Jean Piagets Cognitive Stages of Development1 A young childs understanding of reality is certainly different from an adults.

Just as childs body and physical abilities change, his or her way of knowing or perceiving the world also grows and changes. Major Assumptions, Terms and Concepts of Piagets Theory Piaget believed that human beings are all born with an innate drive toward knowledge as part of our overall need for survival. Given his background as biologist, Piaget saw human cognition or intelligence as adaptive-an ability that facilitates our survival as a species. In the same way that we have physical structures that allows our bodies to adapt, we are equipped with mental structures that that enable us to make sense of the external world. Just as food is taken in and then digested into forms that are useful for the organisms biological survival, information is taken in the human brain and digested in ways that also helps the individual to survive. The cognitive processes are the digestive mechanism that helps humans adapt to their environment. Intelligence is that ability to make adaptive choices. Perhaps one of Piagets more significant contributions is his positive view on childrens thinking. He believed that children are neither deficient nor inferior in intelligence, but rather, their mental structures and ways of knowing are qualitatively different from adults. Secondly, Piaget viewed the child as an active constructor of knowledge. Human are born with an innate drive for knowledge, and already posses the mental structures necessary for learning from experience and from the environment. To understand the further the notion of intelligence as a process and as adaptation, we need to consider four major Piagetian concepts: schemas, or mental structures that develop, assimilation, accommodation and equilibration. I. Schemata Mental schemes or schemas are the basic units of the intellect. They are cognitive factors by which we make sense of our experiences, organize our interactions with the environment, and interpret the external world. Our mental schemes change and become more complex with age and experience. Take the schemes of an infant as an example. In the first weeks of life, an infants schemes such as sucking and grasping, among others are mainly reflexive. It is through these reflex schemes that an infant interacts with the environment: her knowledge of the world is entirely captured by these reflexes. Overtime, however, the infant develops more complex schemas that are better attuned to the demands of the environment., such as those for eating solid food and for concepts of mother, father, and so on. II. Assimilation and Accommodation, and Equilibration
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Condensed by Mr. Roland L. Aparece, MA from General Psychology for Filipino College Students edited by Lolita Teh and Ma. Elizabeth Macapagal (Quezon City: Ateneo De Manila University Press, 2007.)pp. 63-70.

Assimilation and Accommodation are two major processes that allow to grow and change over time.

schemas

Assimilation is the process of taking new information and experiences according to ones existing schemes. In assimilation, the person changes the environment so as to fit the existing structures in the mind (Infants use their sucking schema not only in sucking nipples but also in sucking fingers, blankets and so on). If we keep on assimilating only, then growth is not possible. However, if we continue to spontaneously exercise and apply existing schemes to our experiences and environments, we are bound to encounter new and discrepant stimuli that may not fit with our current schemes. The latter brings about disequilibrium, or a cognitive imbalance which prompts us to engage in the complimentary process known as accommodation. Accommodation is the process of modifying or differentiating existing schemes to better fit the new stimulus or information. In other words, it enables us to deal with new knowledge from the environment by changing our own structures or behaviors. Accommodation occurs when new information or stimuli cannot be assimilated and old schemas are changed to adapt new situations (i.e., the infant changes her existing sucking schema to adjust to the new situation of eating with a spoon). In accommodation, our mental schemes become more complex and reflect the external world more accurately, thereby allowing us to adapt more effectively. Equilibrium, or cognitive balance, will have been attained, when schemes that emerge are in accordance with the demands and information from the external world. As a result of the complementary processes of assimilation and accommodation, the childs cognitive abilities undergo an orderly series of increasing complexity. When enough changes have occurred, the individual undergoes a large developmental shift in his or her point of view. Piaget called these developmental shifts stages in development. According to Piaget, all children go through at approximately the same age, regardless of the culture in which they live. No stage can be skipped, since the skills acquired at the earlier stages are essential to the mastery of the later stages. The Stages of Cognitive Development. I. Sensorimotor Stage (from birth - 2 years) During the Sensorimotor stage, which last from birth until the time of significant language acquisition (at about age 2) children explore the world and develop their schemas primarily through their senses and motor activitieshence the term sensorimotor. As yet, babies do not have the capacity to mentally represent information and experiences; all they know is based on direct manipulation and exploration of the environment. Interestingly, in observing infants, one could notice that they put everything into their mouth and sometimes bangs pots and pans together for what may seem like hours. As Piaget explains, they do this because they are little scientists, eagerly exploring the world.

