Cognitive Development Theory_Bedio_Alvina

What is Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development?

The Theory of Cognitive Development by Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist, suggests that children's intelligence undergoes changes as they grow. Cognitive development in children is not only related to acquiring knowledge, children need to build or develop a mental model of their surrounding world (Miller, 2011). His work is regarded as the cornerstone in the field of developmental psychology. In this article, we examine the implications his work has for the intellectual development of children in classrooms.

In the 1920s, Piaget was working at the Binet Institute and his main responsibility was to translate questions written in English intelligence tests into French. He became interested to find out why children gave incorrect answers to the questions needing logical thinking (Meadows, 2019).

Piaget believed that these wrong answers revealed significant differences between the thinking of children and adults. Piaget proposed a new set of assumptions about the intelligence of children:

• Children think differently and see the world differently from adults.
• Children are not passive learners, they actively build up their knowledge about the surrounding.
• The most effective way to understand children’s reasoning is to think from children's point of view.

Piaget did not want to measure how well children can spell, count or solve problems to check their I.Q. He was more intrigued to find out how the fundamental concepts such as the very idea of time, number, justice, quantity and so on emerged (Greenfield, 2019).

Piaget used observations and clinical interviews of older children who were able to hold conversations and understand questions. He also made controlled observation, and used naturalistic observation of his own three children and developed diary description with charts of children's development.

Piaget's 4 Stages of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of learning. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.1 Piaget's stages are:

• Sensorimotor stage: Birth to 2 years
• Preoperational stage: Ages 2 to 7
• Concrete operational stage: Ages 7 to 11
• Formal operational stage: Ages 12 and up

Piaget believed that children take an active role in the learning process, acting much like little scientists as they perform experiments, make observations, and learn about the world. As kids interact with the world around them, they continually add new knowledge, build upon existing knowledge, and adapt previously held ideas to accommodate new information.

History of Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget was born in Switzerland in the late 1800s and was a precocious student, publishing his first scientific paper when he was just 11 years old. His early exposure to the intellectual development of children came when he worked as an assistant to Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon as they worked to standardize their famous IQ test.

Piaget vs. Vygotsky

Piaget's theory differs in important ways from those of Lev Vygotsky, another influential figure in the field of child development. Vygotsky acknowledged the roles that curiosity and active involvement play in learning, but placed greater emphasis on society and culture.

Piaget felt that development is largely fueled from within, while Vygotsky believed that external factors (such as culture) and people (such as parents, caregivers, and peers) play a more significant role.

Much of Piaget's interest in the cognitive development of children was inspired by his observations of his own nephew and daughter. These observations reinforced his budding hypothesis that children's minds were not merely smaller versions of adult minds.

Until this point in history, children were largely treated simply as smaller versions of adults. Piaget was one of the first to identify that the way that children think is different from the way adults think.

Piaget proposed that intelligence grows and develops through a series of stages. Older children do not just think more quickly than younger children. Instead, there are both qualitative and quantitative differences between the thinking of young children versus older children.

Based on his observations, he concluded that children were not less intelligent than adults—they simply think differently. Albert Einstein called Piaget's discovery "so simple only a genius could have thought of it."

Piaget's stage theory describes the cognitive development of children. Cognitive development involves changes in cognitive process and abilities.2 In Piaget's view, early cognitive development involves processes based upon actions and later progresses to changes in mental operations.

 

The Sensorimotor Stage

During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects. A child's entire experience at the earliest period of this stage occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses.

Birth to 2 Years

Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:

• Know the world through movements and sensations
• Learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and listening
• Learn that things continue to exist even when they cannot be seen (object permanence)
• Realize that they are separate beings from the people and objects around them
• Realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them

During the sensorimotor stage, children go through a period of dramatic growth and learning. As kids interact with their environment, they continually make new discoveries about how the world works.

The cognitive development that occurs during this period takes place over a relatively short time and involves a great deal of growth. Children not only learn how to perform physical actions such as crawling and walking; they also learn a great deal about language from the people with whom they interact. Piaget also broke this stage down into substages. Early representational thought emerges during the final part of the sensorimotor stage.

