1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of
Cognitive Development:
Learning, Reasoning and Language
Development over the Life Span

2. Questions
 Do you think you think children understand things
differently than you do?
 How do child see and understand the world?
 What “abilities” do children have the allow them to
develop cognitively?
 How does the child’s cognitive develop change as
the grow up?
 Is there an endpoint to cognitive development?

3. According to Piaget:
 Children progress through four distinct stages of
cognitive development
 Each stage of development represents a change
or shift in the child’s way of thinking and
understanding of the world (environment)

4. Piaget’s Theory of
Cognitive Development
 Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Swiss psychologist who
became leading theorist in 1930’s
 Piaget believed that “children are active thinkers,
constantly trying to construct more advanced
understandings of the world”
 These “understandings” are in the form of
structures he called schemas

5. Children as active learners
 Piaget believed that children were actively trying to
make sense of their world instead of being passive
reactive to changes that happen to them (like blank
slates)
 He believed that many of the actions we see babies
doing are actually their attempts to make sense of
the world
 So, it is important to know that in examining how
the child’s
purposeful action (i.e., interaction with objects in the
world) changes how they make sense of the world

6. Piaget’s approach
 Genetic Epistemology- i.e., studying development from its
origins
 Primary method was to ask children to solve problems and to
question them about the reasoning behind their solutions
 Discovered that children think in radically different ways than
adults
 Proposed that development occurs as a series of ‘stages’
differing in how the world is understood ( through the child’s
interaction with objects)

7. The Stages of development,
things to remember:
 The key idea about each stage is that it presents a shift in
how the child thinks and understands the world.
 Piaget saw the progression of cognitive development as a
continuous and gradual process.
 The child’s cognitive development is driven by the
child’s physical ability (maturation) to interact with
objects in their environment.
 Piaget believed that at each stage was biologically
programmed to unfold at their respective ages.

8. Stages: Things to remember cont’d
 As the child moves from stage to stage, they build on
the understandings (knowledge) they have from the
previous stage
 As children encounter new information about the
world they begin to change their way of thinking.
 Piaget believed that children in every culture
(universally) progress through the same sequence of
stages at around the same age.
 Piaget felt that the environment was important in
stimulating how successfully the child was at
progressing through each stage.

9. Stages: Things to remember cont’d
 For example, a “bright” child may progress through the
stages faster than as child that was less intellectually
capable, because his/her environment would have
provided ample opportunities for exploration.

10. Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive
Development
Piaget believed that children progress through
four stages of cognitive development
Sensorimotor
Preoperational
Concrete Operations
Formal Operations

11. Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive
Development

13. Sensorimotor Stage (birth to 2 years)
 During this stage the infant acquires knowledge about
the world through actions that allow them to directly
experience and manipulate objects.
 That is, infants activate and develop their reflexes
and five senses.
 They touch, feel, taste, push, pull, twist, turn and
manipulate objects.
 They activate and build upon their motor actions of
grasping, reaching, pushing, pulling pouring.
 They know what objects are by how they look, taste,
feel, smell and sound.

14. Sensorimotor Stage (birth to 2yrs)
 As they continue to interact with objects their gain
basic understandings of the effects their own actions
can produce- like kicking the side of their crib to make
a hanging mobile shake or pushing over a pile of blocks
to see them crash
 At this stage things that are “out of sight are out of
mind”, that is objects only exist if the child can directly
sense it
 For example if a 4 month old kicks a ball under the
couch and it rolls out of sight then they will not look
for it.

15. Sensorimotor Stage (birth to 2yrs)
 However, by the end of the sensorimotor stage, children
acquire object permanence, they can understand that an
object continues to exist even if they can’t see it
 As they interact with objects they gain a better
understanding about what they do and the infants’
memory increases to allow them to mentally represent an
object.
 At this point they will actively search for the object, like
the ball under the couch.
 As their memory develops they develop what Piaget calls
schemas

17. Schemas and Operations
 Schemas:
 Schemas are categories of knowledge that help us
interpret and understand the world.
 For the child schemas are primarily related to physical/
action knowledge
 Operations:
 In Piaget’s theory operations refers to logical mental
activities

18. The Preoperational Stage
 This stage lasts from around 2yrs to 7rs of age. The word
“pre” means before, so this “pre-”operational stage is before
logical operations.
 In this stage the child begins to use symbolic thought,
which refers to their ability to use words, images and
symbols to represent the word.
 The child’s use of symbolic thought can also be seen in their
engaging in fantasy and imaginative play.
 For example, a discarded box becomes a fort or a house
 Children take on the roles of different characters like
princess/ prince, doctor, patient.
 In playing these games children try to imitate the actions they
have seen others done, sometimes days or weeks before.

19. Preoperational Stage (2 – 7 years)
 However, children in this stage display what Piaget
termed egocentrism. That is, they lack the ability to
consider events from another person’s point of view.
 They may think that Grandpa Joe may want a new
puppy as a birthday present because they want one.
 In this stage children also display irreversibility, which
means they cannot mentally reverse a sequence of events
or logical operations
 For example, the child doesn’t understand that “3+1”
and “1+3” refer to the same logical operation.

20. Preoperational Stage (2 – 7 years)
 In this stage children also display centration, which
means that they tend to focus, or center on one aspect
of an object or situation- usually a perceptual aspect.
They tend to ignore other aspects of the situation or
object
 For example, in conservation tasks, 5 year olds cannot
understand that objects may change shape, size,
location, color and still be the same objects
 For example the task of reversibility and centration
(the water/container task)

21. Preoperational Stage (2 – 7 years)
 The principle of conservation holds that two equal
physical quantities remain equal even if the appearance of
one is changed as long as nothing is added or subtracted.
 But because of centration, children in the preoperational
stage cannot consider the height and width of the water in
the container at the same time. So they cannot understand
that the two amounts of water are the same, even though
they “look” different.

