Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence. Piaget believed that one's childhood plays a vital and active role in a person's development.[1] Piaget's idea is primarily known as a developmental stage theory. The theory deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans gradually come to acquire, construct, and use it.[2] To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes resulting from biological maturation and environmental experience. He believed that children construct an understanding of the world around them, experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment, then adjust their ideas accordingly.[3] Moreover, Piaget claimed that cognitive development is at the center of the human organism, and language is contingent on knowledge and understanding acquired through cognitive development.[4] Piaget's earlier work received the greatest attention. Many parents have been encouraged to provide a rich, supportive environment for their child's natural propensity to grow and learn. Child-centered classrooms and "open education" are direct applications of Piaget's views.[5] Despite its huge success, Piaget's theory has some limitations that Piaget recognized himself: for example, the theory supports sharp stages rather than continuous development (decalage).[6] Show
Nature of intelligence: operative and figurative Piaget noted that reality is a dynamic system of continuous change and, as such, is defined in reference to the two conditions that define dynamic systems. Specifically, he argued that reality involves transformations and states.[7] Transformations refer to all manners of changes that a thing or person can undergo. States refer
to the conditions or the appearances in which things or persons can be found between transformations. For example, there might be changes in shape or form (for instance, liquids are reshaped as they are transferred from one vessel to another, and similarly humans change in their characteristics as they grow older), in size (for example, a series of coins on a table might be placed close to each other or far apart), or in placement or location in space and time (e.g., various objects or persons
might be found at one place at one time and at a different place at another time). Thus, Piaget argued, if human intelligence is to be adaptive, it must have functions to represent both the transformational and the static aspects of reality.[8] He proposed that operative intelligence is responsible for the representation and manipulation of the dynamic or transformational aspects of reality, and that figurative intelligence is responsible for the
representation of the static aspects of reality.[9] Assimilation and accommodation Through his study of the field of education, Piaget focused on two processes, which he named assimilation and accommodation.
To Piaget, assimilation meant integrating external elements into structures of lives or environments, or those we could have through experience. Assimilation is how humans perceive and adapt to new information. It is the process of fitting new information into pre-existing cognitive schemas.[15] Assimilation in which new experiences are reinterpreted to fit into, or assimilate with, old
ideas.[16] It occurs when humans are faced with new or unfamiliar information and refer to previously learned information in order to make sense of it. In contrast, accommodation is the process of taking new information in one's environment and altering pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the new information. This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to deal with a new object or
situation.[17] Accommodation is imperative because it is how people will continue to interpret new concepts, schemas, frameworks, and more.[18] Piaget believed that the human brain has been programmed through evolution to bring equilibrium, which is what he believed ultimately influences structures by the internal and external processes through assimilation and
accommodation.[15] Sensory-motor stage Cognitive development is Jean Piaget's theory. Through a series of stages, Piaget proposed four stages of cognitive development: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational period.[21] The sensorimotor stage is the first of the four stages in cognitive development which "extends from birth to the acquisition of
language".[22] In this stage, infants progressively construct knowledge and understanding of the world by coordinating experiences (such as vision and hearing) with physical interactions with objects (such as grasping, sucking, and stepping).[23] Infants gain knowledge of the world from the physical actions they perform within it.[24] They progress from reflexive, instinctual action at
birth to the beginning of symbolic thought toward the end of the stage.[24] US Navy 100406-N-7478G-346 Operations Specialist 2nd Class Reginald Harlmon and Electronics Technician 3rd Class Maura Schulze play peek-a-boo with a child in the Children's Ward at Hospital Likas Piaget divided the sensorimotor stage into six sub-stages".[25]
Pre-operational stage Piaget's second stage, the pre-operational stage, starts when the child begins to learn to speak at age two and lasts up until the age of seven. During the Pre-operational Stage of cognitive development, Piaget noted that children do not yet understand concrete logic and cannot mentally manipulate information.[27] Children’s increase in playing and pretending takes
