Theory of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

Background at Early life
Jean Piaget was born on August 9, 1896, in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was his parents’
first child. Where Piaget’s mother is Rebecca Jackson, attributed his intense early
interest in the sciences to his own neurotic tendencies. Yet his father, a medieval
literature professor named Arthur, in which he modeled a passionate dedication to his
studies. With this a trait that Piaget began to emulate from an early age. At just 10
years old, Piaget’s fascination with mollusks drew him to the local museum of natural
history, where he stared at specimens for hours on end. His career of scientific research
began when he was just eleven years old, focusing on types of birds and Mollusks. In
1907 he published a short paper on the Albino sparrow. He wrote sixty books and
several hundred articles on sparrows and Mollusks. Mollusks are snails, slugs, mussels,
and octopuses. They have a soft unsegmented body and live in aquatic or damp
habitats.

Jean Piaget studied Zoology (doctorate, 1918) and philosophy at the University of
Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and psychology at the University of Zürich (1919) and in Paris
under Pierre Janet and Théodore Simon, among others (1919–21).That same year
Piaget spent a semester studying psychology under Carl Jung and Paul Eugen Bleuler at
the University of Zürich, where Piaget developed a deeper interest in psychoanalysis.
Over the course of the next year, he studied abnormal psychology at the Sorbonne in
Paris.

Personal history
His interest for mollusks was developed during his late adolescence to the point that he
became a well-known malacologist ( a scientist who studies mollusks, animals like
squids and octopuses, snails and slugs, and clams and mussels) by finishing school.
After graduating high school, he studied natural sciences at the University of Neuchâtel
where he obtained a Ph.D in 1918. After a semester spent at the University of Zürich
where he developed an interest for psychoanalysis, he left Switzerland for France. He
spent one year working at the Ecole de la rue de la Grange-aux-Belles - a boys'
institution. There, he standardized Burt's test of intelligence and did his first
experimental studies of the growing mind. In 1923, he married Valentine Châtenay. The
couple had three children; Jacqueline, Lucienne and Laurent Piaget whose intellectual
development from infancy to language was studied by Piaget. Jean Piaget died in
Geneva on September 16, 1980.

Groundbreaking Developmental Work

In 1920, working in collaboration with Théodore Simon at the Alfred Binet Laboratory
in Paris, he evaluated the results of standardized reasoning tests that Simon had
designed. He is also known for creating the term “genetic epistemology,” which refers
to the study of knowledge development. The tests were meant to measure child
intelligence and draw connections between a child’s age and the nature of his errors.
For Piaget it raised new questions about the way that children learn. Piaget ultimately
decided that the test was too rigid. In a revised version, he allowed children to explain
the logic of their "incorrect" answers. In reading the children’s explanations, he realized
that children’s power of reasoning was not flawed after all. In areas where children
lacked life experience as a point of reference, they logically used their imagination to
compensate. He additionally concluded that factual knowledge should not be equated
with intelligence or understanding.

Piaget’s contributions

Piaget contributed to psychology in various ways. He provided support for the idea that
children think differently than adults and his research identified several important
milestones in the mental development of children. His work also generated interest in
cognitive and developmental psychology.

His theories are widely studied today by students of both psychology and education. In
the case of the latter, he once said, "The principle goal of education in the
schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new
things, not simply repeating what other generations have done."

Piaget's Theory Differs From Others In Several Ways

Piaget's (1936, 1950) theory of cognitive development explains how a child constructs a
mental model of the world. He disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a fixed
trait, and regarded cognitive development as a process which occurs due to biological
maturation and interaction with the environment. Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive
development suggests that intelligence changes as children grow. A child's cognitive
development is not just about acquiring knowledge, the child has to develop or
construct a mental model of the world. Children’s ability to understand, think about and
solve problems in the world develops in a stop-start, discontinuous manner (rather than
gradual changes over time). It is concerned with children, rather than all learners. It
also focuses on development, rather than learning, so it does not address
learning of information or specific behaviors. In addition, it proposes discrete stages
of development, marked by qualitative differences, rather than a gradual increase in
number and complexity of behaviors, concepts, ideas. Piaget's cognitive development
theory changed the way we look at child development, that children have different
thought processes than adults. His contributions greatly influenced future
developmental theories within the psychology field while also impacting other fields as
well, such as education, sociology, and genetics.

Theory of Cognitive Development

What is this?
The Theory of Cognitive Development by Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist, suggests
that children's intelligence undergoes changes as they grow. Cognitive development in
children is not only related to acquiring knowledge, children need to build or develop a
mental model of their surrounding world (Miller, 2011). His work is regarded as the
cornerstone in the field of developmental psychology.
In the 1920s, Piaget was working at the Binet Institute and his main responsibility was
to translate questions written in English intelligence tests into French. He became
interested to find out why children gave incorrect answers to the questions needing
logical thinking (Meadows, 2019)
Piaget believed that these wrong answers revealed significant differences between the
thinking of children and adults. Piaget proposed a new set of assumptions about the
intelligence of children:

1. Children think differently and see the world differently from adults.
2. Children are not passive learners, they actively build up their knowledge about the
surrounding.
3. The most effective way to understand children’s reasoning is to think from children's
point of view.
Piaget did not want to measure how well children can spell, count or solve problems to
check their I.Q. He was more intrigued to find out how the fundamental concepts such
as the very idea of time, number, justice, quantity and so on emerged (Greenfield,
2019).

Piaget used observations and clinical interviews of older children who were able to hold
conversations and understand questions. He also made controlled observation, and
used naturalistic observation of his own three children and developed diary description
with charts of children's development.

