Piaget Theory of Cognitive

Development
Piaget's theory of cognitive
development 

 -is a comprehensive theory about the nature

and development of human intelligence, first
developed by Jean Piaget. It is primarily
known as a developmental stage theory. It
deals with the nature of knowledge itself and
how humans come gradually to acquire,
construct, and use it.
Jean Piaget(1896-1980)
 One of the most influential researchers in the area of
developmental psychology during the 20th century.
 Trained in the areas of biology and philosophy and

considered himself a “ genetic epistemologist”.

 Become interested in how children think

 cognitive development was a progressive

reorganization of mental processes as a result of

biological maturation and environmental experience.
Children construct an understanding of the world
around them, then experience discrepancies between
what they already know and what they discover in
their environment.
 Basic Cognitive Concepts

*Schema
- refer to the cognitive structures by which
individuals intellectually adapt to and
organize their environment.

*Assimilation
- the process of fitting a new
experience into existing or previously created
cognitive structure or schema.
*Accommodation- the child accommodate
experiences.
Equilibrium
-Piaget believed that people have natural need to
understand how the world works and to find order’
structure and predictability in real life.
-achieving proper balance between assimilation
and accommodation.
Cognitive Disequilibrium- do not match the
schemata or cognitive structures. A discrepancy
between what is perceived and what is
understood.
Cognitive Development

 -involves a continuous effort to adapt

environment in terms of assimilation
and accommodation.
Piaget’s Stages of cognitive
development
Stage 1
 Sensori- motor stage
-corresponds from birth to infancy.
a child is initially reflexive in grasping,
sucking and reaching becomes organized in
his movement and activity.
-focuses on the prominence of the senses
and muscle movement of an infant.
Object permanence

-The ability of the child to know that an object

still exists even without of sight.
Stage 2

 Pre- Operational Stage

-covers from 2-7 years old roughly
corresponding to pre-school years.
Symbolic function

At about 2–4 years of age, children cannot

yet manipulate and transform information in
a logical way, however they now can think in
images and symbols.
Egocentrism
 The tendency of a child to only see his point
of view and to assume that everyone also has
his same point of view.

Centrism
tendency of a child to focus in his own aspect of a
thing or event and exclude other aspect.
Irreversibility
 Pre operational children have the inability to
reverse their thinking.
Animism
-tendency of a children to attribute human like
traits or characteristic to inanimate objects.
Transductive Reasoning
-refers to the pre operational child’s type of
reasoning that is neither inductive nor deductive.
Stage 3

 Concrete-Operational Stage
-child think logically but only in terms of
concrete objects.
Decentering

-The ability of the child to perceive the

different features of objects and situations.
Reversibility
-child can now follow certain operations
can be done in reverse.
Conservation

-ability to know that certain properties of

object like numbers, mass, volume, or area
do not change even if there is a change in
appearance.
Seriation
-ability to order or arrange things in a series
based on one dimension such as weight,
volume or size.
Stage 4

Formal operational Stage(12-15yrs old)

-thinking become logical. They can
solve abstract problems and can
hypothesize.
Hypothetical Reasoning

 The ability to come up w/ different

hypothesis about problems and to gather and
weight data in order to make a final decision
or judgment.
Analogical Reasoning
 Ability to perceive the relations in one
instance and then use that relationship to
narrow down possible answers in another
similar situations.
Deductive Reasoning
ability to think logically by applying a
general rule to a particular instance or
situation.