Your best quote that reflects
your approach… “It’s one small
step for man, one giant leap for
mankind.”
- NEIL ARMSTRONG
Piaget’s
Theory on
Cognitive
Development
DISCUSSANT: FREDA P. SABIJON
children's intelligence
undergoes changes as
they grow.
Stages of Development
The Sensorimotor Sta
ge
Ages: Birth to 2 Years
◦
◦ The infant focuses
on physical sensations and
learning
◦ to coordinate its body.
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
The infant learns about the world through their senses and through their actions (moving
around and exploring their environment).
During the sensorimotor stage, a range of cognitive abilities develop. These include:
object permanence;
self-recognition (the child realizes that other people are separate from them); deferred
imitation; and representational play.
They relate to the emergence of the general symbolic function, which is the capacity to
represent the world mentally
At about 8 months, the infant will understand the permanence of objects and that they
will still exist even if they can’t see them and the infant will search for them when they
disappear.
During the beginning of this stage, the infant lives in the present. It does not yet have a
mental picture of the world stored in its memory therefore it does not have a sense of
object permanence.
If it cannot see something, then it does not exist. This is why you can hide a toy from an
Stages of Development
T H E P R E O P E R AT I O N A L S TA G E
AGES: 2 – 7 YEARS
At the beginning of this stage, the
child does not use operations, so
the thinking is influenced by the
way things appear rather than
logical reasoning.
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
Toddlers and young children acquire the ability to internally represent the world
through language and mental imagery.
During this stage, young children can think about things symbolically. This is the
ability to make one thing, such as a word or an object, stand for something other
than itself.
A child’s thinking is dominated by how the world looks, not how the world is. It
is not yet capable of logical (problem-solving) type of thought.
Moreover, the child has difficulties with class inclusion; he can classify objects
but cannot include objects in sub-sets, which involves classifying objects as
belonging to two or more categories simultaneously.
Infants at this stage also demonstrate animism. This is the tendency for the child
to think that non-living objects (such as toys) have life and feelings like a
person’s.
Stages of Development
THE CO NCRETE O P ERATIO
NA L STA G E
AGES: 7 – 11 YEARS
The child can use operations
(a set of logical rules) so they
can conserve quantities,
realize that people see the
world in a different way
(decentering), and
demonstrate improvement in
inclusion tasks.
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
During this stage, children begin to think logically about concrete events.
Children begin to understand the concept of conservation; understanding that, although
things may change in appearance, certain properties remain the same.
During this stage, children can mentally reverse things (e.g., picture a ball of plasticine
returning to its original shape).
During this stage, children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other
people might think and feel.
Piaget considered the concrete stage a major turning point in the child’s cognitive
development because it marks the beginning of logical or operational thought. This means
the child can work things out internally in their head (rather than physically try things out in
the real world).
But operational thought is only effective here if the child is asked to reason about materials
that are physically present. Children at this stage will tend to make mistakes or be
overwhelmed when asked to reason about abstract or hypothetical problems.
Stages of Development
The Formal Opera
tional Stage
Ages: 12 and Over
As adolescents enter this stage,
they gain the ability to think in
an abstract manner, the ability
to combine and classify items in
a more sophisticated way, and
the capacity for higher-order
reasoning.
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
Concrete operations are carried out on things whereas formal operations
are carried out on ideas. Formal operational thought is entirely freed from
physical and perceptual constraints.
During this stage, adolescents can deal with abstract ideas (e.g. no longer
needing to think about slicing up cakes or sharing sweets to understand
division and fractions).
They can follow the form of an argument without having to think in terms
of specific examples.
Adolescents can deal with hypothetical problems with many possible
solutions. E.g. if asked ‘What would happen if money were abolished in
one hour’s time? they could speculate about many possible consequences.
Equilibration is a regulatory process that
maintains a balance between assimilation
and accommodation to facilitate cognitive
growth
Disequilibrium is reorganization to higher
levels of thinking wen it is not accomplished
easily. The child must “rethink” his or her
view of the world.
schema is the basic building
block of intelligent behavior – a
way of organizing knowledge.
Accommodation: the cognitive
process of revising existing cognitive
schemas, perceptions, and understanding so
that new information can be incorporated.
Piaget branched out on his own with a new set of
assumptions about children’s intelligence:
Children’s intelligence differs from an adult’s in quality
rather than in quantity. This means that children reason
(think) differently from adults and see the world in
different ways.
Children actively build up their knowledge about the world
. They are not passive creatures waiting for someone to fill
their heads with knowledge.
The best way to understand children’s reasoning is to see
things from their point of view.
