Jean Piaget's Theory Of Child Development

Today’s child development system, in many ways, has been heavily influenced by the work of Jean Piaget. We can observe the use of his ideas in a wide range of facilities and environments. Infant’s abilities vary incredibly between birth to two years. These differences can be found even in the period of a month. Piaget was intrigued by these differences; therefore, he used his vast knowledge on children to divide development into six stages known as Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage. Throughout his observations he used children that he spent a large amount of time with, his very own children.

“According to Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development, it states that all children go through specific stages as their brain matures. It also stated that these stages are completed in a fixed order within all children, according to their range of age (Atherton).” In other words, one cannot expect a two month old baby to solve simple math problems as that of a five year old. There are four stages in which Piaget grouped the development of a child according to their age groups, in which children interact with people and their environment. The sensorimotor stage (birth until age 2) children use their senses to explore their environment. During this stage, children learn how to control objects, although they fail to understand that these objects if not within their view continue to exist. The preoperational stage (2 until age 7) children are not able to see other's viewpoints other than their own. In other words, if the same amount of water is poured into a short wide glass and then a tall thin glass the child will perceive that the taller glass has more water because of the height. The concrete operational stage (7 until 12) children begin to think logically, but only with a practical aid. The last stage of Piaget’s cognitive theory is the formal operation stage (12 through adulthood) in which children develop abstract thinking and begin to think logically in their minds (Piaget).

Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory describes four stages of human development which he described as naturally emerging reasoning and development. The first two stages can be described as sensori-motor development. In all stages of development, the child learns to adapt, assimilate, and accommodate new information into their thought process.  Stage one is Sensorimotor which lasts from birth to 2 years of age. There are six substages which the infant’s source of actions shifts from reflexes to

As with stage four, this stage is characterized by a means/ends differentiation. The infants are no longer restricted to the application of previously established schemata to obtain a goal. They can make the necessary alterations to their schemata to solve problems; this reflects a process of active experimentation. These differences in cognition coincide with improved locomotive abilities as the child becomes more physically active. In this stage, causal inferences are still unavailable to the infant - it must see an action occur before it has any understanding of the causal relationship.

In this stage children begin to learn and discover the world that is around them while they are developing their motor skills and reflexes (Siegler, 2005, p.29). In this stage children discover the world through their own ‘feel’ and ‘touch’. All of the reflexes they are discovering are natural skills/reflexes that a newborn is born with. They keep these for a short period as they develop more fully in later stages. Following the sensorimotor stage, comes the preoperational stage. Children who are at this stage in development are only able to see the world through one perspective. They miss an abundance of key details that an older child may have caught (Siegler, 2005, p.30). The next stage that a child goes through is known as the concrete operational stage. In this stage children have begun to develop the ability to have and perceive different perspectives, but they still continue to have trouble understanding and dealing with abstract situations (Siegler, 2005, p.29). The final stage in Piaget’s Stages of Development theory is the formal operational stage. At this stage of development adolescents and adults should be able to understand and apply abstract theories and ideas. They can also create and reason with things that are not ‘real’, they understand complex ideas that might not make perfect logical sense (Siegler, 2005, p.30).

He thought we go through four stages of cognitive development, these are: The Sensory motor stage: 0 - 18 months / 2years Piaget described the first two years of a child’s life as the sensory motor stage, this is when babies’ and toddlers’ knowledge and understanding are

Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development was divided into schemas, adaptation processes, and stages of development. Schemas can be described as the building blocks of knowledge which allow us to development mental models of our environment. The adaptation processes are divided into equilibrium, assimilation, and accommodation. His stages of development were further split into four components of its own; sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Before Piaget, many assumed in a society that children were on equal grounds with adults in terms of reasoning and even to some extent, logical thinking. Piaget introduced his theory which essentially describes the active development of a child’s understanding of the world which disproved previous assumptions. The general understanding of this theory is that as their bodies grew their minds did as well.