22. Preoperational Stage (2 – 7 years)
 That is, the child can only focus on one aspect of the
situation at a time, in this case the height of the
water (that’s what they can see!).
 In addition, the child cannot mentally reverse the
series of events that they have just seen (that is,
pouring the water into its original container).

23. Conservation
 Number
In conservation of number tests, two equivalent rows of coins
are placed side by side and the child says that there is the same
number in each row. Then one row is spread apart and the child
is again asked if there is the same number in each.

24. Conservation
 Length
In conservation of length tests, two same-length sticks are
placed side by side and the child says that they are the same
length. Then one is moved and the child is again asked
if they are the same length.

25. Conservation
 Substance
In conservation of substance tests, two identical amounts of clay
are rolled into similar-appearing balls and the child says that they
both have the same amount of clay. Then one ball is rolled out and
the child is again asked if they have the same amount.

27. Concrete Operational Stage (7-12 years)
 Around age 7 children become more capable of logical
thought. They gain conservation, they are much less
egocentric and they can mentally reverse operations and
can simultaneously focus on two aspects of a problem.
 For example, when presented with two rows of equally
spaced pennies, they can understand that if the pennies
were moved that the number of pennies in each row
remains the same. (Why do you think that is?)
 This is because during this stage children become more
capable of using logical operations like counting, order
and categorization.

28. Concrete Operational Stage (7-12 years)
 However, the idea that this stage is “concrete” implies
that children’s use of logical operations is limited to
concrete reality- to tangible objects and events.
 Concrete operational children have difficulty thinking
about hypothetical situations or abstract ideas (like
things that have not happened yet, or things that are yet
to happen to someone else). They think in very tangible
ways using first-hand personal experiences and actual
events.
 For example, they may describe friendship as “when
someone plays with me” (p.390).

29. Formal Operational Stage
(age 12 - adulthood)
 At the beginning of adolescence, children enter the
formal operational stage. These adolescents think more
logically and systematically than the concrete operational
child.
 This stage is marked by the adolescent’s growing ability
to think logically when dealing with abstract concepts.
 For example, in describing friendship, they may use
emphasize more global and abstract characteristics,
like mutual trust, empathy, loyalty and shared beliefs.

30. Formal Operational Stage
(age 12 - adulthood)
 However this hypothetical and abstract thinking
develops over time and grows in sophistication
throughout adolescence and adulthood.
 That is, the formal operational adolescent may be able
to think effectively with abstract ideas in one area of
knowledge, but not at the same level in others.
 Piaget also stated that among many adults that formal
operational thinking is limited to areas within which
these adults have expertise.

31. Criticisms of Piaget
 Piaget underestimated the cognitive abilities of infants and
young children
 In order to test object permanence in infants Piaget
showed the infant and object covered by a cloth, and
observed their ability to uncover the object.
 One main criticism is that such a response requires the
infant to reach a certain level of motor skill development,
which was not displayable until the child was about 9
months old, which is why he thought showed that the
child could not possibly “know” that the object was
under the cloth until then.

32. Criticisms of Piaget
 “Increased attention”, Renee Baillargeon proposed
that to understand if the child “knew” the object was
there that it would be better to test their visual response
to the change in objects. The idea was that like adults,
children would look longer at “surprising” events that
contradict their understanding of the world.
 In this approach, infants would watch an expected
event then be shown an unexpected event, if it violates
their understanding of the world the child would look
longer at the unexpected event than the expected event.

33. Criticisms of Piaget
 Piaget underestimated the impact of the social and cultural
environment on cognitive development
 Russian Psychologist, Lev Vygotsky believed that
cognitive development is influenced by social and
cultural factors.
 Vygotsky agreed with Piaget that children may be able
to reach a particular cognitive level through their own
independent efforts. However. Vygotsky argued that
children are able to reach higher levels of cognitive
development through the support and instruction they
receive from other people, especially through social
interactions with expert guides.

34. Criticisms of Piaget
 Vygotsky believed that the Zone of Proximal
Development, which is the gap between what
children can accomplish by themselves and what they
can accomplish with the help of more capable others
was the ideal place for learning (and cognitive
development) to take place.
 He believed that the assistance provided to the child
should be slightly above the child’s current abilities,
such that the guidance can help “stretch” the child’s
cognitive abilities to new levels.

35. Criticisms of Piaget
 Piaget overestimated the degree to which people achieve
formal operational thought
 Researchers have found that many adults display
abstract-hypothetical thinking only in limited areas of
knowledge, and that some adults never display formal
operational thought processes at all.
 For example, college students may not display
formal operational thought outside their area of
major. Like when an English major is presented
with a Physics question.

36. Criticisms of Piaget
 Late in his life Piaget suggested that formal operations
may not be a universal phenomenon, but rather a
product of an individual’s expertise in a specific area.
 Information-processing theorists propose that through
life experiences that we continue to acquire new
knowledge, including more sophisticated cognitive skills
and strategies, which may improve our ability to learn
and remember information.

37. Final point
 Despite the limitations of Piaget’s theory, many
of his observations have shown to be accurate,
in particular those about infancy and childhood.
Especially regarding the idea that early learning
is hands-on and interactive. Also his work
continues to be used in the fields of education-
math, science and language acquisition, and
developmental psychology and even the creation
of children’s toys.