Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

The most well-known and influential theory of cognitive development is that of

French Psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980). Piaget's theory, first published in 1952,

grew out of decades of extensive observation of children, including his own, in their

natural environments as opposed to the laboratory experiments of the behaviourists.

Piaget's work was named by Albert Einstein "as plain as a genius could have dreamed

of it." Although Piaget was interested in how children reacted to their environment, he

proposed a more active role for them than that suggested by learning theory. He

envisioned a child's knowledge as composed of schemas, basic units of knowledge

used to organize past experiences and serve as a basis for understanding new ones.

Piaget claimed that children play an active role in the learning process as they

conduct experiments, make observations, and learn about the world. When children

engage with the world around them, they add new knowledge on an ongoing basis,

expand on existing knowledge and adapt previously held concepts to accommodate

new information.

He concluded on the basis of his findings that children are no less intelligent than

adults, they simply think differently. Piaget's theory of the stage explains children's

cognitive development.

Cognitive development includes improvements in cognitive processes and

abilities. From the point of view of Piaget, early cognitive development requires actions-

based mechanisms and subsequent developments to changes in mental operations.

Cognitive development is the development of manners of thinking, including

remembering, critical thinking, and basic leadership, from childhood through

adolescence to adulthood.

It was once believed that new-born children lacked the ability to think or shape

complex thoughts and stayed without cognition until they learned language. It is now

known that babies are aware about their environment and inspired by investigation from

the time they are born. From birth, babies start to effectively learn. They gather, sort,

and process information around them, utilizing the information to create recognition and

thinking abilities.

Kids have been viewed to a large extent merely as smaller versions of adults up

to this point in history. Piaget was one of the first to recognise the difference between

the way children think and the way adults think. Instead, he suggested, intelligence is

something that grows through a series of stages and develops. Older kids don't think

faster than younger kids, he said.

Actually, there are qualitative and quantitative variations between young

children's thought and older children's thinking.

The cognitive development theory of Jean Piaget indicates that children pass

through four different stages of mental development. His theory focuses not only on

knowledge gained by adolescents, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.

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

The Stages Piaget developed a stage theory of intellectual development through his

observations of his children, which included four distinct stages:

1. The Sensorimotor Stage

Ages: Birth to 2 Years

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

• Children know the world through their gestures and feelings

• Children learn about the world through simple acts such as sucking grasping looking

and listening

• Children learn that things continue to exist even if they can't be seen (object

permanence)

• They are separate beings and objects around them.

•They realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them
 The stage of the sensorimotor is the first stage of cognitive development that

lasts from birth to two years. This stage is characterized by reflexive behaviours that

lack logical thinking mechanisms and require a particular goal-based interaction with the

environment.

The sensorimotor stage has six distinct sub stages, representing the accelerated

development of the brain that takes place during the first two years of life. The

conclusion of the sensorimotor stage comes to an end as children begin to consider

reality emotionally, and the preoperative stage begins.

The six sub stages are as follows:

1. Birth to one-month old

Innate reflexes that are used to communicate with the environment characterize this

level. Such reflexes include, suck, grab, and touch.

2. One to four-months of age

This stage is an extension of the reflexes exhibited by repeated reflexive actions in

response to the gratification felt by the movement in new-born infants. This stage is also

defined as a phase of adaptation to the local environment by "assimilation" and

"accommodation."

Assimilation requires interacting with previous reflexive experiences to a novel stimulus.

For example, a new object introduced to an infant may be reflexively pulled into their

mouth. Accommodation occurs when the infant is required to modify their response to a
new object. For example, to place a novel object into their mouth, the infant may need

to open their mouth wider.

3. Five to eight months of age

Between five to eight months of age, children start recreating pleasurable experiences

and, as a result, develop habits. Multitasking is not yet feasible at this age, and infants

are easily distracted by other stimuli in the environment. Kids in this age range love toys

that stimulate their innate nature by reacting to their actions (e.g. jack-in - the-box or

button toys that make sound in response to pleasure.)

4. Eight to twelve months

Infants start to understand "object permanence" at this point, which means that the

infant comprehends that just because an object is out of sight, it still exists. This is

important because it means the child has to shape an object's mental image. Children

often begin to distinguish between an object and the action associated with the object.

Infants also begin to display particular behaviours to elicit a known reaction.

5. Twelve to eighteen months

Infants can participate in similar actions with slight deviations during this developmental

stage. For instance, infants will throw a ball, then throw a spoon, and then throw their

food to measure the effect of that action.

6. Eighteen to twenty-four months

During this final phase of the sensorimotor, children begin to imagine and develop

abstract thought in their play. The imagination begins to develop and actions are a
result of intelligence rather than habit. It means that infants continue to apply the skills

that they have gained within the first twenty-four months of life to novel situations.

