Cognitive Development According to Piaget

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Cognitive Development According to Piaget

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Cognitive development is defined as gradual orderly changes by which mental processes become more complex and sophisticated, or the scientific study of how human beings develop in certain orderly stages as they get older. The actual study of cognition refers to the process of knowing; it is the study of all mental activities related to acquiring, storing, and using knowledge (Microsoft, 2001, p.3). How we as humans develop cognitively has been thoroughly observed and researched by Jean Piaget. He was a cognitivist: he believed that our environment stimulates us to learn on our own (make our own intelligence).

Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who had a major impact on educational theory in the early 20th century. He called himself a “cognitive biologist.” He was considered a boy genius, publishing his first paper at the age of ten. By the age of fifteen, he had written and published more than twenty articles. He received his doctorate in biology at the age of twenty-two from the University of Neuchatel (Microsoft, 2001, p.5). When Piaget became interested in cognitive development, he started studies and did research and writing on his theories of cognitive development. Piaget wrote extensively on the development of thought and language patterns in children. He examined children’s conceptions of numbers, space, logic, geometry, physical reality, and moral judgment (Microsoft, 2001, p.1).

Piaget was one of the first child psychologists who worked one-on-one with children instead of with a group study. During the one-on-one time he spent with the children, Piaget noticed that at different ages, specifically as they got older, children were able to learn more and understand more complex concepts. This is when he came up with his four stages of cognitive development. He said that we, even as adults, attain intelligence at different levels. He referred to this as hierarchical fashion and said that learning is adaptation (assimilation and association) with structure. What we learn is either combined with previously learned material or that we adjust to the new material (Woolfolk, 2001).

Piaget’s first stage of cognitive development is called the Sensory Stage. It lasts from birth to approximately two years old (Woolfolk, 2001). Here, children have no object permanence (out of sight, out...

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...start to develop concerns about social issues and identity (Woolfolk, 2001, p.31).

Piaget taught us that children are not little adults as they had been formerly thought of. He also taught us that children need hands on learning and at different ages, we should expect different things from them. New material that we teach children should mix with old material so that they get a clear understanding of what they are learning. However, the new material that they are learning shouldn’t be too close to the old material, or nothing new will be formed. Piaget also taught us that interaction with others is good for development, and it helps us to learn in different ways by being with others. Piaget set the stage for others in his field to learn and discover even more about the development of a child into an adult.

Piaget asserted that human intelligence develops in stages, each of which enhances a person’s understanding of the world in a new and more complex way. Children, he taught us, by continually interacting with their environment, keep adding and reshaping their conceptions of the world (Microsoft, 2001, p.1). This he taught us through his theories of cognitive development.

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