Jean Piaget, great pioneer of development psychology, is known for being one of the first to figure out that children function a lot differently than adults. He believed that children are actively processing their understanding of the world as they grow and that this happens in different stages, which led to the cognitive development theory. Piaget proposed 4 stages of cognitive development, which refer to the sensorimotor stage (0-2 years), the preoperational stage (2-7 years), the concrete operational stage (7-11 years) and the formal operational stage (12+ years). The age period at which each stage takes place is approximate. One has to complete the present stage to be able to go to the next. Every child will not complete the stage during the stated age bracket. In fact, some of them may never

Jean Piaget’s Preoperational Stage greatly contributes to the cognitive development in children. The main area in the preoperational stage is make-believe play. Piaget believed that when children have make-believe playtime they are exercising and enhancing newly required representational schemes. Make-believe play is very important in children’s development because it gives a child the opportunity to engage in problem-solving, communication, and empathy. Make-believe play also encourages imagination and creativity.

Jean Piaget is one of the pioneers to child development, he was an important factor in the growth, development and one of the most exciting research theorists in child development. A major force in child psychology, he studied both thought processes and how they change with age. He believed that children think in fundamentally different ways from adults.. Piaget’s belief is that all species inherit the basic tendency to organize their lives and adapt to the world that’s around them, no matter the age. Children develop schemas as a general way of thinking or interacting with ideas and objects in the environment. Children create and develop new schemas as they grow and experience new things. Piaget has identified four major stages of cognitive development which are: sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operations, and formal operations. According to the text here are brief descriptions of each of Piaget’s stages:

From a fertilized egg cell developing into an embryo, then into a foetus ,living in the mother's womb for nine months, then a baby was finally delivered and soon will learnt about his surrounding initially as a child.

Children develop cognition through two main stages that Jean Piaget theorized. The stages run from birth and infancy to school age children. Sensorimotor is the first stage and goes from birth to about the age of two. This stage implies that the children learn about the environment they live in and they learn this through the reflexes and movements they produce. They also learn that they are separate people from their parents and they can say goodbye to them and know they will come back. The second stage is called the preoperational stage. During this stage of development, children will learn how to incorporate symbols to represent objects. This is also the beginning of learning the alphabet and speech. The child is still very much egocentric at this point in time, but with the help of understanding educators, the child will grow appropriately onto the next stages of development. Finally, the children need to develop emotionally/socially.

Piaget considered the most critical factor in a child’s cognitive development to be interaction with peers. Piaget observed that children are most challenged in their thinking when they are with peers as they are all on equal footing and are freer to confront ideas than when interacting with adults. Piaget used the word ’schema’ to show the meaning of a child’s conclusions or thoughts and he felt that learning was a continuing process, where children need to adapt their original ideas if a new piece of information contradicted their conclusions. Piaget proposed as a child develops, so does their thinking and between birth and adulthood a person will go through four stages of cognitive development. Sensorimotor Period: which lasts from birth to around 2 years

Piaget was a Swiss scholar and a psychologist who studied children’s cognitive development. He developed the four critical stages of cognitive development and believed that children progress from the stages. The sensor motor stage is from birth to two years. Children experiment and learn the world through senses and actions. The Pre-operational stage is from around two to seven years. Children start to expand and develop vocabulary through pretend play, but still lack of logical reasoning. They begin to represent the world symbolically. The concrete operational state is to eleven years. Children think logically and rational. They begin to understand the thoughts and others are not necessarily the same. The formal operations stage to sixteen or more. At this final stage, children have abstract reasoning and concrete thinking.

Jean Piaget, a cognitivist, believed children progressed through a series of four key stages of cognitive development. These four major stages, sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational, are marked by shifts in how people understand the world. Although the stages correspond with an approximate age, Piaget’s stages are flexible in that if the child is ready they can reach a stage. Jean Piaget developed the Piagetian cognitive development theory. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development proposes that a child’s intellect, or cognitive ability, progresses through four distinct stages. The emergence of new abilities and ways of processing information characterize each stage. Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of mental development. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.