Piaget's theory of cognitive development consists of 4 stages: the sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2), the preoperational stage (ages 2 to 7), the concrete operational stage (ages 7 to 11), and the formal operational stage (ages 11 to adulthood). During each stage, children build cognitive structures through assimilation and accommodation as they interact with the world. Piaget believed cognitive development is driven by equilibration as children progress from one stage to the next with more advanced logical thinking abilities.

1. Cognitive Development
• Cognitive: is defined as ‘The Mental operations required to understand and learn
new information to analyze, identify, and categories, stimuli, to solve problem to
remember previously learned information and to formulate organize and express
ideas.
• Knowledge:
• How we select information, process, it so that we comprehend it, and store it so
that it may be used at a later time.
• Knowledge representation:
• Once knowledge is acquired it must be stored or represented in memory in some
way if it is to be useful.
• Knowledge use:
• How we remember information and apply what we know to solve problems and
produce answer to questions.

2. Background of Piaget’s Theory:
• Although there is no general theory of cognitive development, the
most historically influential theory was developed by jean piaget, A
Swiss psychologist (1896-1980). His theory provided many central
concepts in the field of developmental psychology and concerned the
growth of intelligence which for piaget meant ability to more
accurately represent the world, and perform logical operations on
representations of concepts grounded in the world.
• Piaget’s theory is based on the idea that the developing child builds
cognitive structures, in other words mental “maps”, schemes or
networked concepts for understanding and responding to physical
experiences within his or her environment.
• Piaget stage theory describes the cognitive development of children.
Cognitive development involves changes in cognitive process.

3. Definition of Cognitive Development
• Cognitive development refers to the changes that occur in an
individual cognitive structures abilities and processes.
• Marcy Driscoll defines cognitive development as the transformation
of the child un differentiated, un specialized cognitive abilities in to
adult conceptual competence and problem solving skill.
• Piaget believed children schemes or logical mental structures change
with age and are initially action based and later move to a mental
level.

4. How Does Cognitive change take place
• According to piaget development is driven by the process of equilibration.
Equilibration encompasses assimilation (people transform incoming
information so that it fits with in their existing scheme or though patterns)
and accommodations ( people adapt their schemes to include incoming
information). Piaget suggested that equilibration takes place in three
phases.
• First children are satisfied with their mode of thought mode and therefore
are in a stage of equilibration
• Second they become aware of the shortcoming in their existing thinking
and are dissatisfied are in a state of dis equilibration and experience
cognitive conflict.
• Last they adopt a ,more sophisticated mode of thought that eliminates the
shortcomings of the old one.

5. Key concepts and stages
• 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.
• As experience happen this new information is used to modify add to
or change previously existing schemas. For example a child may have
a schemas about a type of animal such as a dog. if the child 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 a very large dog.

6. Assimilation:
• The process of taking in new information in to our previously existing
schemas is called assimilation. The process is somewhat subjective
because we tend to modify experience or information some what to
fit in with our pre existing or information some what to fit in with our
pre existing beliefs.
• In the example above seeing a DOG and labelling it dog is an example
of assimilating the animal in to the child dog schemas.

7. • Accommodation:
• Another part of adaptation involves changing or altering our existing
schemes in light of new manager a process known as
accommodations.
• Accommodations involves altering existing schemas or ideas as result
of new information or new experiences. New schemas may also be
developed during this process.

8. • 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 balance between applying previous
knowledge and changing behavior to account for new knowledge.
• Equilibration helps explain ow children are able to move from one
stage of though in to next.

9. • Discussion:
• Piaget divided schemes that children use to understand the world
through four main stages roughly correlated with and becoming
increasingly sophisticated.
• Sensorimotor stage (years 0-2)
• Preoperational stage (years 2-7)
• Concrete operational stage (years 7-11)
• Formal operational stage (years 11 adulthood)

10. 1 Sensorimotor stage
• Sensorimotor stage (birth- 2 years old):
• The child through physical interaction with his or her environment
builds a set of concepts about reality and how it works.
• This is the stage where a child does not know that physical objects
remain in existence even when out of sight.
• According to piaget this child is in the sensorimotor stage and
primarily explores the world with senses rather through mental
operations.

11. Characteristics of the sensorimotor stage:
• The fist stage of piaget theory lasts from birth to approximately age
two and is centered on the infant trying to make sense of the world.
• Children utilize skills and abilities they were born with such as looking
sucking grasping and listening to learn more about the environment.
• Sub stages of the Sensorimotor:
• The sensorimotor stage can be divided in to six separates sub stages
that are characterized by the development of a new skill.
• Reflexes ( 0-1 month):
• During this sub stage the child under stands the environment purely
through in born reflexes such as sucking and looking.

12. • Primary circulations Reactions (1-4 months):
• The sub stags involves according sensation and new schemas for
example, a child may suck his or her thumb by accident and then later
intentionally repeat the action. These actions are repeated because
the infant finds them pleasurable.
• Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months):
• During the sub stage, 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.

