PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

ABOUT THE PROPONENT:

Name: Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
(Swiss biologist and psychologist)
Born: August 9, 1896 in Switzerland
Died: September 16, 1980 (at 84 yrs. old)
Parents: Eldest son of Arthur Piaget and Rebecca Jackson
Education: Received Ph.D. from University of Neuchatel in 1918
Wife: Valentine Chatenay
Children: Jacqueline, Lucienne and Laurent

INTRODUCTION
• Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the 20th century's most influential researchers in the area of
developmental psychology.
• He was originally trained in the areas of biology and philosophy and considered himself a "Genetic
Epistemologist".
• Piaget wanted to know how children learned through their development in the study of knowledge.
• He administered Binet's IQ test in Paris and observed that children's answers were qualitatively
different.
• Piaget's theory is based on the idea that the developing child builds cognitive structures.
• He believes that the child's cognitive structure increases with the development.
• Piaget's Theory of infant development were based on his observations of his own three children and
nephew. These observations reinforced his budding hypothesis that children's minds were not merely
smaller versions of adult minds.
• Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different
stages of mental development. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire
knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.
• 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.

DEFINITION
Cognition-derived from the Latin word “cognoscere” which means “to know” or “to recognize” or
“conceptualize”
-mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and
the senses.
Cognitive Development- emergence of the ability to think and understand
-acquisition of the ability to think, reason, and problem solve
-process by which people’s thinking changes across the life span
-It is the growing apprehension and adaptation to the physical and social environment.

How Cognitive Development Occurs?

• Cognitive Development is gradual and orderly changes by which mental process becomes more
complex and sophisticated.
• The essential development of cognition is the establishment of new schemes.
• Assimilation and Accommodation are both the processes of the ways of Cognitive Development.
• The equilibration is the symbol of a new stage of the Cognitive Development.

IMPORTANT CONCEPTS ABOUT COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT BY PIAGET

A. Schemas- describe 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.
• As experiences happen, this new information is used to modify, add to, or change previously
existing schemas.
B. Assimilation -The process of taking in new information into our already existing schemas
-The process is somewhat subjective because we tend to modify experiences and information slightly
to fit in with our preexisting beliefs.
-Children make sense of the world by applying what they already know. It involves fitting reality and
what they experience into their current cognitive structure.
-A child's understanding of how the world works, therefore, filters and influences how they interpret the
reality.

C. Accommodation- another part of adaptation involves changing or altering our existing schemas in light of
new information
 -this involves modifying existing schemas, or ideas, as a result of new information or new experiences.
-New schemas may also be developed during this process.
-Schemas become more refined, detailed, and nuanced as new information is gathered and
accommodated into our current ideas and beliefs about how the world works.
D. Equilibration
*Piaget believed that all children try to strike a balance between assimilation and accommodation,
which is achieved through a mechanism Piaget called 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).
-This helps explain how children can move from one stage of thought to the next.

THE FOUR STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

1. The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 years old)

-During this initial phase of development, children utilize skills and abilities they were born with (such as
looking, sucking, grasping, and listening) to learn more about the environment.
-In other words, they experience the world and gain knowledge through their senses and motor
movements.
-As children interact with their environments, they go through an astonishing amount of cognitive
growth in a relatively short period of time—the sensorimotor stage lasts from birth to approximately age
2.

Substages:

1.1. Reflexes (0-1 month):

-During this substage, the child understands the environment purely through inborn reflexes
such as sucking and looking.

1.2. Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months):

-This substage involves coordinating sensation and new schemas.
For example, a child may suck his or her thumb by accident and then later intentionally repeat
the action. These actions are repeated because the infant finds them pleasurable.

1.3 Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months):

-During this substage, the child becomes more focused on the world and begins to intentionally
repeat an action in order to trigger a response in the environment.
For example, a child will purposefully pick up a toy in order to put it in his or her mouth.

1.4. Coordination of Reactions (8-12 months):

-During this substage, the child starts to show clearly intentional actions.
-The child may also combine schemas in order to achieve a desired effect.
-Children begin exploring the environment around them and will often imitate the observed
behavior of others.
-The understanding of objects also begins during this time and children begin to recognize
certain objects as having specific qualities.
For example, a child might realize that a rattle will make a sound when shaken.

1.5 Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months):

-Children begin a period of trial-and-error experimentation during the fifth substage.
example, a child may try out different sounds or actions as a way of getting attention from a
caregiver.
1.6. Early Representational Thought (18-24 months):
-Children begin to develop symbols to represent events or objects in the world in the final
sensorimotor substage.
-During this time, children begin to move towards understanding the world through mental
operations rather than purely through actions.

