Piaget's Cognitive Development

A.S.Arul Lawrence
Principal,
St.Joseph College of Education,
Kadamboduvalvu, Nanguneri-627108

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

PIAGET’S THEORY

Prepared by

A.S.Arul Lawrence
Principal,
St.Joseph College of Education,
Kadamboduvalvu, Nanguneri-627108
arullawrence@gmail.com

Prepared by A.S.Arul Lawrence 2

Introduction
 Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the 20th century‘s most influential
researchers in the area of developmental psychology.
 He originally trained in the areas of biology and philosophy and
considered himself a ―genetic epistemologist.‖ (genetic=
development, epistemology = study of knowledge)
 Piaget wanted to know how children learned through their development
in the study of knowledge.
 He administered Binet‘s IQ test in Paris and observed that children‘s
answers were qualitatively different.
 Piaget‘s theory is based on the idea that the developing child builds
cognitive structures (schemes used to understand and respond to
physical environment).
 He believed the child‘s cognitive structure increased with development.
 Piaget‘s theories of infant development were based on his observations
of his own three children.


Jean Piaget (1896-1980): History
 Born: August 9, 1896
Neuchâtel, Switzerland
 Died: Sept. 16, 1980 ( Age 84)
Geneva, Switzerland.
 Parents: Eldest son of Arthur Piaget and
Rebecca Jackson.
 Education: Received Ph.D., from
University of Neuchatel in 1918.
 Wife: Married to Valentine Chatenay in
1923
 Children: 3 children namely
Jacqueline, Lucienne and Laurent whose
intellectual development from infancy to
language was studied by Piaget.


What is Cognition?
o The term cognition is derived from the
Latin word “cognoscere” which means
“to know” or “to recognise” or “to
conceptualise”.
o It refers to the mental processes an
organism learns, remembers,
understands, perceives, solves
problems and thinks about a body of
information.
o Experts argue that cognition
progresses in stages with increasing
levels of complexity and hence the
phrase ―cognitive development‖ which
is the stages a child goes through
conceptualising the world at different
age levels.


What is Cognitive Development?
 Cognitive Development describes how these mental
processes develop from birth until adulthood. In other words,
what kind of cognitive skills is a 4 year old child capable of
compared to a 6 year old.
 The acquisition of the ability to think, reason, and problem
solve.
 It is the process by which people's thinking changes across
the life span.
 Piaget studied cognitive development by observing children
in particular, to examine how their thought processes
change with age.
 He pioneered a way of thinking about how children grow
psychologically.
 It is the growing apprehension and adaptation to the
physical and social environment.


How Cognitive Development Occurs?

 Cognitive Development is gradual，orderly, changes by which
mental process become more complex and sophisticated.
 The essential development of cognition is the establishment of
new schemes.
 Assimilation and accommodation are both processing of the
ways of cognitive development.
 The equilibration is the symbol of a new stage of the cognitive
development.


Key Concepts:
1.Schema : an internal representation of the world. A schema
describes both the mental and physical actions involved in
understanding and knowing. Schemas are mental or cognitive
structures which enables a person to adapt and to organise the
environment. Schemas are categories of knowledge that help
us to interpret and understand the world.
Piaget called the schema the basic building block of
intelligent behavior – a way of organizing knowledge (includes
both a category of knowledge and the process of obtaining that
knowledge). Indeed, it is useful to think of schemas as ―units‖ of
knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world, including
objects, actions and abstract (i.e. theoretical) concepts. As
experiences happen, this new information is used to modify, add
to, or change previously existing schemas.


For example, at birth the schema of a baby
is reflexive in nature such as sucking and
grasping. The sucking reflex is a schema
and the infant will suck on whatever is put
in its mouth such as a nipple or a finger.
The infant is unable to differentiate
because it has only a single sucking
schema. Slowly, the infant learns to
differentiate where milk-producing objects
are accepted while non-milk objects are
rejected. At this point, the infant has two
sucking schemas, one for milk-producing
objects and one for non-milk producing
objects.


