needed to act on strange situations and objects. Lastly is equilibration, which is the force that tends to move development along. According to Piaget, cognitive development is not something that takes place at a steady rate. Therefore, the process occurs through leaps and bounce. Equilibration occurs if a child schema has to act on unrelated data that gets acquired via assimilation.

1. Stages of Cognitive development

As stated by Jean Piaget’s, there are four stages

1. 1. Sensorimotor Stage

It perceived to be the first of cognitive development, which takes place from the birth of a child to language acquisition. At this stage, the child progressively acquires knowledge about the world by matching experiences and physical interaction with things (Ahmad,2016). The child receives knowledge about the world through what they do with the objects physically. At this stage, the child gets to understand that they are separate from other things in the world. It is also at this stage that a child can develop object permanence, and therefore, the child can acknowledge that an object goes on being present even when they cannot hear or see it. The stage is divided into six substages;

1. Simple reflexes

It occurs from birth to the sixth week after a child is born. It happens through the coordination of sensation and acts via the reflective behavior of a child. According to Paget’s, the primary reflexes entails being able to suck an object or anything placed in its mouth and closing of hands when an object is placed on its palm. It also involves the following things that are interesting to the baby with the eyes. All these reflexes eventually become voluntary actions for the baby.

1. First habits and primary circulation phase

It occurs during the sixth weeks to four months after a baby is born. The primary concern is still based on the body of the infant. It entails habits that a child exhibits, like an infant repeating the motion of passing their hands before their faces.

iii. Secondary Circulation Reaction Phase

It occurs between the 4th month to the 8th month of the baby’s life. It is a behavior development stage as a baby repeats actions that interest or bring pleasure to him. At this stage, the child can create a match between prehension and what he sees (Ghazi,2016). It is also at this stage that a child starts doing things intentionally, like grasping the air in the direction of desired objects.

1. Coordination of secondary Circulation reaction stage

It occurs in the 8th to 12th months on a baby’s life. It is at this stage that a child acquires hand and eye coordination (Ahmad,2016). It is also at this stage that there is a primary growth of logic and the matching of the means of doing things and the end result. It is also at this stage that the child starts doing something with an objective hence the first proper intelligence.

1. Tertiary Circulation reaction novelty and curiosity

The stage occurs from 12th to 18th month. At this stage, a child experiments with new behaviors, and they acquire new behaviors hence learning different means to meet their goals (Meadows,2017). A child at this stage describes a child as a “young scientist” because they are experimenting and discovering new methods of solving challenges.

Vi. Internationalization scheme

It is a stage that occurs between the 18th to 24th month. It is at this stage that a real child’s creativity begins, and insight starts (McLeod,2018). The child can use primitive symbols, enduring mental representation.

2. Pre-operational Stage

It starts from when the child starts acquiring the skills to speak when they are 2 to 7 years old. Piaget states that, at this stage, the child cannot understand the concrete logic and still cannot mentally manipulate information acquired (Bormanaki,2017). The child rate of playing rises, and a lot of pretenses to be a given role takes place. However, the child cannot yet see things from someone else points of view. It is an intuitive stage, and the child wants to understand everything around him. It takes place in the symbolic and intuitive substages.

1. Symbolic function

At this stage, the child plays a lot and become very social, and they start assigning a task for one another, and they can think in images (Meadows,2017). It is also at this stage that the child develops an imaginary friend. At this stage, egocentrism occurs as the child is unable to differentiate their perspective from that of others. The child only considers their view of things. Animism also occurs at this stage as the child believes that inanimate objects can perform activities and have a life-like quality. It is at this stage that the child understands that the twinkling of stars in the sky is because they are happy.

1. Intuitive Thought

At this stage that a child becomes very curious and wants to know why things happen the way, they do (Ghazi,2016). At this stage, the child gets to acknowledge that they have a vast amount of information but cannot explain how they acquired it.

3. The concrete operational stage

It is a stage that takes place between the age of seven to twelve years. It is a stage that is characterized by the use of logic because the child becomes more mature and starts behaving like an adult (Ahmad,2016). The child begins solving problems he encounters more logistically. It is also at this stage that the child incorporates inductive reasoning as the child able to draw references from observation to generalize. The child can eliminate egocentrism at this stage. The use of full, common sense has not yet developed at this stage, but a child can understand things from other people’s perspectives.

At this stage, the child has difficulties using deductive logic, which entails the use of general principles to predict outcomes of an event. It is also at this stage that they start changing cognitively by how they think about social matters (Bormanaki,2017). They can understand reversibility and reasonably handle issues. Finally, it is also at this stage that the child can understand the law of conservation. It is a significant turning point in the cognitive development of a child since it a start of operational thoughts.

1. Formal Operational Stage

It is the last stage, as stated by Piaget, and it takes place from the age of twelve years to adulthood. It is at this stage that a person can develop the ability to think about abstract objects. The hypothetic- deductive reasoning is also exhibited at this stage as a person is able to reason in the” what if “situation. It is a skill that is majorly required in mathematics and sciences (Bormanaki,2017). The abstract thought also emerges where a person is able to consider the consequences of a particular action. Metacognition also occurs where one can think about ideas, and one is able to process and monitor those thoughts. However, not every person can utilize formal operations in all their daily actives.

