JEAN PIAGET COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Name: Saeid Ataei
1101600817
Introduction th
Jean Piaget was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, on 9 August 1896. He is a pioneer of Swiss Philosopher and Child Psychologist and one of the leading researchers in development th
psychology in 20 century. Piaget started his career on psychology and education at the age of 22. While working with Alfred Binet, Piaget observes how children think and answer, react to the environment, how they absorb the knowledge, and how they learn. That is how Piaget extends his interest in children development. And Piaget make a conclusion that children are not stupid but they are taught in different ways. Children need to interact with environment and learn from mistakes in order to learn.
Key Concepts of Piaget’s Theory
Key Concepts Schema
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Represent a mindset of an ideas, actions or pictures.
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Help children to understand.
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Known as cognitive structure represent in a categories which have sub-categories ideas.
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E.g.: Dog. The children saw a puddle as a dog, the schema will be ‘small, furry, four legs, a pair of eyes, ears, tail’. When the children started to known about the puddle, it will fit in as new information such as golden fur or naughty dog.
Assimilation
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It is a process where the information exists and fit into preexisting schema.
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Fit a new experience or knowledge into an existing mental structure.
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E.g.: The dog can bark. When the children saw the dog, it will automatically tell them all the dogs’ barks.
Accommodation
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The difference made to a person’s idea by the process of assimilation.
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When a new object came across, the children will automatically apply the old schema to the new object.
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Revise an existing schema because of new experience.
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E.g.: When came across a similar animal such as cats, the children will say ‘A dog’. But, when a person told them it is a cat not a dog, the children will absorb the new information into another schema.
Adaption
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Assimilation and accommodation are the division of adaption.
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It is a process of learning where schema continuously goes through
adaption;
the
process
of
assimilation
and
accommodation. Equilibrium
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It is normal that human strive to achieve goals or cognitive balance.
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Seeking
cognitive
stability
through
assimilation
and
accommodation. -
When children has a schema but cannot apply into reality, tension created in their mind. And therefore, equilibrium is created to reduce cognitive tension.
The concept of assimilation and accommodation are vital for children to learn the activity by questioning and exploring.
Stages of Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Stage 1: Sensorimotor (Birth to 2 years) At this stage, the child understands the environment through sense and action. Imitation, memory and thought are started to utilize. Infant received information by senses; looking, crying, sucking, listening and grasping. In this stage, there are 6 sub-stages. 1. Reflexes (0-1 month) -
Child use innate reflexes.
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E.g.: If a toy placed in their palm, they will automatically grab it.
2. Primary Circular Actions (1-4 months) -
The child repeats the actions on themselves.
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E.g.: Sucking their own hand.
3. Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months) -
Child begins to explore the environment around them.
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E.g.: A ball falls from the table. And the infant will not take action such as go catch the ball but they watch the action which caught their attention.
4. Co-ordination of Secondary Circular Reactions (8-12 months) -
At this stage, the child began to achieve in goal-directed behavior where they develop cause-effect relationships.
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Object permanence is an object that exist where the child can’t identity them.
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E.g.: The ball falls from the table. The child will crawl over to the ball and pick it up.
5. Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months) -
The child at 12 – 18months tends to use their creativity and experiment it with their previous behavior.
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E.g.: The child learns how to use the ball instead of grabbing the ball.
6. Symbolic/Mental Representation (18-24 months) -
The child able to develop ideas in their mind.
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Usually, the child learns by trial-and-error to achieve the preferred effect.
Normally in the first few months, infant is unaware the existing of the object. For example, the ball is hidden under the pillow. At this moment, the child will look for the ball. Then, the child determines to find the hidden ball. They will give up if still couldn’t find where is the ball hidden. After a few months, they are able to find out where the ball is hidden under. This is to enable child to learn that the object existence around them.
Stage 2: Pre-Operational (2-7 years) According to Daniel Willingham (2000), the child understands the environment through language and mental images. At this stage, images, object and symbols are involved. The child starts to learn language and represent an object using images and words. They begin to use
reasoning. At the age of 4years, the child has almost mastered his or her mother tongue. Now, the child can build a sentence. For example, a child sticks their arms together at the back and jump around, it’s symbolizing the movement of a frog. This shows that the child can form between language, action, and object. Egocentrism is not a moral value, selfish. It is a view of the world relate to yourself only. Most of the child struggle to understand the condition from the other view. For example, below pictures are shown by Piaget and Inhelder (1956) to ask the children what pictures they can get on 3D model.
Three Mountains Task.
During the examination, Piaget shows the 8cards of possible view of the mountain to the children and the children having difficulties to pick the correct picture.
Stage 3: Concrete Operational (7-11 years) At this stage, the child understands the world through logical thinking and categories. The child continues to improve their conversation skill. They started to learn math such as add, subtract, count and measure. Besides, the child does learn about the accumulation of length, mass, area, weight, time and volume. In this stage, the child able to sort objects, categorize objects, understanding of accumulation and able to solve hands on problems logically. The child does understand that not all the children have the same perceptions of an idea to understand a state from another person opinion or view. Although the child begins to think logically about concrete
events but they have difficulty to understand abstract or hypothetical concepts. For example, teacher asked the children who are the tallest among Ali, Abu and Ahmad. Ali is taller than Abu. Ali is shorter than Ahmad. Children cannot provide a correct answer because the situation is theoretical. If dolls are used to represent Ali, Abu and Ahmad, the children will be able to answer it. This is because the situation is concrete with physical representations.
