The First Stages Of Jean Piaget's Cognitive Development

819 Words2 Pages

Jean Piaget was a developmental psychologist, who in the 1920 began pioneering research into children’s cognitive development. He began this research after administering intelligence test to children, and saw the similarities between the wrong answers given and the age group of the children. Up until he began his research, it was believed that children were merely less competent thinkers than adults. Piaget proved that this assumption was incorrect, that children reasoned differently, and broke their cognitive development into four stages. The first stage of Piaget’s cognitive development is the sensorimotor stage. This stage begins at birth and last until around two years of age. During this time, infants view their world through what they can touch, hear, mouth, grasp, and see. One of the main developments that a child has during the sensorimotor stage is object permanence; the awareness that a thing continues to exist even when they are out of sight. Piaget discovered that infants under six months perceived things in a here and now format. He used a very simple experiment to prove this; he would show infants of varying age a toy and then cover up the …show more content…

From roughly age twelve our reasoning goes beyond the concrete and begins to include the abstract. One of the tests Piaget performed to prove their grasp of abstract thinking was the “third eye test”. He asked a group of nine year old (in the concrete operational stage) where they would put a third eye. Almost all of them answered in your forehead. When that same question was posed to a group of eleven and twelve year olds( in the formal operational stage), they became inventive with their answers, ranging from in the palm of your hand so you can see around corner or in the back of your head to see what’s behind you. During this stage is when a child begins to develop moral reasoning and will continue to do so through

Open Document