This document provides an overview of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. It describes Piaget's four stages of development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Key concepts discussed include assimilation, accommodation, schemas, and how children's thinking abilities change as they progress through each stage. The document also notes both strengths and weaknesses of Piaget's influential but not definitive theory of child development.

1. 9/24/2014 1

2. Submitted by
Premnath R
Ist year MSc Nursing
Govt CON Kottayam
9/24/2014 2

3. Theory of cognitive development is a
comprehensive theory about the nature and
development of human intelligence.
 Known as Developmental Stage Theory.
9/24/2014 3

4.  It deals with the nature of knowledge
itself and how humans come
gradually to acquire it, construct it,
and use it.
9/24/2014 4

5.  Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory.
 Vygotsky’s Cognitive Developmental
Theory.
9/24/2014 5

6. August 9 1896 – September 16 1980
9/24/2014 6

7.  Reality is a dynamic system of continuous change.
 He argued that reality involves transformations and states.
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.
 Human intelligence is adaptive. Two types of intelligence,
namely
Operative intelligence
Figurative intelligence
9/24/2014 7

8.  Operative intelligence 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. That is, it involves perception,
imitation, mental imagery, drawing, and language.
9/24/2014 8

9.  Piaget believed that this process of
understanding and change involves two
basic functions: Assimilation and
accommodation:
 Assimilation is the process of taking
one’s environment and new information
and fitting it into pre-existing cognitive
schemas.
 Accommodation, unlike assimilation is
the process of taking one's environment
and new information, and altering one's
pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the
new information.
9/24/2014 9

10. Key concepts are,
Schema
Assimilation
Accommodation
Adaptation
Equilibrium
9/24/2014 10

11.  STAGE I: THE SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
 STAGE II: PREOPERATIONAL STAGE
 STAGE III: CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE
 STAGE IV: FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE
9/24/2014 11

12. 9/24/2014 12

13.  Occurs from birth
to approximately 2 years old.
 The child tries to make sense of the
world during this stage, and as the
name suggests, only senses and
motor abilities are used to do so.
9/24/2014 13

14.  The child utilizes innate behaviours to enhance
this learning process, such as sucking, looking,
grasping, crying and listening.
9/24/2014 14

15. The sub-stages are as follow,
1. Reflexes (0-1 month)
2. Primary Circular Actions (1-4 months)
3. Secondary Circular Reactions.
4. Co-ordination of Secondary Circular Reactions (8-12
months)
5. Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months)
6. Symbolic/Mental Representation (18-24 months)
9/24/2014 15

16.  Child uses only innate reflexes.
 Many reflexes like reaching, grasping, sucking
all operating independently.
 These reflexes will have the sole function of
keeping the child alive.
9/24/2014 16

17.  Stage of Primary Circular Reactions.
Circular- repetition.
Primary- centre on infant's own body
 Child now has a fixation with it’s own body with regards
to behaviour.
 They will perform actions repeatedly on themselves
 They also begin to refine reflexes here to form more
complex versions of them.
Example: thumb-sucking.
9/24/2014 17

18.  Stage of Secondary Circular Reactions
 Child begins to take an interest in
their environment
 They notice that they can actually influence events
in their world.
 Infant will not make conscious connections between
what they do and the consequences, they merely
observe that their actions have interesting effects.
9/24/2014 18

19.  Co-ordination of Secondary Circular
Reactions
 Child begins to engage in goal-directed
behavior.
 Begin to develop cause-effect relationships.
 The child effectively knows that their behavior
will have a certain consequence.
 At this stage, object permanence is acquired.
9/24/2014 19

20.  Stage of Tertiary Circular Reactions.
 At this stage, children like to use creativity and
flexibility with their previous behaviors.
 Result of their experimentation often leads to
different outcomes.
9/24/2014 20

21.  Symbolic/Mental Representation.
 At this stage, the child develops symbolic thought and
the ability to mentally represent objects in their head.
 Normally, the child would need to resort to trial-and-error
to achieve a desired effect.
 Child can ‘plan’ to some extent and mentally construct
the consequences of an action in their head.
 Predictions are not always accurate, but it is a step up
from trial-and-error.
9/24/2014 21

22.  Sensory-motor period culminates with the
emergence of the Symbolic function.
 An idea or mental image is used to stand-in
for a perceptually absent object.
 Trial-and-error problem solving does not
need to enacted but can undertaken through
mental combination.
9/24/2014 22

23. MENTAL REPRESENTATION IN
CHILDREN
 Object permanence
Object permanence is when objects
exist even when out of sight.
9/24/2014 23

24. 9/24/2014 24

25. 9/24/2014 25

26.  Deferred imitation
Deferred imitation is simply the
imitation of behaviour a child has seen
before.
9/24/2014 26

27. 9/24/2014 27

28.  (Pre)Operatory Thought is any procedure for
mentally acting on objects. The hallmark of the
preoperational stage is sparse and logically
inadequate mental operations.
9/24/2014 28