place in this stage. However, the child still has trouble seeing things from different points of view. The children's play is mainly categorized by symbolic play and manipulating symbols. Such play is demonstrated by the idea of checkers being snacks, pieces of paper being plates, and a box being a table. Their observations of symbols exemplifies the idea of play with the absence of the actual objects involved. By observing sequences of play, Piaget was able to demonstrate that, towards the end
of the second year, a qualitatively new kind of psychological functioning occurs, known as the Pre-operational Stage.[28][29] Symbolic function substage At about two to four years of age, children cannot yet manipulate and transform information in a logical way. However, they now can think in images and symbols. Other examples of mental abilities are language and pretend play. Symbolic play is when
children develop imaginary friends or role-play with friends. Children’s play becomes more social and they assign roles to each other. Some examples of symbolic play include playing house, or having a tea party. Interestingly, the type of symbolic play in which children engage is connected with their level of creativity and ability to connect with others.[30] Additionally, the quality of their symbolic play can have consequences on their later development. For
example, young children whose symbolic play is of a violent nature tend to exhibit less prosocial behavior and are more likely to display antisocial tendencies in later years.[31] Egocentrism occurs when a child is unable to distinguish between their own perspective and that of another person. Children tend to stick to their own viewpoint, rather than consider the view of others. Indeed, they are not even aware that such a concept as "different viewpoints" exists.[32] Egocentrism can be seen in an experiment performed by Piaget and Swiss developmental psychologist Bärbel Inhelder, known as the three-mountain problem. In this experiment, three views of a mountain are shown to the child, who is asked what a traveling doll would see at the various angles. The child will consistently describe what they can see from the position from which they are seated, regardless of from what angle they are asked to take the doll's
perspective. Egocentrism would also cause a child to believe, "I like Sesame Street, so Daddy must like Sesame Street, too". Intuitive thought substage At between about the ages of 4 and 7, children tend to become very curious and ask many questions, beginning the use of primitive reasoning. There is an emergence in the interest of reasoning and wanting to know why things are the way they are. Piaget called it the "intuitive substage" because children realize they have a vast amount of knowledge, but they are unaware of how they acquired it. Centration, conservation, irreversibility, class inclusion, and transitive inference are all characteristics of preoperative thought. Centration is the act of focusing all attention on one characteristic or dimension of a situation, whilst disregarding all others. Conservation is the awareness that altering a
substance's appearance does not change its basic properties. Children at this stage are unaware of conservation and exhibit centration. Both centration and conservation can be more easily understood once familiarized with Piaget's most famous experimental task. Concrete operational stage The concrete operational stage is the third stage of Piaget's theory of
cognitive development. This stage, which follows the preoperational stage, occurs between the ages of 7 and 11 (preadolescence) years,[38] and is characterized by the appropriate use of logic. During this stage, a child's thought processes become more mature and "adult like". They start solving problems in a more logical fashion. Abstract, hypothetical thinking is not yet developed in the child, and children can only solve problems that apply to
concrete events or objects. At this stage, the children undergo a transition where the child learns rules such as conservation.[39] Piaget determined that children are able to incorporate Inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning involves drawing inferences from observations in order to make a generalization. In contrast, children struggle with deductive reasoning, which involves using a generalized principle in order to try to predict the
outcome of an event. Children in this stage commonly experience difficulties with figuring out logic in their heads. For example, a child will understand that "A is more than B" and "B is more than C". However, when asked "is A more than C?", the child might not be able to logically figure the question out in his or her head. Testing for concrete operations Piagetian tests are well known and practiced to test for concrete operations. The most prevalent tests are those for conservation. There are some important aspects that the experimenter must take into account
when performing experiments with these children.
Formal operational stage The final stage is known as the formal operational stage (adolescence and into adulthood, roughly ages 11 to approximately 15-20): Intelligence is demonstrated through the logical use of symbols related to
abstract concepts. This form of thought includes "assumptions that have no necessary relation to reality."[44] At this point, the person is capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning. During this time, people develop the ability to think about abstract concepts.