Toddlers and babies acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and

manipulate objects during this earliest stage of cognitive development. In the earliest

phase of this point, a child's entire experience occurs through simple reflexes, senses,

and motor responses. Children go through a period of dramatic growth and learning

during the sensorimotor stage. When children engage with their surroundings, new

discoveries about how the world works are constantly being made.

The cognitive development that takes place over a relatively short period of time

during this period involves a lot of growth. Not only do children learn how to perform

physical actions such as crawling and walking; they also learn a lot from the people they

interact with about language. Piaget broke down this stage into several separate sub

stages as well. It is during the final part of the sensorimotor stage that early

representational thought emerges.

Piaget claimed that an important element at this point of development was the

emergence of object permanence or object constancy, the idea that objects continue to

exist even when they cannot be seen. 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.

Once it was assumed that children lacked the ability to thought or form complex

ideas and remained without cognition until language was mastered. It is now

understood that from the moment they are born, babies are aware of their surroundings
and are involved in exploration. Babies start to learn actively from birth. They gather,

sort, and process information from around them, using the data to develop perception

and thinking skills.

2. PREOPERATIONAL STAGE

The preoperative stage is the second stage in the cognitive development theory of

Piaget. This stage starts about 2 years of age when kids start talking and lasts until

around 7 years of age. Children start engaging in symbolic play during this stage and

begin to understand symbols. Piaget noticed, however, that they still do not understand

the real logic. Piaget observed that at this point, children do not yet understand logical

reasoning, are unable to manipulate information mentally and are unable to take other

people's opinions which he called egocentrism.

Children also become more adept at using symbols during the preoperational stage,

as evidenced by the increase in playing and pretending. For example, a child can use

an object to represent something else, such as pretending that a broom is a horse. Is

also important kids sometimes play “mommy”, “daddy”, “doctor”, roles, and many other

characters. Piaget used a variety of clever and creative methods to research children's

mental abilities. One of the popular techniques used by a three-dimensional view of a

mountain scene to illustrate egocentrism children are asked to choose an image that

represented the scene they had seen, often referred to as the “three mountain project”

with little effort, must kids can do this. First, when looking at the mountain from a

different point of view, children are asked to pick a picture showing what someone else
would have seen. Invariably, almost always children choose the scene that shows their

own view of the mountain scene.

Children are having this challenge, according to Piaget because they are unable to

take on the experience of another human. Similar experiments were also carried out by

other researchers. For one study, a room in a small dollhouse was shown to children.

Children could see a toy concealed behind a piece of furniture in the dollhouse. Kids

were then led to a full-size room which was the dollhouse's exact replica. Really young

kids didn't understand searching for the toy behind the sofa, while slightly older kids

looked for the toy immediately.

Development psychologists refer to the ability to understand that other individuals as

mental experience have different perspectives, emotions, feelings, and states. As you

might have noted, at this stage of development much of Piaget's attention was on what

kids couldn't do yet. Both the ideas of egocentrism and conservation are based on

abilities that have not yet been established by children. They lack the understanding

that things look different from other people and that objects. Can alter appearance while

retaining the same property.

THE KEY FEATURES OF THE PREOPERATIONAL STAGE INCLUDE:

Centration- is the prosperity to focus at one time on just one aspect of a situation.

When a child is able to focus on more than one aspect of a setting at the same time

they are able to decenter. During this stage, children have trouble thinking at the same
time about more than one aspect of any circumstance and they have trouble

decentralizing in the social situation just as they do in non-social contexts.

Egocentrism- the feelings and actions of children are usually self centered (i.e. about

themselves). Egocentrism refers to the failure of the child to see a situation from the

point of view of another person the egocentric infant, according to Piaget believes other

people are seeing, hearing, and thinking exactly the same as the child.

Play- you sometimes find kids engaged in parallel play at the beginning of this point.

That is, they of play in the same room as other people, but play alongside others

instead of with them. In their own private world, each child is consumed and speech is

self-centered, that is at this stage, the main function of speech is to outsource the

thought of the child rather than interact with others. The infant has not yet mastered

language or rules, social function.

Symbolic Representation- the early pre-operative phase (age 2-3) is marked by a

dramatic increase in the use of symbolic role by children. This is the ability to make one

element stand for something other than itself a word or an entity. Language may be the

most obvious type of symbolism exhibited by young children.

Pretend (or symbolic) Play- toddlers also pretend to be characters they are not (e.g.

superheroes, policeman) and can perform these roles with props symbolizing artifacts in

real life an imaginary playmate may also be invented by children.

Animism- this is the idea that there are human emotions and actions in inanimate

objects (such as toys and teddy bears). Though animism Piaget (1929) meant that the

world of nature is alive, conscious, and has a meaning for the pre-operational boy.
Irreversibility- this is the inability to revert to their point of departure the course of a

sequence of events.