13. • Coordination of Reactions (8-12 months):
• During this sub stage the child starts to show clearly intentional
actions. The child may also combine schemas in order to achieve a
desired effect. Children begin exploring the environment around
them and with often imitate the observed behavior of others.
• The understanding of object also begins during this time and children
begins to recognize certain objects as having specific qualities.

14. • Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months):
• Children begin a period of trial and error experimentation during the
fifth sub stage.
• For example a child may try out of different sounds of actions as a
way of getting attention from a caregiver.
• Early Representational thought (18-24 months):
• Children begin to develop symbols to represent events or objects in the world
in the final sensorimotor sub stages during this time children begin to move
toward the understanding of the world through mental operations rather
then purely through actions.

15. 2 Pre Operational Stage (ages 2-7)
• The child is not yet able to conceptualize abstractly and needs
concrete physical situations.
• The Pre operational stage is the second four stages of cognitive
development.
• By observing sequences of play piaget was able to demonstrate that
towards the end of the second year a qualitatively quite new kind of
psychological functioning occurs.

16. • Symbolic Functions:
it is characterized by the use of mental symbols words or pictures
which is not physically present.
Centration:
It is characterized by a child focusing or attending to only one aspect
of a stimulus or situation. For example in pouring a quantity of liquid
from a narrow beaker in to a shallow dish preschool child might judge
the quantity of liquid to have decreased because it is lower that is the
child attends to the height of water but not the compensating increase
in the diamter of the container.

17. • Intuitive Thought:
• Occurs when the child is able to believe in something with out
knowing why she or he believe it.
• Egocentrism:
• A version of concentration this denotes a tendency of child to only
think from their own point of view.

18. Inability to Conserve:
Through piaget conservation experiments (conversation of mass, volume, and
number) piagets concluded that children in the pre operational stage, lack,
perception of conservation of mass, volume, and number, after the original
form, has changed.
Characteristics of Pre operational stage:
The pre operational stage occur between ages two and six during which a child
learns to use language. During this stage the children do not under stand
concrete logic cannot mentally manipulate formation and are un able to take
the point of view of others which piaget termed egocentrism.

19. Egocentrism:
• One of the famous technique used by piaget to demonstrate
egocentrism involved using a three dimensional display of a mountain
scene. Children are asked to choose a picture that showed the scene
they had observed.
• Invariably children almost always choose the scene showing the own
view of the mountain scene. According to Piaget children experience
this difficulty because they are un able to take on another person
perspective.

20. • Conservation: Another well known experiment involves demon
straining a child s understanding of conservation. In one conservation
experiments equals amount of liquid are poured in to two identical
containers.
• Children are then asked which cup holds the most liquid. Despite
seeing that the liquid amounts were equals children almost always
choose the cup that appears fuller.
• Piaget found that few children showed any understanding of
conservation prior to the age of five.

21. Concrete Operational Stage (ages 7-11)
• As physical experience accumulate the child starts to conceptualize
creating logical structures that explain his or her physical experiences.
• The concreate operational stage is the third of four stages of cognitive
development is piaget theory this stage which follow the pre operational
stage and occurs from the ages of 7-11 is characterized by the appropriate
use of logic.
• Important processes during this stages are”
• Decentering:
• Where the child takes in to 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 crop.

22. • Reversibility: where 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 4+4 which they can
answer to be 8, minus 4 will equal four the original quantity.
• Conservation: Understanding that quantity length or number of items
is unrelated to the arrangement or appearance of the object of the
items. For instance when a child is presented with two equally sized
full cups they will be able to discern that they if water is transferred
to a pitcher it will conserve the quantity and be equal to the other
filled cup.

23. • Serialization: The ability to arrange objects in an order according to size
change, or any other characteristics. For example if given different shaded
objects they make a colour gradient.
• Classification: The ability to name and identify sets of objects according
appearance size or other characteristics, including the idea that one set of
object can include other.
• Elimination of Egocentrism: The ability to view things from an other
perspective. For instance show a child a comic in which Ali puts doll under
box leaves the room and then Aslam moves toward the doll to drawer and
Ali comes back. A child stage in this stage will say that Ali will still think its
under the box even though the child knows it is in the drawer.

24. Characteristics of Concrete Operations:
• The concrete operational stage begins around age seven and
continues until approximately age eleven. During this time children
gain better understanding of mental operations. Children begin
thinking logically about concrete events but have difficulty
understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts.
• Logic:
• Piaget determined that children in the concrete operational stage
were fairly good at the use of inductive logic. Inductive logic involve
going from a specific experience to a general principal. On the other
hand children at this age have difficulty using deductive logic which
involves using a general principal to determine the outcome of a
specific event.

25. • Reversibility: One of the most important developments in this stage
is an understanding of reversibility or awareness that actions can be
reversed. For example a child might be able to recognize that his or
her dog is a Labrador that a Labrador is a dog and a dog is an animal.

