What is Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development?

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).

Stages of Cognitive Development

According to Jean Piaget, stages of development takes place via the interaction
between natural capacities and environmental happenings, and children
experience a series of stages (Wellman, 2011).  The sequence of these stages
remains same across cultures. Each child goes through the same stages of
cognitive development in life but with a different rate. The following are Piaget's
stages of intellectual development:

1. From birth to 18-24 months: Sensorimotor stage (Object permanence)

The infants use their actions and senses to explore and learn about their
surrounding environment.

A variety of cognitive abilities develop at this stage; which mainly include

representational play, object permanence, deferred imitation and self-recognition.

At this stage, infants live only in present. They do not have anything related to
this world stored in their memory. At age of 8 months, the infant will understand
different objects' permanence and they will search for them when they are not
present.

Towards the endpoint of this stage, infants' general symbolic function starts to

appear and they can use two objects to stand for each other. Language begins to
appear when they realise that they can use  words to represent feelings and
objects. The child starts to store information he knows about the world, label it
and recall it.

From 2 to 7 years: Preoperational stage (Symbolic thought)

Young children and Toddlers gain the ability to represent the world internally
through mental imagery and language.
At this stage, children symbolically think about things. They are able to make one
thing, for example, an object or a word, stand for another thing different from
itself.

A child mostly thinks about how the world appears, not how it is. At the
preoperational stage, children do not show problem-solving or logical thinking.

Infants in this age also show animism, which means that they think that toys and
other non-living objects have feelings and live like a person.

By an age of 2 years, toddlers can detach their thought process from the physical
world. But, they are still not yet able to develop operational or logical thinking
skills of later stages.

Their thinking is still egocentric (centred on their own world view) and intuitive
(based on children's subjective judgements about events).

1. 7 to 11 years: Concrete operational stage (Logical thought)

At this stage, children start to show logical thinking about concrete events.

They start to grasp the concept of conservation. They understand that, even if
things change in appearance but some properties still remain the same.

Children at this stage can reverse things mentally. They start to think about other
people's feelings and thinking and they also become less egocentric.

This stage is also known as concrete as children begin to think logically.

According to Piaget, this stage is a significant turning point of a child's cognitive
development because it marks the starting point of operational or logical
thinking. At this stage, a child is capable of internally working things out in their
head (rather than trying things out in reality).

Children at this stage may become overwhelmed or they may make mistakes
when they are asked to reason about hypothetical or abstract problems.
Conservation means that the child understands that even if some things change
in appearance but their properties may remain the same. At age 6 children are
able to conserve number, at age 7 they can conserve mass and at age 9 they can
conserve weight. But logical thinking is only used if children ask to reason
about physically present materials.

1. age 12 and above: Formal operational stage (Symbolic reasoning)

At this stage, individuals perform concrete operations on things and they
perform formal operations on ideas. Formal logical thinking is totally free from
perceptual and physical barriers.

At this stage, adolescents can understand abstract concepts. They are able to

follow any specific kind of argument without thinking about any particular
examples.

Adolescents are capable of dealing with hypothetical problems with several

possible outcomes.

This stage allows the emergence of scientific

reasoning, formulating hypotheses and abstract theories as and whenever
needed.

Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development made no claims about any specific

age-associated with any of the particular stage but his description provides an
indication of the age at which an average child would reach a certain stage.
Piaget's Theory is different from other theorists in several ways:

Jean Piaget vs Vygotsky: Vygotsky claims that cognitive development is led

by social interactions and children are social beings. Whereas, Piaget believes that a
child's development is led by his own self-centred and focused

Vygotsky’s Concept of Zone of Proximal Development

Lev Vygotsky is most recognized for his concept of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
pertaining to the cognitive development in children.

According to the Vygotsky theory of cognitive development, children who are in the zone of
proximal development for a particular task can almost perform the task independently, but not
quite there yet. With a little help from certain people, they’ll be able to perform the task
successfully. There are four stages of this learning.
Assisted Performance
The first stage takes place when a child is first learning a new subject matter or skill and
requires help from someone with greater knowledge than his own. Typically, the person
who assists the child is someone in a position of authority, such as a teacher, parent or
coach who has developed an expertise in the subject area or skill. The assisted child
learns through a series of instructional methods that include lecture, question-and-
answer, problem solving and positive reinforcement.