How was it introduced to psychology?

Piaget’s theory, published in 1936, shattered old beliefs as he concluded the traditional
idea of considering children as “empty vessels to be filled with knowledge” was
incorrect, instead describing children as “little scientists” who learned through exploring,
interacting with, and acting upon their environments.

Credited with founding the scientific study of children’s thinking theory, Piaget’s work
initiated new fields of scientific study. His theory of learning described children’s
development as a series of four stages – sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete
operational and formal operational. He theorized that children learn through direct and
active interaction with the environment.

The 4 Stages

Sensorimotor Stage:
During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers acquire
knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects. A child's entire
experience at the earliest period of this stage occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and
motor responses.

Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:

- Know the world through movements and sensations
- Learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and
listening
- Learn that things continue to exist even when they cannot be seen (object
permanence)
- Realize that they are separate beings from the people and objects around them
- Realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them

The Preoperational Stage:

The foundations of language development may have been laid during the previous
stage, but the emergence of language is one of the major hallmarks of the
preoperational stage of development.

Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:

- Begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects
- Tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of others
- Getting better with language and thinking, but still tend to think in very concrete
terms

The Concrete Operational Stage:

While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this point in
development, they become much more adept at using logic. The egocentrism of the
previous stage begins to disappear as kids become better at thinking about how other
people might view a situation.

Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:

- Begin to think logically about concrete events
- Begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short,
wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example
- Thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete
- Begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general
principle

The Formal Operational Stage:

The final stage of Piaget's theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use
deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas. At this point, adolescents
and young adults become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems
and think more scientifically about the world around them.

Major characteristics and developmental changes during this time:

- Begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems
- Begins to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues
that require theoretical and abstract reasoning
- Begins to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific
information

Concepts of Jean’s Theory

SCHEMAS AND CONSTRUCTIVISM

Piaget argued that children learn about the world by interacting with it. This notion of
gaining knowledge about the world is known as constructivism (Waite-Stupiansky,
2017). Through their interactions, children construct schemas – or cognitive patterns –
about how the world works (Waite-Stupiansky, 2017). These schemas come about
through organization, which is how categories are formed, organizing items together
based on common characteristics.

ADAPTATION
Adaptation describes how children update their current cognitive organizations and
schemas with new information. Adaptation takes place in two ways: assimilation and
accommodation
 ASSIMILATION
Describes how children incorporate new information into existing
schemas. Through assimilation, we take in new information or experiences and
incorporate them into our existing ideas. This process is somewhat subjective,
because we tend to modify experience or information to fit in with our pre-
existing beliefs.

ACCOMMODATION
Describes how children adapt their cognitive structures to match new
information in the world. Accommodation is a term developed by psychologist
Jean Piaget to describe what occurs when new information or experiences cause
you to modify your existing schemas. Rather than make the new information fit
into an existing schema, you change the schema in order to accommodate the
new information

EQUILIBRIUM
Is a state of mental balance, when a child is able to use existing schemas
to explain what they understand. It is an adaptation process used to progress
from one stage of cognitive development to another. When children learn new
information that is odds with their current schemas, they are in an undesirable
state of disequilibrium.
To achieve equilibrium, children adapt their mental instruction by:
1. Assimilating new information
2. Accommodating new information by updating their cognitive schemas

By achieving equilibrium, children learn new information.

Application in the World

HOW CAN THIS BE APPLIED?

Children should be able to do their own experimenting and their own research.
Teachers, of course, can guide them by providing appropriate materials, but the
essential thing is that in order for a child to understand something, he must construct it
himself, he must re-invent it. Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from
inventing it himself. On the other hand that which we allow him to discover by himself
will remain with him visibly'.

In the 1960s the Plowden Committee investigated the deficiencies in education and
decided to incorporate many of Piaget’s ideas in to its final report published in 1967,
even though Piaget’s work was not really designed for education. The report makes
three Piaget-associated recommendations:

a. Children should be given individual attention and it should be realised that they need
to be treated differently.

b. Children should only be taught things that they are capable of learning

c. Children mature at different rates and the teacher needs to be aware of the stage of
development of each child so teaching can be tailored to their individual needs.

WHY IS THIS AVAILABLE TO HUMAN SOCIETY?

Each stage of Piaget's theory of cognitive development does not describe a normal level
of cognitive functioning but rather the capacity for cognitive functioning. None of the
stages can be skipped because each stage essentially lays the groundwork for the next
stage.

WHY DOES JEAN PIAGET'S COGNITIVE INTELECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

NECESSARY TO KNOW IN OUR CURRENT GENERATION?
d
The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who
are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have
0and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered" (Piaget, 1988, unpublished
paper).
Piaget’s Theory Differs from Others

Piaget's (1936, 1950) theory of cognitive development explains how a child constructs a
mental model of the world. He disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a fixed
trait, and regarded cognitive development as a process which occurs due to biological
maturation and interaction with the environment.
Children’s ability to understand, think about and solve problems in the world develops in
a stop-start, discontinuous manner (rather than gradual changes over time).

▪ It is concerned with children, rather than all learners.

▪ It focuses on development, rather than learning per se, so it does not address
learning of information or specific behaviors.

▪ It proposes discrete stages of development, marked by qualitative differences, rather

than a gradual increase in number and complexity of behaviors, concepts, ideas, etc.

The goal of the theory is to explain the mechanisms and processes by which the infant,
and then the child, develops into an individual who can reason and think using
hypotheses. 6
To Piaget, 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.