Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Stages of Development1

A young child understands of fantasy and reality is certainly different from an

adult’s. Just a s child’s body and physical abilities change, his or her ways of knowing
or perceiving the world also grows and changes.

Major Assumptions, Terms and Concepts of Piaget’s Theory

Perhaps the best way to approach an understanding of Jean Piaget is to

recognize that his background was as a biologist. Thus, his saw human cognition a
sonly one of the on going processes of biology. Piaget believed that we are all born
with an innate drive toward knowledge as part of our overall need for survival. Just
as food is taken in and then digested into forms that are useful for the organism’s
biological survival, information is taken in the human brain and “digested” in ways
that also helps the individual to survive. The cognitive processes are the “digestive’
mechanism that helps humans adapt to their environment. “Intelligence is that
ability to make adaptive choices.
To understand the process of adaptation, we need to understand three major
Piagetian concepts: schemata, assimilation and accommodation.

I. Schemata

Schemata or schemas are the basic units of the intellect. They are cognitive
factors that organize our interactions with the environment, and they grow
and differentiate with experience.

II. Assimilation and Accommodation

Assimilation and Accommodation- are two major processes that allow

schemas to grow and change over time.

Assimilation is the process of taking new information that easily fits

into an existing schema. In assimilation, the person changes the environment so
as to fit the existing structures in the mind (Infants use their sucking schema not
only in sucking nipples but also in sucking fingers, blankets and so on)
If we keep on assimilating only, then growth is not possible. We have to
engage in the complimentary process known as accommodation.
Accommodation enables us to deal with new knowledge from the
environment by changing our own structures or behaviors. Accommodation
occurs when new information or stimuli cannot be assimilated and old schemas are
changed to adapt new situations (i.e., the infant changes her existing sucking
schema to adjust to the new situation of eating with a spoon).
As a result of assimilation and accommodation, the child’s cognitive abilities
undergo an orderly series of increasing complex changes. When enough changes
have occurred, the individual undergoes a large developmental shift in his or her
point of view. Piaget called these developmental shifts “stages” in development.
According to Piaget, all children go through at approximately the same age,
regardless of the culture in which they live. No stage can be skipped, since the skills
acquired at the earlier stages are essential to the mastery of the later stages.

The Stages of Cognitive Development.

1 ?
Condensed by Mr. Roland L. Aparece, MA from Readings in General Psychology vol. 1 compiled
by Lolita Teh and Ma. Elizabeth Macapagal. Quezon City: Ateneo De Manila University Press, 1999.
I. Sensorimotor Stage (from birth - 2 years)

During the Sensorimotor stage, which last from birth until the time of
“significant” language acquisition (at about age 2) children explore the world and
develop their schemas primarily through their senses and motor activities—hence
“sensorimotor.”
Objective permanence, the awareness that an object continues to exist even when
it is not present.

II. Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)

At this stage children have acquired object permanence and can now
understand that sound can be used as symbols for objects (knowledge of objects
must precede the use of language—you have to acknowledge an object before you
label it). This ability for symbolic thinking, i.e., the ability to make something
stand for something, expands the cognitive world of the child. The child is now
able to engage in symbolic play (e.g., putting a box over one’s head and calling it a
“hat”) and to use language to represent objects and persons.

In preoperational stage, we know what the child knows by talking to the

child, i.e., through language. We also know how the child knows by looking at how
the child plays.

A lot of the child’s knowledge is manifested in or evidenced by

symbolic play. What are the implications of this on selecting proper toys for
children in this age bracket? It is better to give children unstructured materials
instead of toys which are exact replicas of objects around us (like water, sand, mud,
clay, blocks and other unstructured materials for which the child’s imagination and
symbolic activities can be facilitated).

Important Limitations of this stage:

i) Egocentrism refers to the preoperational child’s inability to consider another’s

point of view. They assume that others see, hear, feel and think exactly what they
do. They feel that people and objects in the world exist only for their use and benefit.

This kind of thinking of the child is due to limitations on her cognitive structure.
Unfortunately, we tend to judge the intellectual deficit as a moral deficit. We
punish the child for a moral standard she cannot simply fulfill because she
cannot understand yet.

ii) Animism refers to the preoperational child’s belief that all things are
living or animated and capable of intentions, consciousness, and feelings.

iii) Inability to decenter. This refers to the child’s tendency to focus

attention on only one part of a whole at a time. They cannot think simultaneous
thoughts at the same time.

iv) Inability to conserve. This refers to the child’s inability to follow

transformation mentally. The child tends to make judgments based only on
what she sees and not on what actually is. Some conservation principles which
children have not yet mastered at this stage are: conservation of liquid, conservation
of number, conservation of mass, conservation of length.

III. Concrete Operational stage (7-11 years)

At this point the child can now think logically about objects and
events in a concrete way, but not on an abstract/conceptual level yet. The
child now has the ability to perform operations

Many competent and important thinking skills emerge. Now they can perform
such operations as counting and classifying, and can understand and think about
relationships. They also have the ability to understand principles of conservation.

Egocentric thinking decreases at thins point. The child is better able to

imagine how things look from another perspective, and how other people think and
feel.

III. Formal Operational

This is the highest stage of cognitive development. The child, who is now in
the stage of adolescence, reasons logically, starting from premises and drawing
conclusions; entertains hypotheses, deduces consequences, and uses these
deductions to test hypotheses; and solves problems by tackling all possibilities
systematically. Mental acts at this stage are unlimited by time and space: the range
is infinity and eternity.

The ability for hypothetical-deductive reasoning develops. This refers to

the ability of the person to consider all variables and possibilities simultaneously, to
see relationships, and to be able to tackle them systematically no matter what the
content is (an abstract or concrete reality). Piaget also calls this logico-mathematical
intelligence. Use the pendulum problem to test formal operational thinking.

Evaluating Piaget’s theory

Piaget was the forerunner of today’s “cognitive revolution” in psychology,

with its emphasis on internal cognitive processes. His theory has inspired more
research on children’s cognitive development than any other theorist.

Piaget’s theory also revolutionized teaching method for children.

Understanding how children think has help many teachers know what topics are
more appropriate for children at given ages.

Criticism of Piaget’s method and theory:

1. Piaget’s theory focuses mainly on the “average” child’s cognitive

development. His theory does not take into account individual differences, or
the ways in which other factors like culture and personality affect intellectual
development.
2. Many of Piaget’s ideas emerged from his personal observations of his own
three children, and not from scientific research.