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Lesson 19: Cognitive Development Theory
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Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a highly influential Swiss psychologist and biologist, primarily recognized for his pioneering theory of cognitive development, which posits that children progress through four distinct stages of intellectual growth. As a key figure in 20th-century developmental psychology, he introduced fundamental concepts like schemas, assimilation, and accommodation to explain how individuals actively construct knowledge through interaction with their environment a process central to his theory of genetic epistemology. His work revolutionized the understanding of child development and profoundly impacted modern educational practices by advocating for learning methods tailored to a child's specific developmental stage.
Basic Cognitive Concepts
Schema – a mental framework that helps individuals understand and organize information about their environment.
- Ex. A young child has learned from experience that animals with four legs, fur, and a tail are called “dogs.” This knowledge forms their schema, or mental framework, for dogs.
Assimilation – integrating new experiences into already existing schemas.
- Ex. One day, the child visits a friend’s house and sees a cat for the first time. Because the cat has four legs and fur just like their existing schema for dogs, the child calls the cat “dog.” The new experience is fit into the existing schema, this is assimilation.
Disequilibration – a state of cognitive imbalance that occurs when new information cannot be fitted into existing schemas, prompting the need for change through accommodation to restore balance.
- Ex. The child’s parent gently corrects them and says, “That’s a cat, not a dog.” The child feels confused because this new animal doesn’t quite fit into their old schema. This confusion, a state of cognitive imbalance is called disequilibration, and it motivates the child to resolve it.
Accommodation – modifying or creating new schemas in response to new information that doesn’t fit the existing ones.
- Ex. To overcome this confusion, the child adapts by creating a new schema for cats, realizing that some animals with four legs and fur are called “cats,” not “dogs.” They have modified their mental frameworks to make sense of new information.
Equilibration – the process of maintaining a balanced state between assimilation and accommodation to ensure stable understanding.
- Ex. Once the child successfully separates dogs from cats using their new schemas, balance is restored. They can now accurately identify both animals, achieving equilibration, or a stable understanding.
Stages of Cognitive Development
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| Sensorimotor (birth to 2 years) |
During the early phase of development, a child starts with basic reflex actions such as grasping, sucking, and reaching, which gradually become more controlled and purposeful as the infant matures. This process shows how the senses and muscles are essential for learning, allowing the infant to explore and discover both themselves and their surroundings through sensory experiences and motor activity.
Object Permanence - is the understanding developed during the sensorimotor stage that things continue to exist even when they can no longer be seen, heard, or touched.
- Ex. When a toy is hidden under a blanket and a child begins to actively search for it rather than assuming it has simply disappeared, this demonstrates that the child recognizes the toy still exists even though it's out of sight.
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| Preoperational Stage (2 to 7 years) |
Children begin to use symbols and language (symbolic thought), but their thinking is often egocentric (difficulty seeing others' viewpoints) and lacks logical operations like conservation or reversibility
Symbolic Function - Children can use objects, images, or words to stand for things that are not physically present.
- Ex. A child pretends a stick is a sword while playing.
Egocentrism - Children believe that everyone sees the world exactly as they do.
- Ex. If a child covers their eyes and can’t see you, they may think you can’t see them either.
Centration - Children focus all their attention on one feature of an object or event, ignoring everything else.
- Ex. When shown two glasses of water, one tall and thin, the other short and wide, a child thinks the taller one has more water just because it looks higher.
Lack of Conservation - Children don’t understand that quantities remain the same even when their appearance changes.
- Ex. If clay is shaped from a ball to a long snake, a young child may think the amount of clay has changed.
Irreversibility - Children have trouble understanding that things can be returned to their original state.
- Ex. A child may not realize that pouring juice from a glass into a bottle and back into the glass doesn’t change the amount of juice.
Animism - Children believe non-living objects have feelings or intentions like people do.
- Ex. A child might say the sun is “happy” on a bright day or a doll is “sad” if it’s broken.
Realism - Children think that mental or imaginary happenings, such as dreams, are as real as actual events.
- Ex. A child might insist that the monster from their nightmare is really in their room.
Artificialism - Children think that natural events and objects are made by people.
- Ex. A child might believe people make the sun rise or that adults control the wind.
Transductive Reasoning - Children link two unrelated things and see them as cause and effect.
- Ex. A child may believe “I got sick because I was naughty yesterday,” connecting two events without real logic.
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| Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 11 years) |
Children start to think logically about concrete events and objects. They can grasp concepts like conservation, reversibility, and classification, and are less egocentric.
Decentering - Children can pay attention to several features of an object or situation at once.
- Ex. When choosing a toy, a child might notice both its color and its size, not just one feature.
Reversibility - Children understand that actions can be undone or reversed mentally.
- Ex. If clay is flattened, the child knows it can be rolled back into a ball.
Conservation - Children realize that properties like number, mass, or volume stay the same even when their shape or appearance changes.
- Ex. If water is poured from a short, wide glass into a tall, thin glass, they know the amount of water has not changed.
Seriation - Children can organize items in a sequence by a certain trait, such as length or weight.
- Ex. Arranging sticks from the shortest to the longest.
Classification - Children can put objects into groups based on common aspects or properties.
- Ex. Grouping buttons by color, then by shape.
Inductive Reasoning - Children make general rules based on specific experiences, moving from details to broader concepts.
- Ex. After seeing that leaves fall from trees in autumn several times, a child concludes that all trees lose their leaves in autumn.
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Formal Operational Stage (12 years and above) |
Adolescents and adults develop the ability to think abstractly, reason hypothetically, and use systematic scientific reasoning to solve complex problems.
Hypothetical Reasoning - children and adolescents can imagine a variety of possible solutions to a problem and test these ideas in their minds before acting.
- Ex. Faced with the task of making a paper airplane fly farther, a student thinks of different wing designs, predicts which might work best, and tests each one to see the results.
Analogical Reasoning - they can spot relationships between two situations and use that understanding to solve similar problems.
- Ex. A child who knows that a key unlocks a door might reason that a password can “unlock” a computer for access.
Deductive Reasoning - children apply general rules or principles to particular situations to reach logical conclusions.
- Ex. Knowing that all birds have feathers (general rule), a child deduces that a parrot, which is a bird, must have feathers too.
Cognitive Development Theory Quiz: click here
“If you truly understand, comment your reflection in at least 3-5 sentences or more about this lesson.”
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