Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development Essay

893 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Stages of cognitive development expanded by piaget

Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget based his cognitive development stage theory on the knowledge a child constructs through physical experience with the environment. It was very clear to him that pupils in middle childhood think differently to adolescents (Phillips, 1969). In this assignment I will discuss why I agree that every stage has an increased level of systematic mental activity (Piaget, 1952). Piaget's cognitive development stage theory. Concrete stage According to Piaget, a child between seven to eleven years of age, finds themselves in the concrete operational period. This third stage of cognitive development, marks the beginning of logical thought (Phillips, 1969). This can be strengthened by the act of children now understanding the concept of numbers and applying cardinal numbers to fruits, stones, animals, etcetera (Simatwa, 2010). The terms centration and decentration are two key Piagetian terms. The former, is a limitation to the previous stage. The latter can be defined as the child being able to see beyond one aspect, but rather thinking in two or more dimensions of a subject or object (Woolfolk, 2004). Due to this new capability, experiments examine how the child no longer makes the error to think that a tall, thin glass contains more substance than a short, wide glass (Ntshangase, 2011), but they understand that the …show more content…

Convergent thinking on the other hand can be defined as the person being competent at formulating one correct response (Dacey & Travers, 2002) By investigation a open-ended test, such as the “Uses of Objects”, the divergent thinking was made clear to me. Divergent thinking and convergent thinking are two important processes in creativity (Hommel, Colzato, Fischer & Christoffels, 2011). In formal operational stage , the person starts challenging and questioning aspects of their life and this facilitates creative thinking (Shefer,

Show More
Related

  • Jean Piaget's Theory Of Jean Vygotsky

    1122 Words  | 3 Pages

    This theory is crafted by Jean Piaget (1896– 1980) and his work concentrated on seeing how kids see the world. Piaget trusted that from outset, we have the fundamental mental structure on which all ensuing information and learning are based and because of natural development and ecological experience, the mental procedures will have a dynamic rearrangement. Piaget's presumption was that kids are dynamic takes part in the advancement of information and they adjust to nature through currently looking to comprehend their condition. He proposed that cognitive advancement occurs in four phases, 0 to 2 years being the sensori motor, 2 years to 7 years the preoperational, 7 to 12 years the solid operations, and 12 years or more the formal operations.

    Read More

  • Jean Piaget's Influence on Psychology

    632 Words  | 2 Pages

    Some of Piaget’s earlier psychological work included running intelligence tests on children. By preforming these tests, the results led him to the conclusion that children think differently from adults because at the time it was assumed that children were just smaller adults. Because of this, Piaget began to study cognitive development errors in children (Piaget, 1976). One example of a test he performed was giving a three year old one large mound of clay and one small mound of clay. Next, he would tell the child to make them into two equal mounds. After this, Piaget would break one of the mounds into two smaller mounds and then proceed to question the child on which had more clay. Usually they would say that the one with the two smaller mounds was bigger even though they were equal. But when he repeated the tests on children that were six and seven years of age, they no longer made the error in saying one mound was bigger than the other. These types of errors helped to provide insights that were essential for understanding the mental world of a child (Piaget and Inhelder, 1969). He proposed that there...

    Read More

  • Jean Piaget And The Four Stages Of Mental Development

    928 Words  | 2 Pages

    This can be identified as the four stages of mental development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and the formal operational stage. (Cherry, 2017) Each stage involves a difference of making sense in reality than the previous stage. In the sensorimotor stage, the first stage, infants start to conduct an understanding of the world by relating sensory experiences to a motor or physical action. This stage typically lasts from birth until around two years of age. A key component of this stage is object permanence, which simply means to understand an object will exist even when it can’t be directly visualized, heard, or felt. The second stage was the preoperational stage. This stage dealt more so with symbolic thinking rather than senses and physical action. Usually, the preoperational stage last between two to seven years old, so you can think of this as preschool years. The thinking in infants is still egocentric or self-centered at this time and can’t take others perspectives. The third stage or the concrete operational stage averagely lasts from seven to eleven years of age. This is when individuals start using operations and replace intuitive reasoning with logical reasoning in concrete circumstances. For example, there are three glasses, glass A and B are wide and short and filled with water while glass C is tall and skinny and empty. If the water in B is