Stage 4: Formal Operational (11-15 years) The child understands the world through hypothetical thinking and scientific reasoning. At this stage, the child can able to think out of the box. The child able to hypothesize, test and reevaluate where they can think in a formal way. Now, the child can plan his own life and being a responsible person for his own fate and belief. This enables the child to interact more effective in the environment. Besides, the child can understand what are metaphor, joke and meaning. The child so consider the possible outcomes and consequences of actions. This type of thinking is vital for long term planning. The child able to organize well to solve a problem in logically and systematic way when comes to problem solving.
Criticisms of Piaget Theory
Some researcher does question about Piaget theory and they found that it is unclear whether cognitive development appears in the 4stages. Piaget underestimates the children’s abilities and children need time to understand a concept before they absorb it. Competence performance gap happens when motor skill is not good to absorb their knowledge and mental process. For example, preoperational stage of development involves permanence. Researchers recommend the competence performance gap is not an evidence of the object permanence in the stage of sensorimotor. Piaget does an examination on child’s understanding. Piaget concluded that the child will not look for the toy when the toy disappear in front of him and acted the toy has never existed before. According to researchers, the child knows the toy existing just that it is difficult for them to search around. Piaget looks down at children’s ability to explore the world from another person’s opinion or view. Piaget gave the three mountain task to children to identify what picture they can get on 3D model. But the child having difficult to figure it out the exact
picture. If the scene replace by toys or animals, the children still can spot which are the correct picture of the perspective. In another meaning, the child start to develop another person’s of view. Researcher also stated that Piaget devalue the social mechanism of cognitive development, infants and young children are competent than Piaget found, children’s thinking is not as consistent as Piaget’s theory and Piaget look d own on child’s abilities.
Piaget Theory in Education
According to Daniel Willingham (2008), he stated that the learning process for children does not involve stability followed by schema change to a new level of stability. Furthermore, it is depends on parents and teachers teach children how they learn and interact with the environment around them. Now, Piagets’ theory is widely accepted that a child’s intellectual ability is a combination of genetics and environment. The teaching methods are taught where the school children are familiar with; teachers, audio visual, and demonstrations. Parents and teachers play main important role to boost their children’s intellectual development through environmental factor. Parents and teachers must provide learning materials and experiences from the early age such as talking and reading to help them discover the world around them. It is also vital for parents and teachers to challenge the children’s abilities or talents and help children to gain concrete experiences (field trips, communicate among friends, share experience among friends, etc) to help them to learn.
Conclusion
In a nut shell, children need to explore, manipulate, experiment, search, question and find out the answer by themselves. Activity is vital. Parents and teachers need to find out the children strengths and weakness. Parents and teachers must guide, give motivation, allow children to learn from mistakes and prepare learning material which allow them to explore new learning. Most importantly, parents and teachers should have confidence in the child’s capability to learn on their own and seek what their interest is in.
References
Atherton JS (2010). Piaget's developmental theory. Learning and Teaching. http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/piaget.htm [viewed 12 Dec 2010] ‘Cognitive Development.’ Encyclopedia of Psychology. Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2nd ed. Gale Group, 2001. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0004/ai_2699000417/ [viewed 11 Dec 2010] Cognitive Development Stage, Jean Piaget. http://expandmind.com/jp.htm [viewed on 30 Nov 2010] Cognitive Development - Overview Of Cognitive Development, Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development, Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory http://social.jrank.org/pages/145/CognitiveDevelopment.html#ixzz19fIkUAsu [viewed on 29 Nov 2010] Cynthia Joffrion (2010). The Learning Model of Jean Piaget . PR Log – Global Press Release Distribution. http://www.prlog.org/10814343-the-learning-model-of-jean-piaget.html [viewed 30 Nov 2010] Huitt, W., & Hummel, J. (2003). Piaget's theory of cognitive development . Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University. http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/cogsys/piaget.html [viewed on 1 Dec 2010] Jeffrey Donaldson (2009). Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development. Understand the Developing Child’s Mind and How Kids Learn. Suite101.com. (12 Sept 2009) http://www.suite101.com/content/piagets-theory-of-cognitive-development-a147876 [viewed 1 Dec 2010] Kendra Cherry. Support and criticism of Piaget’s Stage Theory. About.com. http://psychology.about.com/od/piagetstheory/p/piagetcriticism.htm [viewed 2 Dec 2010] Psycho Hawks (2010).Theories of cognitive development: Jean Piaget. [blog], 5 Sept 2010. http://psychohawks.wordpress.com/2010/09/05/theories-of-cognitive-development-jean-piaget/ [viewed 1 Dec 2010] Willingham, D. T. What is Developmentally Appropriate Practice? American Educator, Summer, 34-39, 2008. Jean Piaget