26. Formal Operations (Beginning at Ages 11-15)
• By this point of view the child cognitive structures are like those of an
adult and include conceptual reasoning.
• Characteristics of the formal operational stage:
• The formal operational stage begins at approximately age twelve to
and last in to adulthood. During this time people develop the ability
to think about abstract concepts. Skills such as logical thought
deductive reasoning and systematic planning also emergence during
this stage.

27. • Logic: Piaget believed that deductive logic becomes important during
the formal operational stage. Deductive logic requires the ability to
use a general principal to determine a specific outcome. This types of
thinking involves hypothetical situations and is often required in
science and mathematics.
Abstract Thought:
• While children tend to think very concretely and specifically in earlier
stages the ability to think about abstract concepts emerges during the
formal operational stage.
• This type of Thinking is important in long term planning.

28. • Problem Solving:
• In earlier stages children used trial and error to solve problems. During the
formal operational stage the ability to systematically solve a problem in a
logical and methodical way emerges.
• Piaget outlined several principals for building cognitive structures. During
all development stages the child experiences his or her environment using
whatever mental maps he or she has constructed so far.
• If the experience is repeated one it fit easily or is assimilated in to the child
cognitive structures so that he or she maintains mental equilibrium.
• This way child erects more and more adequate cognitive structures.

29. How Piaget,s Theory Impacts Learning
• According to piaget, teaching can support these development
processes by
• Providing support for the spontaneous research of the child
• Using active methods that require rediscovering reconstructing truth
• Using collaborative as well as individual activities
• Devising situations that present useful problems and create dis
equilibrium in the child.

30. • Curriculum:
• Educators must plan a developmentally appropriate curriculum the
enhances their students logical and conceptual growth.
• Instruction:
• Teachers must emphasize the critical role that experiences
interactions with the surrounding environment play in student
learning.
• For Example Instructions have to take in to account the role
fundamental concepts, such as the permanence of objects play in
establishing cognitive structures.

31. Corresponding Instructional Strategies:
• Piaget himself did not design instructional strategies but education
have interpreted piaget theory to suggest broad instructional
principal. If an educator is using a specific method it is one that
depends on his or her unique understanding of children.
• There are three basic instruction principles on which Piagetian
theorists generally agree.
Principle 1: The learning environment should support the activity of
the child (that is an active, discovery, oriented environment)
Principal 2: Children ,s interactions with their peers are an important
sources cognitive development (that is peer teaching and social
negotiation)

32. Principal 3: Adopt instructional strategies that make children aware of
conflicts and in consistencies is their thinking (Conflict teaching and Socratic
dialog)
Specific instructional strategies include modeling, coaching, scaffolding,
fading, problem based learning, authentic learning anchored instruction,
cognitive flexibility hypertexts and object based learning.
There are several implications for instruction that arise from piaget
description of the stages of the cognitive development
1 Active interaction with object ideas and concepts is essential not only to
help learners master specific topics and solve specific problems but also to
help them move more easily to higher overall stages of cognitive
development.

33. • 2 When the Goal is to help learners master specific topics or solve
specific problems information and problems should be presented to
them at the level of abstraction at which they are comfortable. Other
wise they are not likely to assimilate it and integrate it with their
existing structures.
• When the goal is to help learners move to higher levels of
abstractions it may be useful to present information and problems to
them at the level of abstraction slightly beyond that at which they are
comfortable.

34. Summary of Piaget stages theory and
Development
• AS mentioned piaget theory was a psychologist who was interested in
cognitive development. After observation of many children he
theorized that children progress through four stages and that they all
do so in the same order. These four stages are described below.
• The Sensor motor period (birth to 2 years):
• During this time piaget said that a child cognitive system is limited to
motor reflexes at birth but the child builds on these reflexes to
develop more sophisticated procedures.
• They learn to generalize their activities to a wider range of situations
and coordinate them in to increasingly length chains of behavior.

35. • Pre operational Thought (2 to 6/7 years):
• At this age according to piaget children acquire representational a skills in
the areas mental imagery and specially language. They are very self
oriented and have an egocentric view that or pre operational children can
use these representational skill only to the view the world from their own
perspective.
• Concrete Operations (6/7 to 11/12 years):
• As opposed to pre operational children in the concrete operations stage
are able to take an other point of view and take In to account more than
one perspective simultaneously.
• Although they can understand concrete problems piaget would argue that
they cannot yet perform on abstract problems and them they do not
consider of all logically possible outcomes.

36. • Formal Operations (11/12 TO adult ):
• Children who attain the formal operation stage are capable of
thinking logically and abstractly. They can also reason theoretically
piaget considered this the ultimate stage of development, and started
that although the children would still have to revise their knowledge
base their way of thinking was a powerful as it would get.
• Whether Piaget was correct or not however it is safe to say that this
theory of cognitive development has had tremendous influence on all
modern development psychologist.