The experiment conducted by Piaget’s to test the cognitive development was by using scaling and different weights. The task entailed balancing the scale by placing weights at different scales. The success of the experiment involved using formal operational thoughts to be able to understand that the distance of weight got hooked from the center affected the balance. It also requires one to understand that the heaviness of the load also plays a role in the balance (Meadows,2017). Children from the age of three to five were unable to understand the concept. The children at the age of seven were able to balance the scale by placing the same objects at the end of the balance but were unable to understand the location. Children at the age of ten were able to comprehend position but did not use logic, and instead, they used trial and error. Finally, by the age of 13, most of them were able to understand the concept of weight and location and were able to apply the theory of hypothesis.

1. World view

The theory fits in constructivism. The main reason is that it is about understanding the world in which one lives and why some things happen the way they do. Piaget’s theory was based on seeking to understand why a child would not understand the concept that an adult could easily understand. The approach is also about how children interact with the environment and how different stages of development occur.

The root of the theory

1. Relation of the approach to the life of the theorist

Piaget shows that intelligence is not a stagnant trait and that it is a process that occurs as a result of the maturing biologically. Piaget had gotten a job in the 1920s at Binet Institute, and his primary role was to come up with a French version of the question on an English intelligence test (Ahmad,2016). He was intrigued by the reason the children did not give the correct answer to questions that only needed logical thinking. Through the wrong answers given, he believes that it created the difference between how an adult and a child thinks. He started his study on cognitive development, not on grade their I.Q. He was interested in showing that an adult has different thinking to a child.

1. Who influenced the theory idea?

Piaget’s early work of intelligence testing got mainly based on proving that children’s thinking is different from that of adults (Bormanaki,2017). Therefore, his theory got influenced by his desire to understand how knowledge goes on increasing throughout childhood. That is the reason why a concept that may be very easy for an adult may be complicated for a child to comprehend.

1. The historical root of the theory

Before Piaget’s theory, children were always considered mini-adults, but through the cognitive theory of development, the concept changed. Through his research, Piaget shows that a child’s thinking varies form how an adult would think (Ghazi,2016). Paget’s work had a lot of influence on the emergence of developmental psychology. His work led to a considerable contribution to the education system because the curriculum was set according to the cognitive development of children at a specific age.

1. Status of the theory today

Supporters of the theory

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development has a lot of influence today. It has helped changed methods that people use to study children and the way they perceive children’s world. His theory has helped many researchers in understanding the cognitive development of a child across the globe. It has helped teachers and parents come up with better ways of communicating with their children. It has helped in education centers in creating a curriculum that supports the teaching specific concept to a child depending on their age due to different stages of understanding matters.

Critiques of the theory

Piaget’s work got criticized because he concentrated on universal stages of cognitive development and biological maturation only. He failed to consider the effects of social setting and culture, which play an essential role in cognitive development (Meadows,2017). A child is able to grow at a different rate depending on the social aspect around him. The cognitive development of a child that grows around adults that are always talking and involving him in a lot of practical activities is not the same as a child that grows without many interactions.

Piaget’s work got also criticized due to his method of observation, and clinical interviews are more biased than other methods. Piaget conducted the research by observing children and writing his view on a journal for the infants. He also researched on older children but in a different style from infants, he would ask a question, and through this, he made his observation (McLeod,2018). Piaget’s work cannot be considered entirely reliable because all his conclusions got made out of his personal view. He did not involve other researchers in the same observation for credibility, which would have been developed by comparing the findings.

It is also criticized because of a lack of consistency in children thinking. Through the inconsistency, it makes the four stages questionable because a child can conserve numbers a year before they can conserve weight. Piaget also limits cognitive development to only four steps, which is also debatable. There are more than four stages because a person’s cognitive continues to develop after stage four (Bormanaki,2017). Lastly, his theory got also criticized because, unlike in his approach, cognitive development is not something that progresses smoothly. Through further studies, it got proven that a child may be able to understand and learn concepts that Piaget has placed at an advance stage when he or she is still very young.

1. Conclusion

I chose Piaget’s theory because I was interested in understanding why a child does not comprehend a concept that an adult would easily understand. Through this theory, I have acquired my answer by the knowledge that a person’s cognitive development as they grow. A child does not understand a given concept because they have not yet gotten to a specific stage of cognitive development. I have also learned the importance of letting a child discover for themselves new things through their interaction with the environment, rather than presenting a child with ready-made knowledge. Lastly, the theory has also influenced my idea about children because I now understand that their different stages of cognitive development. Therefore, even though the development stages are the same, it occurs at different rates for different children, and consequently, it is vital to understand a child as an individual.

References

Ahmad, S., Ch, A. H., Batool, A., Sitars, K., & Malik, M. (2016). Play and Cognitive Development: Formal Operational Perspective of Piaget’s Theory. Journal of Education and Practice, 7(28), 72-79.

Meadows, S. (2017). An assessment of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Developing thinking (pp. 7-25). Routledge.

Bormanaki, H. B., & Khoshhal, Y. (2017). The role of equilibration in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and its implication for receptive skills: A theoretical study. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 8(5), 996-1005.

Ghazi, S. R., Ullah, K., & Jan, F. A. (2016). Concrete operational stage of Piaget’s cognitive development theory: An implication in learning mathematics. Gomal University Journal of Research, 32(1), 9-20.

McLeod, S. (2018). Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Simply Psychology.