The three mountain task- the three mountain challenge (see image belong) was used

by Sean Piaget to check whether children were self-centered. Egocentric children

believe that the same view of the three mountains will be seen by others as they do.

According to Piaget, thought at the age of 7 is no longer self centered, as the infant can

see more than its own point of view.

3. CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE

The simple operating period is the third stage in the cognitive development theory

of Piaget. This phase covers the time of middle childhood it starts about 7 years of age

and lasts until about 11 years of age and is marked by logical thought development.

Thought often appears to be very concrete, during this stage of development children

become much more abstract and complex in their thought. Although this is an important

stage in and of itself, it also acts as an important transition from earlier stages of

development to the next stage in which children will learn how to think more abstractly

and hypothetically. Children become more logical about concrete and specific things at

this age, but they are still struggling with abstract ideas.

Piaget determined that children will fairly good at using inductive inference

(inductive reasoning) in the concrete operational stage, inductive logic involves going to

a general principle from a specific experience. An example of inductive logic would be

to note that you have itchy eyes, a runny nose, and a sore throat every time you’re

around a cat. From that experience, you might expect that you are allergic to cats.
 The appreciation of reversibility or knowledge that behaviour can be reversed is

one of the most important development at this point. An example of this is the capacity

to change the order of mental group relationships. An example of reversibility is that a

child may understand that a Labrador is his or her dog, and a dog is an animal.

Another main development at this point is the realization that when something

shifts in form or size, it’s still the same, a term known as conversation. Kids at this point

recognize that if you split a candy bar into smaller pieces, it’s still the same amount

when the candy was whole. Suppose, for example, that you have two candy bars of

exactly the same size. You split one candy bar into two bits of equal size and the other

candy bar into four smaller but similarly sized parts. A child in the concrete operating

stage will realize that both candy bars are still the same number, while a younger child

would believe that the candy bar with more parts is bigger.

One of the key features of the specific-operational stage is the ability to focus on

many parts of a problem. Although children in the pre-operational stage of development

tend to focus on just some aspect of a situation or issue, those in the concrete

operational stage are able to engage in what is known as “decentartion”. Although kids

become egocentric at early stages of development, those in the concrete stage of

activity become more socio-centric. In other terms, they should understand that other

people have their own ideas. Kids at this level are aware that other people have unique

perspectives, but they may not yet be able to guess precisely how or what that other

person is experiencing.
 This increasing ability to manipulate knowledge mentally and think about other

people’s thoughts can play a critical role in the structured organizational development

stage where reasoning and abstract thinking become important.

MAJOR CHARACTERISTICS OF CONCRETE OPERATIONAL THOUGHT,

INCLUDING COGNITIVE LIMITATIONS

Conservation- the ability to pass conservation tasks offers clear evidence of

operational-mental behaviour that are consistent with ethical laws. Meaning kids should

concentrate on and respond to several aspects of an issue, rather than just one. We

can also prove reversibility. It is the ability to think through a series of steps and

mentally reverse the trajectory of the steps, returning to the point of departure at which

the cycle started.

Classification- children aged 7 to 10 years pass the class inclusion issue of Piaget. It

indicates that they are more aware of hierarchies of classification and can also focus on

relationships between a general category and two different categories, i.e. three

relationships at the same time in middle childhood, collections like postage stamps,

coins, baseball and Pokémon cards, rocks and bottle caps become popular. Children

are better able to classify where these things belong and position them in their own

categories at this stage in life.

Seriation- this is the ability to order items, such as length or weight, through a

quantitative dimension. Older pre-schoolers are able to put sticks in a row when asked

to position them in order from the largest to smallest, but not in any particular order, 6-7

yr. order people are able to make the order in the correct way. Like largest to lesser and
vice versa. It is also called transitive inference that can be mentally seriated by the

concrete process child.

Spatial Reasoning- the perception of space in school aged children is more precise

and established that in pre-school aged children. Children of this era are able to

represent places like their neighbourhoods and schools in map drawing. Pre-schoolers

have landmarks on these maps, but building location is not as accurate as that around 8

to 10 years. Children’s maps of age are more structured with landmarks that precisely

correspond with where the artefacts actually are ten to twelve years. Older people still

understand the idea of scale, the relative relationship between the space and its

representation on a map.

Limitations of concrete operational thought - only when dealing for concrete info

children think in an organized logical fashion. We can directly perceive. For abstract

ideas, their conceptual thinking functions poorly, thoughts we have come to recognize

that are not apparent or noticeable in the real world. They can order them correctly

when confronted with physical sticks, but when give an intellectual question of ordering

objects, at this age and stage of life it is more difficult for them to understand and solve.