    Read More

  • Cognitive Development: Gardner's Eight Frames Of Child Development

    982 Words  | 2 Pages

    Cognitive development is an important area of development during middle to late childhood. According to Piaget's theory, the ages between 7 and 11 are referred to as the concrete operational stage. The text describes children at this stage

    Read More

  • Jean Piaget's Development

    1790 Words  | 4 Pages

    Piaget is most commonly recognised for his work in forming a theory explaining how children’s thinking evolves to become more complex with age (Passer & Smith, 2012). For more than fifty years, Piaget researched the area of child thought processes, proposing a step-wise sequence of child mental development involving four distinct stages (Passer & Smith, 2012, p. 422). According to Passer and Smith (2012), a core belief of Piaget’s was that “cognitive development results from an interaction of the brain’s biological maturation and personal experiences” (p. 422). Piaget’s research has since received considerable attention and debate as to its validity. Many assessments of his work detail a greater level of criticism than praise; this criticism presumably being in place to support recent scientific discoveries and assist in the evolution of particular elements of his theories to what is regarded as relevant today (Flavell, 1996). Despite those who doubt his work, many sympathetic theorists (labelled neo-Piagetians) have opted to adopt and

    Read More

  • Jean Piaget's Cognitive Development Framework: The Early Years Learning Framework

    1460 Words  | 3 Pages

    The third stage is the Concrete Operational stage (7-11 years); this is when children are starting to solve problems mentally and develop concepts and are beginning to get better at understanding and following rules. Piaget’s fourth and final stage is the Formal Operational Stage (11 years and over); this stage is where the child is able to think not only as in the terms of the concrete, but also think in the abstract and is now able to think hypothetically. Piaget’s theory is one where children learn in a different manner to that of adults as they do not have the life experiences and interactions that adults have and use to interpret information. Children learn about their world by watching, listening and doing. Piaget’s constructivist theory has had a major impact on current theories and practices of education. Piaget has helped to create a view where the focus is on the idea of developmentally appropriate education. This denotes to an education with environments, materials and curriculum that are coherent with a student’s cognitive and physical abilities along with their social and emotional

    Read More

  • Comparing Piaget and Vygotsky

    2169 Words  | 5 Pages

    Both Piaget and Vygotsky agreed that children's cognitive development took place in stages. (Jarvis, Chandler 2001 P.149). However they were distinguished by different styles of thinking. Piaget was the first t reveal that children reason and think differently at different periods in their lives. He believed that all children progress through four different and very distinct stages of cognitive development. This theory is known as Piaget’s Stage Theory because it deals with four stages of development, which are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. (Ginsburg, Opper 1979 P. 26).

    Read More

  • Cognitive Stages Of Cognitive Development

    2220 Words  | 5 Pages

    Piaget believed that language development is associated with cognitive development or one’s own thought processes. Children ages 2-7 years old classify in Piaget’s preoperational cognitive stage. In this stage children use their well-developed ability to symbolize events or objects that are absent. Although children can represent the absent objects, they do not permit the child to think about the reversible cost of actions. According to Piaget, comprehending at this stage is based on appearances rather than main beliefs (Gray, 1991). For instance, one child playing with a ball of play dough may say they have less than the child playing with a flat piece of play dough simply because it is shaped differently. Also during the preoperational stage children are able to expand their vocabulary from 3,000 words to 8,000 words. Their sentences grow in length and complexity. They commonly use grammatically correct sentences and learn the basics of writing and reading (Cooter & Reutzel, 2008).