By learning that objects are separate and distinct entities and that they have an existence of their own outside of individual perception, children are then able to begin to attach names and words to objects.

The Preoperational Stage

The foundations of language development may have been laid during the previous stage, but the emergence of language is one of the major hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development.3

2 to 7 Years

Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:

• Begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects
• Tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of others
• Getting better with language and thinking, but still tend to think in very concrete terms

At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the point of view of other people. They also often struggle with understanding the idea of constancy.

For example, a researcher might take a lump of clay, divide it into two equal pieces, and then give a child the choice between two pieces of clay to play with. One piece of clay is rolled into a compact ball while the other is smashed into a flat pancake shape. Because the flat shape looks larger, the preoperational child will likely choose that piece, even though the two pieces are exactly the same size.

The Concrete Operational Stage

While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this point in development, they become much more adept at using logic.2 The egocentrism of the previous stage begins to disappear as kids become better at thinking about how other people might view a situation.

7 to 11 Years

Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:

• Begin to think logically about concrete events
• Begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example
• Thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete
• Begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general principle

While thinking becomes much more logical during the concrete operational state, it can also be very rigid. Kids at this point in development tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts.

During this stage, children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other people might think and feel. Kids in the concrete operational stage also begin to understand that their thoughts are unique to them and that not everyone else necessarily shares their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

The Concrete Operational Stage in Cognitive Development

The Formal Operational Stage

The final stage of Piaget's theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas.3 At this point, adolescents and young adults become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems and think more scientifically about the world around them.

Age 12 and Up

Major characteristics and developmental changes during this time:

• Begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems
• Begins to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning
• Begins to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific information

The ability to thinking about abstract ideas and situations is the key hallmark of the formal operational stage of cognitive development. The ability to systematically plan for the future and reason about hypothetical situations are also critical abilities that emerge during this stage. 

The Formal Operational Stage of Cognitive Development

Important Concepts

It is important to note that Piaget did not view children's intellectual development as a quantitative process. That is, kids do not just add more information and knowledge to their existing knowledge as they get older.

Instead, Piaget suggested that there is a qualitative change in how children think as they gradually process through these four stages.4 At age 7, children don't just have more information about the world than they did at age 2; there is a fundamental change in how they think about the world.

Piaget suggested several factors that influence how children learn and grow.

Schemas

A schema describes both the mental and physical actions involved in understanding and knowing. Schemas are categories of knowledge that help us to interpret and understand the world.

In Piaget's view, a schema includes both a category of knowledge and the process of obtaining that knowledge.3 As experiences happen, this new information is used to modify, add to, or change previously existing schemas.

For example, a child may have a schema about a type of animal, such as a dog. If the child's sole experience has been with small dogs, a child might believe that all dogs are small, furry, and have four legs. Suppose then that the child encounters an enormous dog. The child will take in this new information, modifying the previously existing schema to include these new observations.

What Is a Schema in Psychology?

Assimilation

The process of taking in new information into our already existing schemas is known as assimilation. The process is somewhat subjective because we tend to modify experiences and information slightly to fit in with our preexisting beliefs. In the example above, seeing a dog and labeling it "dog" is a case of assimilating the animal into the child's dog schema.

What Is Assimilation in Psychology?

Accommodation

Another part of adaptation is the ability to change existing schemas in light of new information; this process is known as accommodation.5 New schemas may also be developed during this process.

Understanding Accommodation in Psychology

Equilibration

As children progress through the stages of cognitive development, it is important to maintain a balance between applying previous knowledge (assimilation) and changing behavior to account for new knowledge (accommodation).

Piaget believed that all children try to strike a balance between assimilation and accommodation using a mechanism he called equilibration. Equilibration helps explain how children can move from one stage of thought to the next.3

A Word From Verywell

One of the main points of Piaget's theory is that creating knowledge and intelligence is an inherently active process.