29.  Child learns to use and to represent objects by images,
words, and drawings.
 Child is able to form stable concepts as well as mental
reasoning and magical beliefs.
 Child however is still not able to perform operations;
tasks that the child can do mentally rather than
physically.
 Thinking is egocentric
 Child has difficulty taking the viewpoint of others.
9/24/2014 29

30. Two substages are,
1. The symbolic function substage.
2. The intuitive thought substage.
9/24/2014 30

31.  Occurs between about the ages of 2 and 7.
 During 2-4 years old, kids cannot yet manipulate and
transform information in logical ways, but they now
can think in images and symbols.
 The child is able to formulate designs of objects that
are not present.
 Although there is an advancement in progress, there
are still limitations such as egocentrism and animism.
9/24/2014 31

32.  Egocentrism occurs when a child is unable to
distinguish between their own perspective and
that of another person's.
 Children tend to pick their own view of what they
see rather than the actual view shown to others.
 An example is an experiment performed by Piaget
and Barbel Inhelder. Three views of a mountain
are shown and the child is asked what a traveling
doll would see at the various angles; the child
picks their own view compared to the actual view
of the doll.
9/24/2014 32

33. 9/24/2014 33

34. 9/24/2014 34

35. The Intuitive Thought Substage
 Occurs between about the ages of 4 and 7.
 Children tend to become very curious and ask
many questions; begin 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 know it.
 Centration and conservation are both
involved in preoperative thought.
9/24/2014 35

36. 9/24/2014 36

37. Children tend to centre/focus upon one aspect of a situation and not
take into account others. Pre-operational children tended to say there
was more liquid in C as they focused on height
9/24/2014 37

38.  Occurs between the ages of 7 and 11 years
 Characterized by the appropriate use of logic.
 During this stage, a child's thought processes
become more mature and "adult like."
9/24/2014 38

39.  Conservation
 Decentering
 Reversibilty
 Serriation
 Transitivity
 Classification
 Elimination of egocentrism
 Logic
9/24/2014 39

40.  Conservation
The understanding that although an object’s
appearance changes, it still stays the same in quantity.
Redistributing an object does not affect its mass,
number, or volume. For example, a child understands
that when you pour a liquid into a different shaped
glass, the amount of liquid stays the same.
 Decentering
The child now 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.
9/24/2014 40

41.  Reversibility
The child now understands that numbers or
objects can be changed and then returned to their
original state. For example, during this stage, a
child understands that his or her favorite ball that
deflates is not gone and can be filled with air and
put back into play again. Another example would
be that the child realizes that a ball of clay, once
flattened, can be made into a ball of clay again.
 Serriation
The ability to sort objects in an order
according to size, shape, or any other
characteristic. For example, if given different-shaded
objects they may make a color gradient.
9/24/2014 41

42.  Transitivity
Transitivity, which refers to the ability to
recognize relationships among various things in a
serial order. For example, when told to put away
his books according to height, the child recognizes
that he starts with placing the tallest one on one
end of the bookshelf and the shortest one ends up
at the other end.
 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.
9/24/2014 42

43.  Elimination of Egocentrism
The ability to view things from another's
perspective (even if they think incorrectly). Children
in this stage can, however, only solve problems that
apply to actual (concrete) objects or events, and not
abstract concepts or hypothetical tasks.
Understanding and knowing how to use full
common sense has not been completely adapted yet.
9/24/2014 43

44.  They start solving problems in a more logical fashion.
 Children can only solve problems that apply to
concrete events or objects.
 Children in this stage commonly experience
difficulties with figuring out logic in their heads.
9/24/2014 44

45.  Children are able to incorporate inductive reasoning.
Inductive reasoning involves drawing inferences from
observations in order to make a generalization.
 Deductive reasoning, which involves using a
generalized principle in order to try to predict the
outcome of an event.

9/24/2014 45

46. Milestones of the concrete operational stage
 Ability to distinguish between their own thoughts
and the thoughts of others.
 Increased classification skills
 Ability to think logically about objects and events.
 Ability to fluently perform mathematical problems
in both addition and subtraction.
9/24/2014 46

47.  Commences at around 11 years of age (puberty)
continues into adulthood.
 Individuals move beyond concrete experiences
and begin to think abstractly, reason logically and
draw conclusions from the information available,
as well as apply all these processes to hypothetical
situations.
9/24/2014 47

48.  Solve problems in a trial-and-error fashion.
 Adolescents begin to think more as a
scientist thinks, devising plans to solve
problems and systematically testing
solutions.
9/24/2014 48

49. •They use hypothetical-deductive reasoning,
which means that they develop hypotheses or
best guesses, and systematically deduce, or
conclude, which is the best path to follow in
solving the problem.
9/24/2014 49

