Theories Of Cognitive Development

Lawrence Kohlberg is known for his theory of moral development developed in 1958. His theory was dependent on the thinking of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget and American philosopher John Dewey. It consists of three levels of moral reasoning: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. These levels are based on the degree to which an individual accommodates to the conventional standards of society. Each level aquires two stages that serve as different standards of sophistication in moral reasoning. Overall, Kohlberg affirms that moral development is a process of maturing that emerges from thinking about about moral issues (“Kohlberg’s Moral Development”).

Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development has served as basis of the investigation of many issues related to morality. Building on Piaget’s belief that the moral judgment of children derived from their cognitive development, Kohlberg attend to identify cognitive stages that underline the development of moral thinking.

The second stage is the Preoperational stage which is age two to seven years old. In this stage, they can think and their language becomes fully grown. Their memory and imagination becomes to develop. For example, a four-year-old will imagine to have superpower to save the world which he/she is using her imagination. During the early stages of Preoperational children are still seeing things only from their own viewpoint which Piaget refer to as egocentric. An example of egocentric is that my sister loves strawberry ice-cream so she thinks that her friend loves strawberry ice cream but what my sister doesn’t realize is that she only seeing her viewpoint on strawberry ice cream and not seeing her friend viewpoint on strawberry ice cream. When the child has reach his/her seventh birthday their “thinking becomes more logical, flexible, and more organized than it was during the preschool years” according to Who I am in the Lives of Children. (203) Which means that the child is ready to go to the next stage which is concrete operational stage.

The third stage is the Concrete Operational Stage, which occurs around age seven to age eleven. This stage marks the beginning of logical or operational thoughts for the child. Their thinking becomes less egocentric, and the child can now understand that although the appearance of something changes, the “thing” itself does not. For example, if a child decided to spread out a pile of blocks, they know there are still as many blocks as there were before, even though it looks different.

Piagetian theory of cognitive development includes four main stages. Sensorimotor stage is from birth to two years of age, preoperational stage is from ages two to seven, concrete operational stage is from seven to eleven years of age, and formal operational stage is from eleven years and on. During the preoperational, young children are able to think about

Lawrence Kohlberg (who was Director of Harvard 's Center of Moral Development), was a child development expert of his time, and considered himself a philosopher of morality. His work on stages of moral development proved indispensable (though not without its critiques), and continues to serve as a fundamental study on our motivation and reasoning, in relation to ethics and morality. Kohlberg 's studies are an adaption of earlier principles from a theory conceived by a Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher (Jean Piaget). There are three main stages of moral developmental as described by Kohlberg, which I will discuss, and also critiques on Kohlberg 's work, which include the lack of evidence as it pertains to gender-related differences in moral development and moral reasoning styles. To begin the dissection of Kohlberg 's studies, one must begin with defining and understanding Kohlberg 's stages. They are classified as pre-convention, conventional, and post-conventional.

There is a lot of evidence that focuses on moral development as a life-long process that develops throughout a person’s life and changes based on a variety of factors. The first is Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. Inspired by early work of Piaget on moral judgment, Kohlberg set out to develop a more comprehensive cognitive understanding of moral development. Kohlberg used with clinical interviewing procedure in which he presented a sample 10-to-16- year old boys with hypothetical moral dilemmas presenting in the conflict between two moral values- and asked them what the main actor should do and why. ? Real life moral dilemmas often help to highlight the role of emotion in moral judgment. Then he followed the participants longitudinally, reinter viewing

The development of morals values in a human life stems from the exposure and experience of varying degrees of those experiences in the life of a developing child. Popular theorists have wrestled and some won their arguments that, moral development is a social function, and therefore forms as a result of social condition. On the other hand, there is a strong argument from theorists such as Kohlberg that moral development is a mix component of psychological pre-disposition and the condition of a child?s life from the parent roots. Despite many harsh criticism of the Theory of Moral Development from Kohlberg, the stages of development he derived at have offered plausible explanations that moral development can be defined clearly a core function of nurturance. The way a child to acts or not act in any given situation determines whether

Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) further developed the works of Piaget (1896-1980) in regards to moral development. This essay will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Kohlberg’s theory in a critical manner, looking at the positive aspects of his research and the disadvantages of the types of situations he gave in his experiments, the universal accuracy of his results and the controversial findings of sex differences in regards to morality. Kohlberg advanced Piaget’s theory of moral development and interviewed 10-13 year-old boys to find out how they would attempt to resolve moral issues. These issues varied between situations that involved obeying the law, authority figure or rule and ones that would conflict these rules in order to serve a human need. From the answers that were given Kohlberg devised three levels, each split up into two stages, that he believed were universally found and that every person went through to advance their levels of morality (Shaffer & Kipp, 2007).

The first five years are very crucial to a child and many milestones are achieved. Piaget is known as one of the early primary contributors to cognitive development theory. Piaget theorized cognition developed in four different stages through childhood. He based his theory off of observation analysis of subjects. The four stages that he defined were sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage, and formal operational stages. The sensorimotor stage occurs between 0 - 2 years of age and is when imitation, memory and thought begin to be utilized. Next the preoperational stage occurs between ages 2 - 7 years old and encompasses language development and recognizing symbolic form. The third phase is the concrete operational stage that takes place between ages 7 – 11 years old and represents the ability to solve hands-on problems logically. The fourth and final

In the sensorimotor stage the child discovers the environment through physical actions such as sucking, grabbing, shaking and pushing. During these first two years of life children realize objects still exist, even if it is out of view. This concept is known as object permanence. Children in the preoperational stage develop language skills, but may only grasp an idea with repeated exposure. As Piaget describes in the next stage, children draw on knowledge that is based on real life situations to provide more logical explanations and predictions. Lastly, in the formal operational stage children use higher levels of thinking and present abstract ideas.

These include the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational and lastly the formal operational stage, all of which have set and specific age groups. The sensorimotor stage spans from birth till two years of age, This is when infants learn and explore primarily with their senses and movement. The preoperational stage spans from 2 years of age to 7, during this stage infancy comes to an end and a language development occurs. The concrete operational stage starts at 7 years of age and lasts till 12, throughout this stage children are able to truly think logically and can imagine the consequences of an event happening without it actually happening. Lastly the formal operational stage includes ages 12 and older, This is the final stage of development and involves the understanding of complex thought processes and increased sophistication. Thus Piaget concluded that a 12 year old or older would be able to pass formal operations where as a child younger than 12 simply could

As stages in psychological development have been defined by Freud, stages in moral development have been outlined by early educators Jean Piaget and Kohlberg, who put forth differing views on the moral development of children. Piaget theorized that children process morals in stages, first one then the next, with a transition in between. The first stage (from ages 4 to about 7) is referred to as “heteronymous morality”, where children think of rules as constants, that is to say, rules are part of the world’s makeup with no input or possibility of change by people. As children progress from seven to ten years of age, they move from one stage to the next, maintaining some of the traits of the

I remember a few things about my development from ages 7-11, but I actually called my parents to gain a little bit more information. As far as my height and weight go, I believe I was average for my age groups. I know compared to my classmates I was a little bit shorter, but even to this day my high school classmates are all fairly tall. When I look back at pictures at that age I would say my facial features and body type have remained fairly consistent since that time. I was very athletic and adventurous for my age. I loved every type sport and was always out and active. With this amount of activity, my motor development improved greatly. A couple of my favorite things to do were ride bike, baseball, and basketball, all of which use gross motor skills. My fine motor skills were also constantly improving, and they became second nature at that point. When it came to my health, I would say that I was as healthy as a child could be at that age.

The theory of moral development, advanced by psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg is one of the most well-known persuasive theories in the field of cognitive science and stems from the work of Jean Piaget, which hypothesizes on the direct correlation that exists between moral and cognitive development. Kohlberg speaks of the appearance and understanding of what is right and wrong from childhood to adulthood and explains by this transition through the identification of various levels of morality known as pre-conventional, conventional and post conventional. People will make decisions based on the understanding of the possible outcome and through reasoning of morals. (Target Concept)