2Unassisted Performance
As a child gains understanding of the new subject or skill, she moves into the second
stage, in which she performs tasks without relying on the person who was assisting her.
Though she may not have gained mastery, she is now confident enough to work
through the task by herself, even if she makes occasional mistakes. The second stage
is still considered a beginning stage because the child has not attained full capacity.

3Full Internalization
In the third stage, a student's knowledge reaches the point where performance is
automatic and fully developed. Any doubts are gone during this stage, and the student
has internalized the skills necessary to perform the task with proficiency. Expert
assistance or tutelage is not required or needed, and in fact the student may resent the
intrusion or advice of the expert now that he has fully developed his own level of
expertise.

4De-automization
The fourth and final stage typically occurs later in life when the student becomes an
adult and loses the ability to perform at a proficient level. At that point, she must go
through the development process again to restore knowledge and skills she has lost.
Reasons for de-automization may include personal crisis, sudden trauma, gradual
erosion of skills due to age, and major life changes. Self-evaluation and continuing
education are measures that may help delay de-automization, but it is an inevitable
occurrence that requires individuals to regress to the beginning of the learning cycle to
regain mastery.

Piaget Vs Vygotsky
1. Piaget concluded that development happened in distinct stages and that each must be
reached in order while Vygotsky did not accept that development happened in distinct
stages.
 2. Piaget concluded that development leads to learning while Vygotsky held that social
learning precedes development.
3. Piaget concluded that development starts in the individual and continues to the social
world while Vygotsky held that development starts in the social world and regularly
becomes internalized in the individual.
4. Piaget concluded that egocentric speech helps to prove that children are self-centered and
not able to see from any point of view but their own while Vygotsky held that egocentric
speech occurs as children improve from language as a tool used to interact socially to
language as private speech and then inner speech (thought).
5. Piaget concentrated little on language as a tool of cognitive development while
Vygotsky’s strong center on language as a tool of cognitive development.
6. Piaget concluded that language is directed by thought while Vygotsky held that thought is
driven by language.
7. Piaget held that the pace of cognitive development is managed by the child’s level of
maturation while Vygotsky held that children are born with innate elementary functions.
8. Piaget held that children learn independently while Vygotsky held that children depend
on social interaction to learn (zone of proximal development).
9. Piaget held that the child takes on the role of a scientist while Vygotsky held that the
child takes on the role of an assistant.
10. Piaget held that development is the same in every child while Vygotsky held that
development varies depending on cultural differences.

Bruner’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Jerome Bruner is one of the most influential and renowned educational
psychologists of the twentieth century. He researched the cognitive
development of children and identified three stages of representation
namely, the enactive stage, the iconic stage, and the symbolic
representation stage. 

Modes of representation are ways humans store and encode knowledge or information in the
memory. Bruner’s modes are only loosely sequential.
Enactive (0 – 1 years)
This mode involves encoding action-based information for storage in our memory – e. g.
an infant recalls shaking a rattle by developing a ‘muscular memory’ of the task.
Infants, and adults, recall tasks via muscular memory. For instance, miming operating a lawn
mower is much quicker and easier than a complex verbal explanation
Iconic (1 – 6 years)
This is the ability to store a mental picture ‘in the mind’s eye’. When learning a new topic, it can
be helpful to use pictures and diagrams to support verbal explanations.
Symbolic (7 years and above)
This more-sophisticated mode is the last to develop and is more flexible than the previous two
modes. Mostly via the medium of language, information is stored using codes and symbols. For
example, ‘dog’ is a symbolic representation of a certain class of animals.
Such symbols can be manipulated, sorted, classified etc., so the learner is not restricted to using
only actions or images. Data storage is accomplished via words, mathematical signs and/or other
symbol systems.
The main differences between Bruner and Piaget’s theories of
cognitive development are as follows:
1. According to Piaget’s theory, cognitive development takes place in a series
of stages whereas in Bruner’s theory, cognitive development is a continuous
process.
2. Piaget’s theory suggests that language is a consequence of cognitive
development whereas Bruner’s theory asserts that language is a cause of
cognitive development.
3. Piaget’s theory puts little emphasis on socio-cultural context whereas
Bruner’s theory puts a lot of emphasis on socio-cultural context believing
that it influences one’s intellectual development.
4. As opposed to Bruner’s three stages, Piaget’s theory has four stages namely,
sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage, and
formal operational stage.
5. Bruner’s theory has three representation stages namely the enactive stage,
iconic stage, and symbolic stage as opposed to Piaget’s four stages of
cognitive development.