50.  During this stage the adolescent is able to
understand such things as love, "shades of
gray", logical proofs and values.
 During this stage the young person begins to
entertain possibilities for the future and is
fascinated with what they can be.
9/24/2014 50

51.  Adolescent Egocentrism governs the way that
adolescents think about social matters and is the
heightened self-consciousness in them as they are
which is reflected in their sense of personal
uniqueness and invincibility.
 Adolescent egocentrism can be dissected into two
types of social thinking.
◦ Imaginary audience that involves attention getting
behavio
◦ Personal fable which involves an adolescent's sense of
personal uniqueness and invincibility.
9/24/2014 51

52. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
 Parents can use Piaget's theory when deciding how
to support what to buy in order to support their
child's growth.
 Teachers can use this when discussing whether the
syllabus subjects are suitable for the level of
students or not.
9/24/2014 52

53.  Teacher who work with children in both the
preoperational and the concrete operational levels of
cognitive development should adopt suitable academic
expectations with regard to children's cognitive
developmental abilities.
 The need for educators to individualize and adopt
appropriate academic expectations appears to be most
relevant for children at the first-grade level.
9/24/2014 53

54. STRENGTHS OF PIAGET’S THEORY
 Piaget was an inspiration to many who came after and
took up his ideas.
 Piaget's ideas have generated a huge amount of
research which has increased our understanding of
cognitive development.
 His ideas have been of practical use in understanding
and communicating with children, particularly in the
field of education (re: Discovery Learning).
9/24/2014 54

55. Weaknesses
 Progress to the formal operational stage is
not guaranteed.
 Piaget failed to consider the effect that the
social setting and culture may have on
cognitive development.
 Piaget’s methods (observation and clinical
interviews) are more open to biased
interpretation than other methods. Because
Piaget conducted the observations alone data
collect are based on his own subjective
interpretation of events.
9/24/2014 55

56.  Piaget underestimated the abilities of children
because his tests were sometimes confusing
or difficult to understand.
 The concept of schema is incompatible with
the theories of Bruner and Vygotsky.
 Behaviorism would also refute Piaget’s
schema theory because is cannot be directly
observed as it is an internal process.
 Piaget carried out his studies with a handful
of participants. This sample is biased, and
accordingly the results of these studies
cannot be generalized to children from
different cultures.
9/24/2014 56

57.  Kohlberg
 Gilligan
 Youniss
 Anne Nelley & Perret Clermont
9/24/2014 57

58.  Children’s thinking is affected by their knowledge of the
social community (which is learnt from either technical or
psychological cultural tools).
 Language is the most important tool for gaining this social
knowledge; the child can be taught this from other people via
language.
 Intelligence as “the capacity to learn from instruction”.
 Need for a more knowledgable other person or ‘teacher’. He
referred to them as just that: the More Knowledgable
Other (MKO). MKO’s can be parents, adults, teachers,
coaches, experts/professionals, other children, friends and
computers.
9/24/2014 58

59.  He described zone of proximal
development (ZPD), as a key feature of his
theory. There are two levels of attainment for
the ZPD:
◦ Level 1 – the ‘present level of development’. This
describes what the child is capable of doing without
any help from others.
◦ Level 2 – the ‘potential level of development’. This
means what the child could potentially be capable
of with help from other people or ‘teachers’.
◦ The gap between level 1 and 2 (the present and
potential development) is what Vygotsky described
as this zone of proximal development.
9/24/2014 59

60.  Vygotsky looked at the role of egocentric/private
speech. This is, for example, when a child will sit
on their own and speak their thoughts out loud
as they play.
 This verbal thinking forms the basis for higher
level, more abstract thinking (planning,
reasoning, memorising, evaluating).
9/24/2014 60

61. Summary of vygotsky’s theory
 Emphasized the role of a teacher in cognitive development,
and the need to have support from a More Knowledgable
Other, or MKO.
 The zone of proximal development, or ZPD, differentiates
between a learner’s current development and their potential
development when being taught from a MKO.
 Scaffolding provides an effective way to reach potential levels
of development, but only when different levels of assistance
are given when required.
 Social and cultural tools are an important means of gaining
intelligence.
 There is a close link between the acquisition of language and
the development of thinking.
 Internalising monologues, and therefore becoming a verbal
thinker, is a stepping stone to higher levels of thinking.
9/24/2014 61

62. Similarities &
Differences.
Jean Piaget Lev Vygotsky
Learning is… Solitary Social
What drives
development…
?
Maturation, conflict Enjoyment from others, motivates
more learning.
Role of language… Thought drives language Language drives thought
Role of biology… Maturation dictates pace of
cognitive development
Elementary functions are innate.
Child is active… Child actively organises
cognitive schemas to
maintain equilibrium.
Child is active in providing
feedback to the
parent/instructor.
9/24/2014 62

63. Cognitive developmental theory
&
Nurses
9/24/2014 63

64. 9/24/2014 64
THANK YOU