Jean Piaget

Theory of Cognitive Development

While working in Binet's IQ test lab in Paris, Piaget became interested in how children think. He noticed that young children's answers were qualitatively different than older children which suggested to him that the younger ones were not dumber (a quantitative position since as they got older and had more experiences they would get smarter) but, instead, answered the questions differently than their older peers because they thought differently.

There are there are 2 major aspects to his theory: the process of coming to know and the stages we move through as we gradually acquire this ability.

The four development stages are described

1. Sensorimotor Stage: from birth to age 2 years (children experience the world through movement and senses and learn object permanence)
   


2. Preoperational Stage: from ages 2 to 7 (acquisition of motor skills)


3. Concrete Operational Stage: from ages 7 to 11 (children begin to think logically about concrete events)
   


4. Formal Operational Stage: after age 11 (development of abstract reasoning).

The Developmental Process

Piaget provided no concise (or clear) description of the development process as a whole. Broadly speaking it consisted of a cycle:

• The child performs an action which has an effect on or organizes objects, and the child is able to note the characteristics of the action and its effects.
  


• Through repeated actions, perhaps with variations or in different contexts or on different kinds of object, the child is able to differentiate and integrate its elements and effects. This is the process of reflecting abstraction (described in detail in Piaget 2001).
  


• At the same time, the child is able to identify the properties of objects by the way different kinds of action affect them. This is the process of empirical abstraction.
  


• By repeating this process across a wide range of objects and actions, the child establishes a new level of knowledge and insight. This is the process of forming a new cognitive stage.


• This dual process allows the child to construct new ways of dealing with objects and new knowledge about objects themselves.
  


• However, once the child has constructed these new kinds of knowledge, he or she starts to use them to create still more complex objects and to carry out still more complex actions.


• As a result, the child starts to recognize still more complex patterns and to construct still more complex objects. Thus a new stage begins, which will only be completed when all the child’s activity and experience have been re-organized on this still higher level.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget

The Process of Cognitive Development

Piaget was interested in how an organism adapts to its environment (Piaget described as intelligence.) Behavior (adaptation to the environment) is controlled through mental organizations called schemes that the individual uses to represent the world and designate action. This adaptation is driven by a biological drive to obtain balance between schemes and the environment (equilibration).

Piaget hypothesized that infants are born with schemes operating at birth that he called "reflexes." In other animals, these reflexes control behavior throughout life. However, in human beings as the infant uses these reflexes to adapt to the environment, these reflexes are quickly replaced with constructed schemes.

Piaget described two processes used by the individual in its attempt to adapt: assimilation and accommodation. Both of these processes are used throughout life as the person increasingly adapts to the environment in a more complex manner.

Assimilation is the process of using or transforming the environment so that it can be placed in preexisting cognitive structures. Accommodation is the process of changing cognitive structures in order to accept something from the environment. Both processes are used simultaneously and alternately throughout life. An example of assimilation would be when an infant uses a sucking schema that was developed by sucking on a small bottle when attempting to suck on a larger bottle. An example of accommodation would be when the child needs to modify a sucking schema developed by sucking on a pacifier to one that would be successful for sucking on a bottle.

As schemes become increasingly more complex (i.e., responsible for more complex behaviors) they are termed structures. As one's structures become more complex, they are organized in a hierarchical manner (i.e., from general to specific).

http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/piaget.html

Piaget’s theory of Cognitive development, he noticed that children’s answers were quantitatively different from those of older children. There are 2 major aspects to his theory, the process of coming to know and the stages we move through to acquire this knowledge. There are 4 developmental stages, but I have found that in reading about Piaget, Vygotsky is mentioned a fair bit. This to me means that Piaget is useful, but his theory comes together when it is used along side Vygotsky’s theory of social interaction. People assimilate and accommodate to increasingly difficult situations in their life. Piaget’s theory suggests that people move through the stages, but not all people actually reach the final, formal stage in Piaget’s theory. As a teacher I need to focus my lessons on the stage that the students are at, but in the same instance I need to be able to challenge my students so they can reach the next level in Piaget’s theory.