"I find myself opposed to the view of knowledge as a passive copy of reality," Piaget wrote. "I believe that knowing an object means acting upon it, constructing systems of transformations that can be carried out on or with this object. Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality."6

Piaget's theory of cognitive development helped add to our understanding of children's intellectual growth. It also stressed that children were not merely passive recipients of knowledge. Instead, kids are constantly investigating and experimenting as they build their understanding of how the world works.

Critical Evaluation of Piaget's Theory

1. Support

Piaget’s ideas have enormous influence on developmental psychology. His theories changed methods of teaching and changed people's perceptions about a child’s world.

Piaget (1936) was the foremost psychologist whose ideas enhanced people's understanding of cognitive development. His concepts have been of practical use in communicating with and understanding children, specially in the field of education (Discovery Learning).

Piaget's main contributions include thorough observational studies of cognition in children, stage theory of children's cognitive development, and a series of ingenious but simple tests to evaluate multiple cognitive abilities.

2. Criticisms

Do stages really exist? Critiques of Formal Operation Thinking believe that the final stage of formal operations does not provide correct explanation of cognitive development. Not every person is capable of abstract reasoning and many adults do not even reach level of formal operations. For instance, Dasen (1994) mentioned that only less than half of adults ever reach the stage of formal operation. Maybe they are not distinct stages?

Piaget was extremely focused on the universal stages of biological maturation and cognitive development that he failed to address the effect of culture and social setting on cognitive development.

A contemporary of Piaget, Vygotsky argued that social interaction is essential for cognitive development. Vygotsky believes that a child's learning always takes place in a social context involving co-operation of someone more knowledgeable (MKO). This kind od social interaction offers language opportunities and according to Vygotksy language provides the basis of thought.

Hughes (1975) believes that Piaget underestimated children's abilities as his tests were frequently unclear and hard to understand.

Vygotsky (1978) and Bruner (1966) were against the concept of schema. Behaviorism also disapproves Piaget’s schema theory as it is an internal phenomenon which cannot be observed directly. Due to this, they would claim schema cannot be measured objectively.

The first few years of a child’s life is critical to their overall development, so that’s why many parents are concerned with making sure their child develops the cognitive abilities they need early on.

We spoke with Heather Grocott of The Children’s Workshop for the following reasons why cognitive development is so important:

If you have a child under the age of 3, you may not realize that your child’s brain is making 700 to 1,00 neural connections every second!

As we get older, our brain’s ability to adapt to change reduces, making the first few years of a child’s life critical to their overall development and success in the future.

As parents, it is essential we think about not “what” children think or learn, but how they are thinking and learning.Why is Cognitive Development important?

• Cognitive development provides children with the means of paying attention to thinking about the world around them.
• Everyday experiences can impact a child’s cognitive development.
• Cognitive development encompasses a child’s working memory, attention, as well as a child’s ability to manage and respond to the experiences and information they experience on a daily basis.
• Cognitive development can be compared to a child’s air traffic control tower – taking in information and processing it on a daily basis with intent and purpose.

What skills fall under “cognitive development?

• Logic and reasoning
• Memory and working memory
• Attention
• Control
• Flexibility, ability to adapt
• Evaluation and analyzing skills
• Ability to make comparisons
• Explore and understand cause and effect
• Critical thinking, higher level thinking

How can I support my child’s cognitive development?

• Help children to keep focused and attentive by limiting distractions and interruptions.
• Express interest in your child’s activities and try to observe and reflect on what you believe they are trying to accomplish.
• Spark curiosity by offering materials in new ways
• Spark curiosity by noticing things and suggesting, “Let’s go see what would happen if?”
• Offer materials that are challenging enough to be interesting but not impossible
• Share the joy children feel as they show you their accomplishments.
• Help children develop memories by keeping the routine and room arrangement predictable; keep toys where children know to find them
• Talk with children about what they did earlier in the day or the day before.
• Provide many opportunities to categorize, match, sort, compare, and contrast with toys and activities.
• Encourage problem solving