Piaget's Cognitive Development

Cognitive development is a process human beings go through from cradle to grave. This process involves our development of intelligence and processing of information, ability to reason, memory and language development. These equip us to understand and adapt to the world through the interaction between nature and nurture. Individuals like teachers, fathers, mothers and foster parents are most likely to be interested in the development of children. It will, therefore, be acceptable to say that intelligence and morals are very crucial in the development of a child. In this case, the objectives of this essay are to discuss, analyse and evaluate the development of children’s intelligence and morals from birth to adolescence. An analysis of the following

These are the sensorimotor (0-2 years), pre-operational (2-7 years), concrete operational (7 – 11 years) and formal operational stages (11 - adulthood) and I will be evaluating on this stage. Sensorimotor, the first stage of Piaget’s cognitive development emphasises that infants develop their first phase of intelligence, it is at this stage that they develop the ability to hear, grasp, pull, talk and examine objects. Piaget described infants as egocentric and that they are only concerned with their understandings. At this stage infants, by eight months old, should be able to develop the understanding of the existence of objects and that event independently occur. For example, because schema of objects is developed, infants are able to remember they exists even if it is hidden. Piaget believed that it is a milestone that must be attained within the specific time frame to enable the child to progress to the next stage the pre-operational. However, (Mehler & Dupoux, 1994) criticised this idea because if a child is unable to recollect memory of objects it may be due to distractions or them not being interested, and I believe in their argument. Infants develop their memory, i.e. their intellectual ability to remember objects due to repetitive actions perhaps through trial and error and behaviourists will share this

Piaget proposed three stages through which morals are developed in a child through certain approximate ages, which mirrors his cognitive theory. The three stages; moral judgement, moral realism and moral relativity suggest that children start to develop their morality right from birth but there are variations, in that, the first stage they are mainly governed by external rules and are unable to crack the concept behind what is an acceptable behaviour or not due to their inability to understand and apply the concepts. However, if this rules are continually reinforced, as they go through to the second stage they will then be able to get the understanding of the rules and be able to somewhat have a better sense of judgement; as they get to the final stage, as adults they can manipulate rules even if they know the consequences. Kohlberg agreed with Piaget’s theory but developed it further using moral dilemmas to gain an insight into how children reason morally at each developmental stage but unfortunately not all of are able to achieve full moral concepts at the various stages. Just as the superego by Freud gives us the structure of morals, reasoning and rationality through parental authority, Kohlberg’s pre-conventional morality stage emphasises this. For instance, at the phallic stage, a