2. Assimilation : is using an existing schema
to deal with a new object or situation. The
process of taking in new information into
our previously existing schema‘s is known
as assimilation.
A child sees a Zebra for the first time
and immediately calls it a Donkey. Thus, the
child has assimilated into his schema that
this animal is a Donkey.
Why do you think this happened? The
child seeing the object (Zebra), sifted
through his collection of schemas, until he
found one that seemed appropriate. To the
child, the object (Zebra) has all the
characteristics of a Donkey– it fits in his
Donkey schema – so the child concludes
that the object is a Donkey. The child has
integrated the object (Zebra) into his
Donkey schema.


Key Concepts…
3. Accommodation : Another part of
adaptation involves changing or altering
our existing schemas in light of new
information, a process known as
accommodation. Accommodation
involves altering existing schemas, or
ideas, as a result of new information or
new experiences. New schemas may also
be developed during this process.
The boy who had assimilated the
Zebra as a Donkey will eventually
accommodate more information and thus
realize the different characteristics
between a Zebra and a Donkey. The child
will learn that the Donkey is not a Donkey
but a Zebra, an accommodated ability.


4. Equilibration : Piaget believed that cognitive
development did not progress at a steady rate, but rather
in leaps and bounds. Equilibrium is occurs when a
child's schemas can deal with most new information
through assimilation. However, an unpleasant state of
disequilibrium occurs when new information cannot be
fitted into existing schemas (assimilation). Equilibration is
a balance between assimilation and accommodation.
Disequilibrium is an imbalance between assimilation and
accommodation
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 are able to move from one stage of thought into
the next.

Assimilation

Disequilibriu
Equilibration Equilibrium
m

Accommoda
tion


5. Adaptation:
Assimilation and accommodation
are the two sides of
adaptation, Piaget‘s term for what
most of us would call learning
through which awareness of the
outside world is internalized.
Although one may predominate at
any one moment, they are two
sides and inseparable and exist in
a dialectical relationship.


Cognitive Structure

Organisation
Cognitive
Assimilation
Structure
Adaptation

Accommodation


Stages:
1.Sensorimotor Stage

2.Preoperational Stage

3.Concrete Operational Stage

4.Formal Operational Stage


1. The Sensorimotor Stage
(birth to 2 yrs) (Infancy)

 The first stage of Piaget‘s theory starts from birth to
approximately age 2 and is centered on the infant
trying to make sense of the world. During this stage,
the child's knowledge is limited to sensory
perceptions and simple motor activities. e.g. looking,
sucking, grasping.
 Sub-stages of the Sensorimotor Stage: It can be
divided into 6 separate sub-stages.


1. Reflexes (0-1 month): In the first month of life, infants‘ behaviors reflect
innate reflexes—automatic responses to particular stimuli. The child
understands the environment purely through inborn reflexes such as
suckling, grasping, knee-jerking. These are the reactive functions that infants
essentially exit the womb with. These behaviors are typically, quickly
reinforced to provide food when hungry, grab things in the environment, and
pull away from potentially threatening sensations.
For instance, if you put a nipple or pacifier in or near a newborn‘s
mouth, she will automatically suck on it. If you put something against the palm
of a newborn‘s hand, his fingers will automatically close around it. Many of
these inborn reflexes are designed to keep the infant alive. The infant soon
begins to modify some reflexes to better accommodate to the environment—
for instance, by learning to distinguish between a nipple and the surrounding
areas of a breast or bottle. And other reflexes, such as the tendency to grab
onto something placed in the hand, fade away over time.


2. Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months): It involves
coordinating sensation and new schemas. In the first few
months of life, infants‘ behaviors are focused almost
exclusively on their own bodies (in Piaget‘s terminology, the
behaviors are primary) and are repeated over and over
again (i.e., they are circular). Infants also begin to refine
their reflexes and combine them into more complex
actions.
For example: A child may such his or her thumb by
accident and then later intentionally repeat the action.
These actions are repeated because the infant finds them
pleasurable.


3. Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8
months): In this stage the child
become more aware of and more
responsive to the outside world (their
behaviors become secondary), and
they begin to notice that their
behaviors can have interesting effects
on the objects around them. The child
becomes more focused on the world
and begins to intentionally repeat an
action in order to trigger a response in
the environment.
For example: A child will
purposefully pick up a toy in order to
put it in his or her mouth.


4. Coordination of Reactions (8-12 months): The child
starts to show clearly intentional actions. The child may
also combine schemas in order to achieve a desired
effect. After repeatedly observing that certain actions lead
to certain consequences, infants gradually acquire
knowledge of cause-effect relationships.
For example: 1. A child might realize that a rattle will
make a sound when shaken. 2. When an infant sees the
twine of a pull-toy near her, rather than crawling over to
the toy she might instead reach out and grab the twine
and then purposely pull the twine in order to acquire the
toy.
Another acquisition at this sub-stage is object
permanence, means knowing that an object still
exists, even if it is hidden. According to Piaget, Object
Permanence is a child's awareness or understanding that
objects continue to exist even though they cannot be seen
or heard.
For example, when a caregiver hides an attractive toy
beneath a pillow, the infant knows that the toy still
exists, also knows where it exists, and will attempt to
retrieve it. Before this stage, the child behaves as if the
toy had simply disappeared.

5. Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18
months): Piaget believed this marks the
developmental starting point for curiosity
and interest in novelty. Beginning sometime
around their first birthday, infants show
increasing flexibility and creativity in their
behaviors, and their experimentation with
objects often leads to new outcomes (the
term tertiary reflects this new versatility in
previously acquired responses).
For example: A child may try out
different sounds or actions as a way of
getting attention from a caregiver.


6. Early Representational Thought (18-24 months):
Piaget proposed that in the latter half of the second
year, young children develop symbolic thought, the
ability to represent and think about objects and
events in terms of internal, mental entities, or
symbols. They may “experiment” with objects in their
minds, first predicting what will happen if they do
something to an object, then transforming their plans
into action. To some degree, mental prediction and
planning replace overt trial-and-error as growing
toddlers experiment and attempt to solve problems.
The capacity for mental representation is seen in
the emergence of deferred imitation, the ability to
recall and copy another person’s behaviors and
infants show some ability to imitate others’
actions. Their newly acquired ability to recall and
imitate other people‘s past actions enables them to
engage in make-believe and pretend play—for
instance, by ―talking‖ on a toy telephone or ―driving‖
with the toy steering wheel attached to their car seats.


2. Preoperational Stage
(2 to 7 yrs) (Toddler and Early Childhood)

Pre-operational stage (two to seven years):
This stage begins when the child starts to use symbols and
language. This is a period of developing language and concepts.
So, the child is capable of more complex mental representations
(i.e. words and images). He is still unable to use ‗operations‘, i.e.
logical mental rules, such as the rules of arithmetic. It is divided into
two sub-stages:
1. Preconceptual stage (2 to 4 years): Here, cognitive
development becomes increasingly dominated by symbolic
activity. The child can use symbols to stand for actions; a toy
doll stands for a real baby or the child role-plays mummy or
daddy. Language also develops during this stage.
2. Intuitive stage (5 to 7 years): This stage is characterized by the
way in which children base their knowledge on what they feel
or sense to be true, yet they cannot explain the underlying
principles behind what they feel or sense.


The following are the key features of this stage:
1. Egocentrism: The child‘s thoughts and communications are typically
egocentric (i.e. about themselves or his/her point of view) E.g.:” If I
can’t see you, you can’t see me!”. It is the inability to see the world
through anyone else‘s eyes except on his own. It is well explained by
Piaget as Three Mountain Task.
2. Animism: Treating inanimate objects as living ones. E.g.: Children
bathing, dressing and feeding their dolls as if they are alive.
3. Centration: It refers to the tendency to focus on only one aspect of a
situation, problem or object, and so cannot see the big picture.
Centration is noticed in conservation: the awareness that altering a
substance's appearance does not change its basic properties.
Children at this stage are unaware of conservation. They are unable
to grasp the concept that a certain liquid be the same volume
regardless of the container shape. For example, equal amounts of
liquid are poured into two identical containers. The liquid in one
container is then poured into a different shaped cup, such as a tall
and thin cup, or a short and wide cup. Then the child is asked, Which
one has more water, the tall glass or the short glass.