As they gradually apply their sensory motor schemes in their environment, infants gradually develop an understanding that they are separate from the external world, a process called decentration. They also realized that they can purposively act on objects in the world, a process known as intentionality. A third ability that gradually develops in this stage is objective permanence, the awareness that objects and other stimuli continue to exist even outside of the infants perception (8-12 months: partial objective permanence, 12-18 months: full objective permanence. II. Preoperational Stage (2-7 years) At this stage children have acquired object permanence and can now understand that sound can be used as symbols for objects (knowledge of objects must precede the use of languageyou have to acknowledge an object before you label it). This ability for symbolic thinking, i.e., the ability to make something stand for something, expands the cognitive world of the child. The child is now able to engage in symbolic play (e.g., putting a box over ones head and calling it a hat) and to use language to represent objects and persons. In preoperational stage, we know what the child knows by talking to the child, i.e., through language. We also know how the child knows by looking at how the child plays. A lot of the childs knowledge is manifested in or evidenced by symbolic play. What are the implications of this on selecting proper toys for children in this age bracket? It is better to give children unstructured materials instead of toys which are exact replicas of objects around us (like water, sand, mud, clay, blocks and other unstructured materials for which the childs imagination and symbolic activities can be facilitated). Lastly, Piaget describes this stage as preoperational because the thinking ability of the child is still rigid and illogical because of the childs inability to perform mental operation. Operations are mental representations of actions that obey logical rules. Operational thinking is present only when actions can be transformed, manipulated and reorganized mentally. Because of the preoperational thinking of the child at this point, several limitations exist at this stage as well. Important Limitations of this stage: i) Egocentrism refers to the preoperational childs inability to consider anothers point of view. They assume that others see, hear, feel and think exactly what they do. They feel that people and objects in the world exist only for their use and benefit. This kind of thinking of the child is due to limitations on her cognitive structure. Unfortunately, we tend to judge the intellectual deficit as a moral deficit. We punish the child for a moral standard she cannot simply fulfill because she cannot understand yet. ii) Animism refers to the preoperational childs belief that all things are living or animated and capable of intentions, consciousness, and feelings.

iii) Inability to decenter or Centration. This refers to the childs tendency to focus attention on only one part of a whole or one aspect of a stimulus at a time. They cannot think simultaneous thoughts at the same time. Moreover, the attention of young children is often perception bound, or tends to focus on the most perceptually salient features of a stimulus, or what the object looks like. For this reason, children at this age are often fooled by an objects appearance. They ascribe the real nature of the object to it. To illustrate, clowns and costume mascots in birthday parties may inspire real joy or fear in children because these children think that the characters truly are Jollibee, McDonald, and the like. It is difficult to convince them otherwise! iv) Inability to conserve. This refers to the childs inability to follow transformation mentally. The child tends to make judgments based only on what she sees and not on what actually is. Some conservation principles which children have not yet mastered at this stage are: conservation of liquid, conservation of number, conservation of mass, conservation of length. III. Concrete Operational stage (7-11 years) Concrete operational children have the ability to understand principles of conservation, can consider several features of objects simultaneously, perceive others view points, and most importantly, think in a reversible and operational fashion. The child now has the ability to perform operations. Specifically, the older child is capable of seriation, or the ability to order objects according to some quantitative dimension (smallest to biggest; shortest to longest). She/he is able to solve transitive reasoning problems (If Anna is Taller than Jenny, and Jenny is taller than Mina, then who is the tallest?) A third qualification is that of classification, or recognizing the hierarchical relations between sets and subsets. A child can identify, for example, that roses, santan and gumamela all belong to the category of flowers, and that flowers, in turn, fall under the classification of plants. The skills of seriation, transitive reasoning, and reasoning all require decentered, reversible and flexible thinking- the ability to understand that an object can be described according to two or more dimensions simultaneously. However, children at this stage can think in this way with regard to what is observable and tangible or concrete reality but not on an abstract/conceptual level yet. III. Formal Operational This is the highest stage of cognitive development. The child, who is now in the stage of adolescence, reasons logically, starting from premises and drawing conclusions; entertains hypotheses, deduces consequences, and uses these deductions to test hypotheses; and solves problems by tackling all possibilities systematically. Mental acts at this stage are unlimited by time and space: the range is infinity and eternity. The ability for hypothetical-deductive reasoning develops. This refers to the ability of the person to consider all variables and possibilities simultaneously, to see relationships, and to be able to tackle them systematically no matter what the content is (an abstract or concrete reality). Piaget also calls this logico-mathematical intelligence. Use the pendulum problem to test formal operational thinking.

Evaluating Piagets theory Piaget was the forerunner of todays cognitive revolution in psychology, with its emphasis on internal cognitive processes. His theory has inspired more research on childrens cognitive development than any other theorist. Piagets theory also revolutionized teaching method for children. Understanding how children think has help many teachers know what topics are more appropriate for children at given ages. Criticism of Piagets method and theory: 1. Piagets theory focuses mainly on the average childs cognitive development. His theory does not take into account individual differences, or the ways in which other factors like culture and personality affect intellectual development. 2. Many of Piagets ideas emerged from his personal observations of his own three children, and not from scientific research.