Usually, this kind of mental problem solving can be solved between 11 and 12 years of

age.

4. Formal Operational Stage

The fourth and the final stage in Piaget’s theory is about cognitive development is the

Formal Operational stage. It begins at approximately age 12 and lasts into adulthood. In

this stage, intelligence is demonstrated through the logical use of symbols related to
abstract concepts and it became advanced. Early in the period there is a return to

egocentric thought. Kids can think about abstract and theoretical concepts and use logic

to come up with creative solutions to problems. Skills such as logical thought, deductive

reasoning, and systematic planning also emerge during this stage. Only 35 percent of

high school graduates in industrialized countries obtain formal operations; many people

do not think formally during adulthood.

For example, instead of realizing that there are consequences to actions, such as

getting in trouble or being grounded because of yelling at a parent, a person in this

stage will begin to realize that consequences are a result of not following directions.

More importantly, they will begin to realize that consequences may also result in moral

and ethical issues, such as distrust, emotional instability, and dishonour.

In order to test the way of thinking of adolescence and adulthood, Piaget tested

formal operational thought in a few different ways. Two of the better-known tests

explored physical conceptualization and the abstraction of thought.

In conceptualizing balance, one task involved having children of different ages balance

a scale by hooking weights on each end. To balance the scale, the children needed to

understand that both the heaviness of the weights and distance from the center played

a role. Younger children around the ages of 3 and 5 were unable to complete the task

because they did not understand the concept of balance. Seven-year-olds knew that

they could adjust the scale by placing weights on each end, but failed to understand that

where they put the weights was also important. By age 10, the kids considered location

as well as weight but had to arrive at the correct answer using trial-and-error. It wasn't

until around age 13 those children could use logic to form a hypothesis about where to
place the weights to balance the scale and then complete the task. In Abstraction of

Ideas, Piaget asked children to imagine where they would want to place a third eye if

they had one. Younger children said that they would put the imagined third eye in the

middle of their forehead. Older children, however, were able to come up with a variety of

creative ideas about where to place this hypothetical eye and various ways the eye

could be used. In the two tests that Piaget did, we can see that the way of thinking of

children is way different than adulthood because as we grow older our way of thinking

became more sophisticated and advanced.

There are two formal operational thought, the Hypothetico Deductive Reasoning and the

Abstract Thought. Hypothetico deductive reasoning is the ability to think scientifically

through generating predictions, or hypotheses, about the world to answer questions.

Piaget believed that what he referred to as "hypothetical-deductive reasoning" was

essential at this stage of intellectual development. At this point, teens become capable

of thinking about abstract and hypothetical ideas. They often ponder "what-if" type

situations and questions and can think about multiple solutions or possible outcomes.

And the Abstract thought is important for planning regarding the future. While children

tend to think very concretely and specifically in earlier stages, the ability to think about

abstract concepts emerges during the formal operational stage. Instead of relying solely

on previous experiences, children begin to consider possible outcomes and

consequences of actions. This type of thinking is important in long-term planning.

There are psychologists who have replicated Piaget’s research, and they generally

found out that children cannot complete the task successfully until they are older.

According to Robert Seigler an American Psychologist, (1979) he gave children a

balance beam task in which some discs were placed either side of the center of

balance. The researcher changed the number of discs or moved them along the beam,

each time asking the child to predict which way the balance would go. He studied the

answers given by children from five years upwards, concluding that they apply rules

which develop in the same sequence as, and thus reflect, Piaget's findings. Like Piaget,

he found that eventually the children were able to take into account the interaction

between the weight of the discs and the distance from the center, and so successfully

predict balance. However, this did not happen until participants were between 13 and

17 years of age. He concluded that children's cognitive development is based on

acquiring and using rules in increasingly more complex situations, rather than in stages.

To summarize Piaget’s last stage of cognitive development, the researcher conclude

that the way of thinking of the people is maturing as their age increasing. They can

think, decide and plan in their own because they are independent and they think

advanced than kids.

REFERENCES:

https://biologydictionary.net/cognitive-development/

https://study.com/academy/lesson/piagets-formal-operational-stage-definition-

examples-quiz.html

https://sites.google.com/site/thejourneyoflifefromeggtodeath/middle-childhood/major-

characteristics-of-concrete-operational-thought-including-cognitive-limitations

http://www.healthofchildren.com/C/Cognitive-Development.html#ixzz69YgUq700

https://www.simplypsychology.org/formal-operational.html

https://www.simplypsychology.org/preoperational.html

https://www.verywellmind.com/concrete-operational-stage-of-cognitive-development-

2795458

https://www.verywellmind.com/formal-operational-stage-of-cognitive-development-

2795459

https://www.verywellmind.com/preoperational-stage-of-cognitive-development-2795461