    Read More

  • Case Study Of Jean Piaget's Cognitive Development

    854 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to Piaget in the “preoperational stage, which goes through 2 to 7 years of age a child should have the ability to use symbols to represent objects in the world and thinking remains egocentric and centered” (Slavin ,2015) For example, I lined up two sets of quarters on a table in front of Ahmad. Each set of quarters had four in a row, I asked Ahmad which set of quarters had the most he told me that they all had the same amount. For the second part I lined the quarters up differently, but they still had the same amount the second row of quarters I spaced them out. I then proceeded to ask Ahmad the same question which row of quarters had the most he replied the second row. I asked Ahmad why did he think the second row had the most, he replied because it is larger. This method would be conforming to Piaget’s principle of conservation, “one manifestation of a general trend from a perceptual-intuitive to an orientation, which characterizes the development of conceptual thinking” (operational Zimiles

    Read More

  • Piaget And Vygotsky Compare And Contrast

    867 Words  | 2 Pages

    Piaget’s stage theory of cognitive development demonstrates a child’s cognitive ability through a series of observational studies of simple tests. According to Piaget, a child’s mental structure, which is genetically inherited and evolved, is the basis for all other learning and knowledge. Piaget’s

    Read More

  • The Critique of Piaget's Theories

    1634 Words  | 4 Pages

    Piaget theorised that children’s thinking goes through changes at each of four stages (sensory, motor, concrete operations and formal operations) of development until they can think and reason as an adult. The stages represent qualitatively different ways of thinking, are universal, and children go through each stage in the same order. According to Piaget each stage must be completed before they can move into the next one and involving increasing levels of organisation and increasingly logical underlying structures. Piaget stated that the ‘lower stages never disappear; they become inte... ...

    Read More

  • Jean Piaget Learning Theory

    872 Words  | 2 Pages

    Children’s from this stage remain egocentric for the most part but to begin to internalize representations. (Piaget, 1999). Concrete operational stage is children to age seven to eleven. They develop the ability to categorize objects and how they relate to one another. A child’s become more mastered in math by adding and subtracting. If a child eat one brownie out of a jar containing six. By doing the math there would be 5 brownies left by counting the remaining brownies left in the jar because they are able to model the jar in their

    Read More

  • Jean Piaget Theory

    910 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the first stage, children will undergo the process of assimilation where they will be using their existing schema to handle a new situation or something new when felt. In the second stage, they will go through the accommodation process in which if their existing schema does not work, it will be ‘upgraded’ or changed with newly acquired knowledge. During the third stage of adaptation process, they will go through the stage of equilibration when external pressure from knowledge acquire is being used to modify prior knowledge. This only happens when children are able to allow their existing schemas to handle new information through the first process, assimilation. The last of Piaget’s theory is the stages of development. We will look at the first two stages which are the sensorimotor and preoperational stages. During the stage of sensorimotor which happens during the first two years from birth, they will undergo a key feature of knowing and having object permanence that also means that if a particular object was hidden or covered by a cloth, he or she will be able to actively search for it. The preoperational stage takes place from two years of age till they are of seven years old. During this stage, children will be building up their incidents or encounters through adaptation and slowly move on to the next stage of the development as they are not able to

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Jean Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory

    1757 Words  | 4 Pages

    One hundred years ago, Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a young man developing new insights about learning. He was one of a handful of constructivist-minded writers and educational theorists of the time. Learning theories open educators up to new ideas. They are necessary to expand our knowledge of how learning works. Piaget’s work is a well-tested and educators around the world should be aware of Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive development in particular because it will improve the quality of their teaching. Once a teacher knows this theory, they can plan lessons appropriate to their students’ cognitive ability and build upon students’ earlier knowledge in a constructivist way.

    Read More

  • Child Psychology And The Development Of Child Development

    1012 Words  | 3 Pages

    He developed his own laboratory and spent years recording children’s intellectual growth. Jean wanted to find out how children develop through various stages of thinking. This led to the development of Piaget four important stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor stage (birth to age two), preoperational stage (age two to seven), concrete-operational stage (ages seven to twelve), and formal-operational stage (ages eleven to twelve, and thereafter).

    Read More

More about Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development Essay

Open Document