Human Development 4

Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Development

• Jean Piaget considers the active role of an individual as an important
factor in human development.

• He believes that an individual grows through a dynamic process in

which the body’s internal system interacts with the environment.

• His theory of cognitive development tries to explain how a child

understands the world: how he/she thinks, reasons out, remembers
and solves problems.
Sensorimotor Stage
• From Birth to 2 years

• The child learns through sensory experiences.

• Knowledge is based on the senses and the child responds to people

and things through reflex movements like grasping.

• The child should begin to form mental images toward the latter part
of this stage.
Pre-Operational Stage
• From 2 to 7 years

• The child’s way of thinking is toward himself (egocentric). It is all

about him. The child thinks that other people are just like him.

• The child continues to develop using mental images and begins to use
symbols to represent what he knows (symbolic thought) significantly
through language.
• The child may find difficulty that actions or thinking can be reversed
(e.g. reversing mental operations 1 + 2 can be 2 +1)

• The child is still unable to focus on several aspects of a problem or

understand cause and effect relationships.

• The child tends to attribute human characteristics to inanimate

objects.
Concrete-Operational Stage
• From 8 to 11 years old

• The child begins to be more logical and able to perform simple

operations (e.g. math computations) begin to understand
classifications (e.g. living things and non living things) and can
understand reversibility.

• The child is less egocentric and more other-centered.

Formal Operational Stage
• Starts to emerge between 11 to 15 years

• At this point, he is no longer just dependent on concrete perceptual

experiences in the present. In dealing with situations, the past or the
future can be reference to know what to do.

• He is able to analyze problems and consider different ways of solving

it in a systematic way.

• He can deal with abstract or hypothetical situations and generate

ideas about it through logical thinking.