Cognitive 


Development
Theory

DIANA M. DE CASTRO, MD, FPPA

FEU-NRMF Medical Center
Department of Medicine
Section of Psychiatry
“It is with children that we have
the best chance of studying the
development of logical
knowledge, mathematical
knowledge, physical
knowledge, and so forth.”

~Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget
• Swiss developmental
psychologist,
philosopher
• Piaget developed
theories concerning
how children learn
while studying his
own children
Piaget referred to himself primarily as a
“

genetic epistemologist.

He defined genetic epistemology as

the study of the development of
abstract thought on the basis of a
biological or innate substrate.
Components of Piaget's Cognitive
Development
1. Schema
2. Processes that enable the
transition from one stage to another
3. Three Stages of Development
Schema
• Basic building block of
intelligent behavior
• A way of organizing knowledge
Process
When intellectual growth happens through:
1. Assimilation - use of initial knowledge
2. Accommodation - schema needs to be
changed
3. Equilibration - child's existing knowledge
or schema can be used to deal with new
situations
Four Stages:
• Sensorimotor Stage
• Pre-Operational Stage
• Concrete Operational
Stage
• Formal Operational Stage
Stage 1
Sensorimotor

(0-2 years)
• A child begins to interact
with the environment

• Knowledge of the world is

LIMITED, since it’s based on
physical interactions/
experiences
Sensorimotor

(0-2 years)

• Physical Mobility
- Allows the child to
begin developing new
intellectual abilities
The critical achievement of this
period is the development of object
permanence or the schema of the
permanent object.

Infants learn to differentiate

themselves from the world and are
able to maintain a mental image of
an object, even when it is not
present and visible.
Object permanence
• An object exists when the child
sees it
• 7-8 months - the child begins to
understand that the object/
person will still exist even when
already out of sight
At about 18 months, infants begin to
develop mental symbols and to use
words, a process known as
symbolization.

Example. Infants are able to create a

visual image of a ball or a mental
symbol of the word ball to stand for,
or signify, the real object.
Stage 2
Pre-Operational stage

(2-7yrs old)
• Toddlers can understand the
use of symbols and language;
“symbolic thinking”
I.E pretend play.
Pre-Operational stage

(2-7yrs old)
• Unable to think logically/
deductively
• Concepts are primitive
• They can name objects but not
classes
Pre-Operational stage

(2-7yrs old)
• No sense of cause and effect
• No sense of conservation
• Things are represented in
terms of function
During this time, things are
represented in terms of
function.

Example. A child defines a bike

as “to ride” and a hole as “to
dig.”
Immanent Justice

Children in this stage have a

sense of immanent justice, the
belief that punishment for bad
deeds is inevitable.
Children have no sense of cause
and effect.

Example. If children drop a glass

that then breaks, they believe that
the glass was ready to break, not
that they broke the glass.
Children in this stage also cannot grasp
the sameness of an object in different
circumstances.

Example. The same doll in a carriage, a crib,

or a chair is perceived to be three different
objects.
Children in this developmental
stage are egocentric.
• They see themselves as the center
of the universe;
• They have a limited point of view;
• They are unable to take the role of
another person and are unable to
modify their behavior for someone
else.
Children cannot deal with moral
dilemmas, although they have a
sense of what is good and bad.
Children use a type of magical
thinking called phenomenalistic
causality, in which events that occur
together are thought to cause one
another.

Example. Thunder causes lightning,

and bad thoughts cause accidents.
Animistic Thinking

Children use animistic thinking

which is the tendency to
endow physical events and
objects with lifelike
psychological attributes, such
as feelings and intentions.
Semiotic Function

Children can represent something--such

as an object, an event, or a conceptual
scheme--with a signifier, which serves a
representative function (e.g. language,
mental image, symbolic gesture).

That is, children use a symbol or sign to

stand for something else.
Stage 3
Stage of Concrete Operations (7
to 11 Years)
Children operate and act on the concrete, real,
and perceivable world of objects and events.

Egocentric thought is replaced by operational

thought, which involves dealing with a wide
array of information outside the child.

Children can now see things from someone

else’s perspective.
Children in this stage begin to use limited logical thought
processes and can serialize, order, and group things into
classes on the basis of common characteristics.

Syllogistic reasoning, in which logical conclusion is formed

from two premises, appears during this stage.

Example. All horses are mammals (premise); all mammals

are warm-blooded (premise); therefore, all horses are
warm-blooded (conclusion).
Children are able to reason and follow
rules and regulations.

They can regulate themselves, and they

begin to develop a moral sense and a
code of values.

A child attains a healthy respect for rules

and understands that there are legitimate
exceptions to rules.
Concrete Operational Stage
(7-11 years)
• The children are now able to
conserve
• They understand that although
the appearance has changed
the thing itself does not.
What is Conservation?
“The awareness that a quantity
remains the same despite a
change in its appearance”
Reversibility
It is the capacity to understand
the relation between things, to
realize that one thing can turn
into another and back again
—for example, ice and water.
Stage 4
 Formal Operational Stage
(11- 16 years )
• Most of previous characteristics
discussed have now developed.
• With logical thinking; they are
able to work through abstract
problems
A young person’s thinking operates in a
formal, highly logical, systematic, and
symbolic manner.

This stage is characterized by

-the ability to think abstractly,
-to reason deductively,
-to define concepts
-the emergence of skills for dealing with
permutations and combinations;
-they can grasp the concept of
probabilities.
Abstract Thinking
Abstract thinking is shown by
the adolescent’s interest in a
variety of issues—philosophy,
religion, ethics, politics.
Hypotheticodeductive Thinking
It is the highest organization
of cognition and enables
person’s to make a
hypothesis or proposition
and to test it against reality.
Deductive reasoning moves
from the general to the
particular and is more
complicated than inductive
reasoning, which moves from
the particular to the general.
Prepared By:
Diana M. de Castro, M.D., F.P.P.A.
Psychiatry

Reference: Kaplan and Sadock’s Synopsis of

Psychiatry
Thank
You!