Jean Piaget’s

Cognitive
Development
Jean Piaget Biography
(1896-1980)
Jean Piaget was a Swiss
psychologist and genetic
epistemologist. He is most
famously known for his theory
of cognitive development that
looked at how children
develop intellectually
throughout the course of
childhood.
 Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
considers the active role of an
individual as an important
factor in human development.
He believes that a human grows
through a dynamic process in
which a body’s internal system
interacts with the environment.
One needs to
strike a balance, a
state which he
called equilibrium. Equilibration (the process
of achieving balance)
marks significant
development of an
individual.
 Other factors involved in the developmental process
are maturation (biological change), experience and the
transfer of attitudes, information, or customs (for
example, a child learning from what parents taught
him/her).

His theory of cognitive development tries to explain

how a child understands the world: how he/she thinks,
reason out, remembers, and solves problems. He
considered education as a key element in developing
one’s cognitive skills.
Stages of
cognitive
development
 1. Sensorimotor stage
- from birth to 2 years
Children learns through sensory
experiences.
Knowledge is based on the
senses, and the child responds
to people and things through
reflex movements like sucking
and grasping.
An important understanding that
should be attained is that an
object continues to exist even if it
is no longer seen (object
permanence).
The child should begin to form
mental images toward the latter
part of this stage.
 2. Pre-operational stage
- from 2 to 7 years
The child's way of thinking is toward himself/herself (egocentric). It is all
about him/herself. The child thinks that other people are just like him/her
in the way they think or feel.
The child continues to develop using mental images and begins to use
symbols to represent what he/she knows (symbolic thought) significantly
through language. However, perceptions are limited and understanding is
based on concrete objects.
The child may find difficulty understanding that actions or thinking can be
reversed (e.g., reversing mental operations "1 + 2" can be "2 + 1" ).
The child is still unable to focus on several aspects of a problem or
understand cause-and-effect relationships.
The child is limited in understanding or appreciating another ’s point
of view (e.g., a boy will insist on buying her sister a car for her
birthday because he thinks she will also have fun playing with it as
much as he does).
The child tends to attribute human characteristics to inanimate
objects (e.g., it rains because the sky is crying; a child will put her
doll to sleep).
3. Concrete- Operational Stage
from 8 to 11 years
The child begins to be more logical and able to perform simple
operations (e.g., basic math computation) , begins to understand
classifications (e.g., living things and non-living things), and can
understand reversibility (e.g., commutative property of addition).
The child is less egocentric and more other-centered.
 At this point, he /she is no longer just
4. Formal dependent on concrete perceptual
experiences in the present. In dealing with
Operational situations, the past or the future can be a
Stage Starts reference to know what to do.
He/she is able to analyze problems, and
to emerge consider different ways of solving it in a
systematic way.
between 11 Significantly, he/she can deal with abstract or
to 15 years hypothetical situations and generate ideas
about it through logical thinking. For instance,
the adolescent is now able to imagine how
the Philippines will turn out if it was not
conquered by Spaniards. Moreover, he/she
can elaborate ideas.
 If you want to be
creative, stay in part a
child, with them
creativity and invention
that characterizes
children before they
are deformed by adult
society.
Jean Piaget