Object Permanence- is a child's understanding that objects continue to exist even though they cannot
be seen or heard.
-According to Piaget, developing object permanence is one of the most important
accomplishments at the sensorimotor stage of development .

2. The Preoperational Stage (2-7 years old)

-During this stage, children begin to engage in symbolic play and learn to manipulate symbols.
However, Piaget noted that they do not yet understand concrete logic.
 -This is a period of developing language and concepts. So, the child is capable of more complex mental
representations (i.e., words and images). He is still unable to use 'operations', i.e., logical mental rules,
such as rules of arithmetic.

2 Sub-stages:

2.1. Preconceptual stage (2-4 yrs.):

-Increased use of verbal representation but speech is egocentric.
-The child uses symbols to stand for actions; a toy doll stands for a real baby or the child role
plays mummy or daddy.
2.2. Intuitive stage (4-7 yrs.):
-Speech becomes more social, less egocentric.
-Here children base their knowledge on what they feel or sense to be true, yet they cannot
explain the underlying principles behind what they feel or sense.

Key Features of this Stage:

• Egocentrism: -The child's thoughts and communications are typically egocentric (i.e, about
themselves or their own point of view). E.g.: "if I can't see you, you also can't see me".
-It is the inability to see the world from anyone else's eyes. It is well explained by Piaget as Three
Mountain Task.
• Animism: Treating inanimate objects as living ones. E.g.: children dressing and feeding their dolls as
if they are alive.
. Role-playing also becomes important— Children often play the roles of "mommy," "daddy," "doctor,"
and many other characters.
• Concentration: The process of concentrating on one limited aspect of a stimulus and ignoring other
aspects. It is noticed in Conservation. Conservation on the other hand is the knowledge that quantity is
unrelated to the arrangement and physical appearance of objects. Children at this stage are unaware of
conservation.

3. Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years old)- Child and Early Adolescence
- is characterized by the development of logical thought.
-Thinking still tends to be very concrete, children become much more logical and sophisticated in their
thinking during this stage of development.
-While this is an important stage in and of itself, it also serves as an important transition between earlier
stages of development and the coming stage where kids will learn how to think more abstractly and
hypothetically.

 Important processes during this stage are:

• Seriation: The ability to sort objects in an order according to size, shape or any other characteristic.
• Transitivity: The ability to recognize logical relationships among elements in a serial order.
• Classification: The ability to group objects together on the basis of common features. The child also
begins to get the idea that one set can include another.
• Decentering: The ability to take multiple aspects of a situation into account.
• Reversibility: The child understands that numbers or objects can be changed, then returned to their
original state.
• Conservation: Understanding that the quantity, length or number of items is unrelated to the
arrangement or appearance of the object or item.
• Elimination of Egocentrism: The ability to view things from another's perspective.
-They are now sociocentric. In other words, they are able to understand that other people have
their own thoughts. Kids at this point are aware that other people have unique perspectives, but
they might not yet be able to guess exactly how or what that other person is experiencing.
-The child performs operations: combining, separating, multiplying, repeating, dividing etc.

4. Formal Operation Stage (12 years to about 15)

-The thought becomes increasingly flexible and abstract, i.e., can carry out systematic experiments.
-The ability to systematically solve a problem in a logical and methodological way.
-Understands that nothing is absolute; everything is relative.
-Develops skills such as logical thought, deductive reasoning as well as inductive reasoning and
systematic planning etc.
-Understands that the rules of any game or social system are developed by a man by mutual
agreement and hence could be changed or modified.
-The child's way of thinking is at its most advanced, although the knowledge it has to work with, will
change.
*As children gain greater awareness and understanding of their own thought processes, they develop
what is known as metacognition, or the ability to think about their thoughts as well as the ideas of
others.
 *Creative ideas represent the use of abstract and hypothetical thinking, both important indicators of
formal operational thought.

*Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development is well-known within the fields of psychology and education, but
it has also been the subject of considerable criticism. While presented in a series of discrete, progressive
stages, even Piaget believed that development does not always follow such a smooth and predictable path.
*In spite of the criticism, the theory has had a considerable impact on our understanding of child development.
Piaget's observation that kids actually think differently than adults helped usher in a new era of research on the
mental development of children.

SUPPORT FOR THE THEORY

-Piaget's focus on qualitative development had an important impact on education. While Piaget did not
specifically apply his theory in this way, many educational programs are now built upon the belief that children
should be taught at the level for which they are developmentally prepared.
-In addition to this, a number of instructional strategies have been derived from Piaget's work. These strategies
include providing a supportive environment, utilizing social interactions and peer teaching, and helping children
see fallacies and inconsistencies in their thinking.