3. Concrete Operational Stage
(7 to 12 yrs of age) (Childhood and early Adolescence)

The Concrete Operational stage is characterized by the appropriate use of logic.
Important processes during this stage are:
1. Seriation: the ability to sort objects in an order according to size, shape or any other
characteristic. Eg.: if given different-shaded objects, they may make a colour gradient.
2. Transitivity: the ability to recognize logical relationships among elements in a serial
order. Eg.: if A is taller than B and B is taller than C, then A must be taller than C.
3. Classification: the ability to name and identify sets of objects according to
appearance, size or other characteristic, including the idea that one set of objects can
include another
4. Decentering: where the child takes into account multiple aspects of a problem to
solve it. For example, the child will no longer perceive an exceptionally wide but short
cup to contain less than a normally-wide, taller cup.
5. Reversibility: the child understands that numbers or objects can be changed, then
returned to their original state. For this reason, a child will be able to rapidly determine
that if 4+4 = t, t−4 will equal 4, the original quantity.
6. Conservation: understanding that quantity, length or number of items is unrelated to
the arrangement or appearance of the object or items.
7. Elimination of Egocentrism: the ability to view things from another's perspective.
However, in this stage child can solve problems that apply to actual (concrete)
objects or events only, and not abstract concepts or hypothetical tasks.

Stage 3…


4. Formal Operational Stage
(from 12 yrs and up) (Adolescence and Adulthood)

This is the most complete stage of development. In this stage,
the individual‘s
1. thought becomes increasingly flexible and abstract, i.e., can carry
out systematic experiments.
2. ability to systematically solve a problem in a logical and methodical
way.
3. Understand that nothing is absolute; everything is relative.
4. Skills such as logical thought, deductive reasoning, and systematic
planning develop inductive as well as deductive logic.
5. Understand that the rules of any games or social system are
developed by man by mutual agreement and hence could be
changed or modified.
6. The child‘s way of thinking is at its most advanced, although the
knowledge it has to work with will change.


General Characteristics of this Stages:
These four stages have been found to have the following
characteristics:
1. Each stage is a structured whole and in a state of
equilibrium.
2. Each stage derives from the previous stage and incorporate
and transform to prepare for the next and no going back.
3. The stages follow an invariant sequence. There is no
skipping stages.
4. The stages are universal. Culture does not impact the
stages. Children everywhere go through the same stages
no matter what their cultural background is.
5. Each stage is a coming into being. There is a gradual
progression from stage to stage.


Applications of Theory in the
Classroom
 Jean Piaget’s theories are imbedded into the
school system in the sense that the curriculum is
based on his stage theory.
 The curriculum is designed to teach students at
the first stage and progressively teach new
learning to change the schemas in order to move
students through each stage.
 The teacher starts at the basics introducing a
new subject and once the knowledge of that
subject is mastered, they would create a schema.

 To transition to the next stage, or a new learning method,
the teacher would demonstrate how the student will
change, modify or adapt their schema to the new method
in order for new learning to take place.
 When children enter the school they are generally at the
preoperational stage. Teachers must recognize that they
cannot learn concrete-operational strategies until the
students have mastered the preoperational schemas
 In other words, students must start at the basic first stage
and master it before they can progress well to higher
stages.


Educational Implications:
1. Emphasis on discovery approach in learning.
2. Curriculum should provide specific educational experience
based on children‘s developmental level.
3. Arrange classroom activities so that they assist and
encourage self-learning.
4. Do not treat children as miniature adults; they think and learn
differently from adults.
5. Practical learning situations.
6. Simple to Complex and Project method of teaching.
7. Co-curricular activities have equal importance as that of
curricular experiences in the cognitive development of
children.
8. Major goals of education are equal to the creative and critical
thinking.


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