Piaget’s Stages of

Cognitive Development
Lesson 5
Objectives:
• Describe Piaget’s stages in your own words.
• Conduct a simple Piagetian Task interview with children.
• Match learning activities to the learner’s cognitive stage.
Introduction
• Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Theory of Development is truly a classic in
the field of educational psychology. This theory fueled other
researches and theories of development and learning. Its focus is on
how individuals construct knowledge.
Jean Piaget
• 60 years – cognitive development
• Research Method: Observing a small number
of individuals as they responded to cognitive
tasks that he designed.
• Piagetian Tasks
• Biology – Philosophy
• These disciplines influenced his theories and
research of child development
• Stages of Cognitive Development
• Applied widely to teaching and curriculum design
specially in the preschool and elementary curricula.
• Schema. It refers to the cognitive
structures by which individuals
intellectually adapt to and organize their
environment. It is an individual’s way to
understand or create meaning about a
thing or experience. It is like the mind
has a filing cabinet and each drawer has
folders that contain files of things he has
had an experience with. For instance, if a
child sees a dog for the first time, he
creates his own schema of what a dog is.
It has four legs and a tail.
• Assimilation.
 This is the process of fitting a new experience into an existing or previously created
cognitive structure or schema.
 The process of taking in new information into our previously existing schemas.

• Accommodation.
 This is the process of creating a new schema.
 This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs to be
changed to deal with a new object or situation.
• Equilibration.
 Piaget believed that the people have the natural need to understand how
the world works and to find order, structure and predictability in their life.
 Equilibration is achieving proper balance between assimilation and
accommodation.
 When our experiences do not match our schemata or cognitive structures,
we experience cognitive disequilibrium. This means there is a
discrepancy between what is perceived and what is understood.
We then exert effort through assimilation and accommodation
to establish equilibrium once more.
 Brain Teaser

NOON LAZY
• Answer:
Lazy
Afternoon
Stage 1: Sensori-motor stage
• Birth to Infancy
• This is the stage when a child who is
initially reflexive in grasping, sucking
and reaching becomes more organized in
his movement and activity.
• The term sensori-motor focuses on the
prominence of the senses and muscle
movement through which the infant
comes to learn about himself and the
world. In working with children in the
sensori-motor stage, teachers should aim
to provide a rich and stimulating
environment with appropriate objects to
play with.
Object Permanence
• This is the ability of the child to know that an object still exists even
when out of sight.
Stage 2: Pre-Operational Stage
• 2 to 7 years old
• Preschool years
• Intelligence at this stage is intuitive in nature.
• At this stage, the child can now make mental representations and is able to
pretend, the child is now ever closer to the use of symbols.
Symbolic Function
• This is the ability to represent objects
and events. A symbol is a thing that
represents something else.
• A drawing, a written word, or a
spoken word comes to be understood
as representing a real object like a
real MRT train.
• This gradually develops in the period
between 2 to 7 years.
 Egocentrism
• This is the tendency of the child to only see his point of view and to
assume that everyone also has his same point of view.
• The child cannot take the perspective of others.
 Centration
• This refers to the tendency of the child to only focus on one aspect of
a thing or event and exclude other aspects.
 Irreversibility
• Pre-operational children still have the inability to reverse their
thinking.
 Animism
• This is the tendency of children to attribute human like traits or
characteristics to inanimate objects.
 Transductive Reasoning
• This refers to the pre-operational child’s type of reasoning that is
neither inductive nor deductive.
• Reasoning appears to be from particular to particular i.e., if A cause
B, then B causes A.
 Brain Teaser

• Answer:
DEAL
Big Deal
Stage 3: Concrete-Operational Stage
• 8 to 11 years old
• Elementary School years
• This stage is characterized by the ability of the child to think
logically but only in terms of concrete.
 Decentering
• This refers to the ability of the child to perceive the
different features of objects and situations. No longer is
the child focused or limited to one aspect or dimension.
This allows the child to be more logical when dealing with
concrete objects and situations.
 Reversibility
• During the stage of concrete operations, the child can now follow that
certain operations can be done in reverse.
 Conservation
• This is the ability to know that certain properties of objects like
number, mass, volume, or area do not change even if there is a
change in appearance.
 Seriation
• This refers to the 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 to 15 years
• Logical thinking
• They can now solve abstract problems and can hypothesize.
 Hypothetical Reasoning
• This is the ability to come up with different hypothesis about a
problem and to gather and weigh data in order to make a final
decision or judgment. This can be done in the absence of concrete
objects.
• “What if?”
 Analogical Reasoning
• This is the ability to perceive the relationship in one instance and
then use that relationship to narrow down possible answers in
another similar situation or problem.
Deductive Reasoning
• This is the ability to think logically by applying a general rule to a
particular instance or situation.
 Brain Teaser

ECNALG
• Answer:
Backward Glance
Principles:
• Children will provide different explanations of reality at different stages of
cognitive development.
• Cognitive development is facilitated by providing activities or situations
that engage learners and require adaptation.
• Learning materials and activities should involve the appropriate level of
motor or mental operations for a child of given age; avoid asking students
to perform tasks that are beyond their current cognitive capabilities.
• Use teaching methods that actively involve students and present
challenges.
Activity #2:
1. It’s Christmas and Uncle Juan is giving “Aguinaldo” to the children.
Three year old Karen did not want to receive the one hundred peso
bill and instead preferred to receive four 20 peso bills. Her ten year-
old cousins were telling her it’s better to get the one hundred bill, but
they failed to convince her.
2. Siblings, Tria; Enzo, 8; and Riel 4 were soring out their stuffed
animals. They had 7 bears, 3 dogs, 3 cows and 1 dolphin. Mommy, a
psychology teacher, enters and says, “Good thing you’re sorting those.
Do you have more stuffed animals or more bears?” Tria and Enzo
says, “stuffed animals.” Riel says “Bears.”
3. While eating on her high chair, seven-month old Liza accidentally
dropped her spoon on the floor. She saw mommy pick it up. Liza again
drops hew new spoon, and she does this several times on purpose.
Mommy didn’t like it at all but Liza appeared to enjoy dropping the
spoons the whole time.
Analysis
1. Why do you think Karen prefer the 20 peso
bills?
2. Why do you think Riel answered “Bears?” What
does these say about how she thought to
answer the question?
3. Why do you think baby Liza appeared to enjoy
dropping the spoons?
Quiz next meeting! 