CRITICISMS

1. Problems with Research Methods

-Much of the criticism of Piaget's work is in regards to his research methods. A major source of inspiration for
the theory was Piaget's observations of his own three children. In addition to this, the other children in Piaget's
small research sample were all from well-educated professionals of high socioeconomic status. Because of
this unrepresentative sample, it is difficult to generalize his findings to a larger population.
-Piaget's research methodology is also problematic due to the fact that he rarely detailed how his participants
were selected. Most of his work includes very little statistical detail about how he arrived at his conclusions.
-Another issue lies with Piaget's lack of clear operationally defined variables. In order to replicate his
observations and objectively measure how one variable leads to changes in another, researchers need to have
very specific definitions of each variable. Much of the terminology related to Piaget's theory lacks these
operational definitions, so it is very difficult for researchers to accurately replicate his work.

2. Developmental Variations Exist

-Research has disputed Piaget's argument that all children will automatically move to the next stage of
development as they mature. Some data suggest that environmental factors may play a role in the
development of formal operations.
-The theory seems to suggest that reaching the formal operational stage is the end goal of development, yet it
is not clear if all people actually fully achieve the developmental tasks that are the hallmark of formal
operations. Even as adults, people may struggle to think abstractly about situations, falling back on more
concrete operational ways of thinking.
-The theory also seems to suggest that intellectual development is largely complete by the age of 12. More
recent research demonstrates that the teen and early adult years are a period of important cognitive
development as well.
-The stage approach is viewed as problematic as well. Stage theories have fallen out of popularity in modern-
day psychology for a number of reasons. One of these is that they often fail to accurately capture the many
individual variations that exist in development.

3. The Theory Underestimated Children's Abilities

-Most researchers agree that children possess many of the abilities at an earlier age than Piaget
suspected. Theory of mind research has found that 4- and 5-year-old children have a rather sophisticated
understanding of their own mental processes as well as those of other people.
For example, children of this age have some ability to take the perspective of another person, meaning they
are far less egocentric than Piaget believed. Some research has shown that even children as young as age 3
have some ability to understand that other people will have different views of the same scene.

PIAGET'S LEGACY

-While there are few strict Piagetians around today, most people can appreciate Piaget's influence and legacy.
His work generated interest in child development and had an enormous impact on the future of education
and developmental psychology.
-While his research methods were imperfect, his work did pioneer the development of what is now known as
the clinical method. This approach involves conducting intensive interviews with subjects about their own
thought processes.
-Piaget's theory also helped change the way that researchers thought about children. Rather than simply
viewing them as smaller versions of adults, experts began to recognize that the way children think is
fundamentally different from the way that adults think.

EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
• Emphasis on discovery approach in learning.
The role of the teacher is to facilitate learning, rather than direct tuition. Therefore, teachers should encourage
the following within the classroom:
 Focus on the process of learning, rather than the end product of it.
 Using active methods that require rediscovering or reconstructing "truths."
 Using collaborative, as well as individual activities (so children can learn from each other).
 Devising situations that present useful problems, and create disequilibrium in the child.
 Evaluate the level of the child's development so suitable tasks can be set.

• Curriculum should provide specific educational experience based on children's developmental level.
• Arrange classroom activities so that they assist and encourage self-learning.
• Social interactions have a great educational value for Piaget. Positive social actions, therefore should be
encouraged.
• Instruction should be geared to the level of the child. As the level of the child changes at each stage, the level
of instruction or exploratory activities should also change.
• Simple to Complex and Project method of teaching.
• Co-curricular activities have equal importance as that of curricular experiences in the cognitive development
of children.
• Major Goals of education according to Piaget are critical and creative thinking.

CONTRIBUTION TO EDUCATION
• Piaget's theory helped educators, parents and investigators to comprehend the capacity of children in their
different stages.
• He made us conscious with the way children and adults think.
• A lot of school programs have been redesigned taking as base Piaget's discoveries.
• Piaget made a revolution with the developmental psychology concentrating all his attention to the mental
process and his role with behavior.

Resources:
https://www.learning-theories.com/piagets-stage-theory-of-cognitive-development.html
Kendra Cherry. Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development. https://www.verywellmind.com/piagets-stages-of-
cognitive-development-2795457. Sept. 5, 2019
Ayushi Gupta. Jean Piaget: Theory of Cognitive Dev’t. https://www.slideshare.net/ayushigupta547/jean-piaget-
theory-of-cognitive-development. April 21, 2017