While children in primary school years mostly used inductive reasoning, drawing general conclusions from personal experiences and specific facts, adolescents become capable of deductive reasoning, in which they draw specific conclusions from abstract
concepts using logic. This capability results from their capacity to think hypothetically.[46] Experiments Piaget and his colleagues conducted several experiments to assess formal operational
thought.[48] Example of Piaget's conservation tasksThe stages and causation Piaget sees children’s conception of causation as a march from "primitive" conceptions of cause to those of a more scientific, rigorous, and mechanical nature. These primitive concepts are characterized as supernatural, with a decidedly non-natural or non-mechanical tone. Piaget has as his most basic assumption that babies are phenomenists. That is, their knowledge "consists of assimilating things to
schemas" from their own action such that they appear, from the child’s point of view, "to have qualities which, in fact, stem from the organism". Consequently, these "subjective conceptions," so prevalent during Piaget’s first stage of development, are dashed upon discovering deeper empirical truths. Practical applications Parents can use Piaget's theory when deciding how to determine what to buy in order to support their child's growth.[51] Teachers can also use Piaget's theory, for instance, when discussing whether the syllabus subjects are suitable for the level of students or
not.[52] For example, recent studies have shown that children in the same grade and of the same age perform differentially on tasks measuring basic addition and subtraction fluency. While children in the preoperational and concrete operational levels of cognitive development perform combined arithmetic operations (such as addition and subtraction) with similar
accuracy,[53] children in the concrete operational level of cognitive development have been able to perform both addition problems and subtraction problems with overall greater fluency.[54] Postulated physical mechanisms underlying schemas and stages In 1967, Piaget considered the possibility of RNA molecules as likely embodiments of his still-abstract schemas (which he promoted as units of action)—though he did not come to any firm conclusion.[57] At that time, due to work such as that of Swedish biochemist Holger Hydén, RNA concentrations had, indeed, been shown to correlate with learning, so the idea was quite plausible. Relation to psychometric theories of intelligencePiaget designed a number of tasks to verify hypotheses arising from his theory. The tasks were not intended to measure individual differences, and they have no equivalent in psychometric intelligence tests. Notwithstanding the different research traditions in which psychometric tests and Piagetian tasks were developed, the correlations between the two types of measures have been found to be consistently positive and generally moderate in magnitude. A common general factor underlies them. It has been shown that it is possible to construct a battery consisting of Piagetian tasks that is as good a measure of general intelligence as standard IQ tests.[61][62][63] Challenges to Piagetian Stage Theory Piagetian accounts of development have been challenged on several grounds. First, as Piaget himself noted, development does not always progress in the smooth manner his theory seems to predict. "Decalage," or progressive forms of cognitive developmental progression in a specific domain, suggest that the stage model is, at best, a useful approximation.[64] Furthermore, studies have found that children may be able to learn concepts and
capability of complex reasoning that supposedly represented in more advanced stages with relative ease (Lourenço & Machado, 1996, p. 145).[65][66] More broadly, Piaget's theory is "domain general," predicting that cognitive maturation occurs concurrently across different domains of knowledge (such as mathematics, logic, and understanding of physics or
language).[64] Piaget did not take into account variability in a child's performance notably how a child can differ in sophistication across several domains. Post-Piagetian and Neo-Piagetian StagesMain article: Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development In recent years, several theorists attempted to address concerns with Piaget's theory by developing new theories and models that can accommodate evidence which violates Piagetian predictions and postulates.
Kohlberg's Model of Moral Development
Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs
References
External links
Which of the following is an example of perceptual narrowing?12-month-old infants can only tell is a scale is out-of-tune if it is a familiar scale. 9-month-old infants can only recognize faces from their own race. 10- to 12-month-old infants cannot perceive all of the phonemes that exist in human languages. All of these are examples of perceptual narrowing.
Which term refers to an innate fixed pattern of action that occurs in response to a particular stimulus?reflexes. innate, fixed patterns of action that occur in response to particular stimulation. some reflexes, such as rooting and sucking have clear adaptive value, Others such as tonic neck reflex have no known adaptive significance.
Which perceptual ability is made possible by the cue of optical expansion?Depth from motion
Another name for this phenomenon is depth from optical expansion. The dynamic stimulus change enables the observer not only to see the object as moving, but to perceive the distance of the moving object.
Which sequence is the typical progression for infants self locomotion?Infants' motor development is marked by a series of postural milestones: sitting at approximately 6 months of age, hands-and-knees crawling at 8.5 months, and walking at 12 months (Bayley, 1969; Frankenburg, et al., 1992).
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