Piaget's theory of cognitive development

By Vandana ThakurAsst professor

RIE Bhopal

An overview of Piaget’s life

• born in Switzerland in 1896• published his first scientific paper at the tender

age of 10 – a 100-word description of an albino sparrow in a naturalist magazine

• Between the ages of 15 and 19 he published numerous papers on molluscs

• offered a job as a curator at a museum, although he had to decline the offer since he still had two years of high school to complete

• doctoral degree at the University of Neuchatel• Ph.D. degree at age 22 in natural history• Simon offered Piaget a position supervising the

standardization of the intelligence tests developed by Binet and Simon, interest in children

• Based on his observations, he concluded that children were not less intelligent than adults, they simply think differently

• Albert Einstein called Piaget's discovery "so simple only a genius could have thought of it.“

• watching his 13-month-old nephew, Gerard, at play• Piaget observed the toddler playing with a ball. When

the ball rolled under a table where the boy could still see it, Gerard simply retrieved the ball and continued playing. When the ball rolled under a sofa out of his sight, however, the child began looking for it where he had last seen it. This reaction struck Piaget as irrational.

• Piaget came to believe that children lack what he referred to as the object concept - the knowledge that objects are separate and distinct from both the individual and the individual's perception of that object

• Jean Piaget set out to study his daughter Jacqueline as she developed through infancy, toddlerhood, and childhood

• during the early months of his daughter's life, she seemed to believe that objects ceased to exist once they were out of her sight

• At nearly a year, she made mistakes similar to the one Gerard made.

• By 21 months, Jacqueline had become skilled at finding hidden objects and understood that objects had an existence separate from her perception of them.

• , there are both qualitative and quantitative differences between the thinking of young children versus older children.

Overview

• Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence.

• To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes resulting from biological maturation and environmental experience.

• 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

Nature of reality and intelligence

• Reality is a dynamic system of continuous change; two conditions that define dynamic systems.– 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).

Two types of intelligence

• Operative intelligence is the active aspect of intelligence. It involves all actions, overt or covert, undertaken in order to follow, recover, or anticipate the transformations of the objects or persons of interest.

• Figurative intelligence is the more or less static aspect of intelligence, involving all means of representation used to retain in mind the states (i.e., successive forms, shapes, or locations) that intervene between transformations.

Process of growth- fundamental concepts

• Schemas - A schema describes both the mental and physical actions involved in understanding and knowing. Schemas are categories of knowledge that help us to interpret and understand the world.

• In Piaget's view, a schema includes both a category of knowledge and the process of obtaining that knowledge. As experiences happen, this new information is used to modify, add to, or change previously existing schemas.

• For example, a child may have a schema about a type of animal, such as a dog. If the child's sole experience has been with small dogs, a child might believe that all dogs are small, furry, and have four legs. Suppose then that the child encounters an enormous dog. The child will take in this new information, modifying the previously existing schema to include these new observations.

• Assimilation– how humans perceive and adapt to new

information. It is the process of fitting new information into pre-existing cognitive schemas.

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

• They are two sides of a coin.• to recognize (assimilate) an apple as an apple,

one must first focus (accommodate) on the contour of this object. To do this, one needs to roughly recognize the size of the object.

• Equilibration - Piaget believed that all children try to strike a balance between assimilation and accommodation, which is achieved through a mechanism Piaget called equilibration. As children progress through the stages of cognitive development, it is important to maintain a balance between applying previous knowledge (assimilation) and changing behavior to account for new knowledge (accommodation). Equilibration helps explain how children can move from one stage of thought into the next.

The stages

• According to psychologist Jean Piaget, children progress through a series of four critical stages of cognitive development. Each stage is marked by shifts in how kids understand the world. Piaget believed that children are like "little scientists" and that they actively try to explore and make sense of the world around them.

• Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality."

The Sensorimotor Stage

• During this stage, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects.

• a child's intelligence consists of their basic motor and sensory explorations of the world

• By devlepoing object permanency, children are then able to begin to attach names and words to objects

The Preoperational Stage

• At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the point of

• struggle with understanding the ideal of constancy view of other people, eg pieces of clay rolled into different shapes.

The Concrete Operational Stage

• begin to think more logically, but their thinking can also be very rigid

• tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts.

• children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other people might think and feel

• also begin to understand that their thoughts are unique to them and that not everyone else necessarily shares their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

The Formal Operational Stage

• an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas

• people become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems and think more scientifically about the world around them.

Support for Piaget's Theory

• Piaget's focus on qualitative development had an important impact on education. While Piaget did not specifically apply his theory in this way, many educational programs are now built upon the belief that children should be taught at the level for which they are developmentally prepared.

• n addition to this, a number of instructional strategies have been derived from Piaget's work. These strategies include providing a supportive environment, utilizing social interactions and peer teaching, and helping children see fallacies and inconsistencies in their thinking.

Criticisms of Piaget

• 1. Problems With Research Methods• Much of the criticism of Piaget's work is in regards

to his research methods. A major source of inspiration for the theory was Piaget's observations of his own three children. In addition to this, the other children in Piaget's small research sample were all from well-educated professionals of high socioeconomic status. Because of this unrepresentative sample, it is difficult to generalize his findings to a larger population.

• 2. Problems With Formal OperationsResearch has disputed Piaget's argument that all children will automatically move to the next stage of development as they mature. Some data suggests that environmental factors may play a role in the development of formal operations.

• . Underestimates Children's Abilities• Most researchers agree that children possess many

of the abilities at an earlier age than Piaget suspected. Recent theory of mind research has found that 4- and 5-year-old children have a rather sophisticated understanding of their own mental processes as well as those of other people. For example, children of this age have some ability to take the perspective of another person, meaning they are far less egocentric than Piaget believed.