Journal #2: Jean Piaget's Constructivist Theory of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget was a french psychologist, who was the first to make a systematic study of cognitive development. Piaget is best known for the identifying the stages of mental development, called schema and establishing fields of cognitive theory and developmental psychology.

Before Piaget, people believed that children were less competent thinkers than adults, but with his work he show that young children think on a completely different way compared to adults. When Piaget looked at children he noticed that children are borned with a very basic mental structure, which were inherited or evolved. Piaget theory was called the Cognitive theory. His theory was different than many others at that time because his study was on children, compared to the adult studies that the other psychologist did.

The Cognitive theory has three basic components: Schema; Equilibrium, assimilation and accommodation; and the stages of development. Piaget defined a schema as 'a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning'. The schema is the basic building blocks of intelligence behaviors. The Schema changes when the child is exposed to new challenges and demands. Equilibrium, assimilation and accommodation are adoption processes that enable the transitions between each of the stages. The stages of development was Piaget way of looking how a child learnt and how they were taught.

The stages of development are known as Theory of Cognitive Development, which consist of four stages. These stages are called the Sensorimotor stage (birth to 1 year), the Preoperational stage (2 to 7 years), the Concrete Operational stage (7 to 11 years), and the Formal Operational stage (11+ years).

During the Sensorimotor stage, children learn through movements and the sensations that come from those movements. They learn that they are different from the objects and people around them and they can cause certain things to happen. They also learn that things still exist even when they don’t see them. The experiment that Piaget did for this stage was that he hid a toy under a blanket, while the child was watching, and observed whether or not the child searched for the hidden toy. Piaget believed that if the child searched for the toy that they must have a mental representation of it.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/sensorimotor.html

In the second stage, the Preoperational stage, they have very egocentric thinking, and they assume that everyone sees from the same point of view as they do. The child is able to understand concepts like counting, and they are able to sort things according to their similarity. They also understand ideas of past, present and future, but they are still mostly focused on the present. The method that Piaget used for this stage was that he put a child at a table and put three mountains in front of him. Each of the mountains were different heights, and colors. The child is then allowed to walk around the model and then sits down on one side. A doll is then placed on the table. The child is showed 10 different images of the mountains and asked which photo is from the dolls view. Piaget believed that if the child correctly picks out the picture than he/she is not egocentric, and if they pick the photo of what they saw then they would still be considered egocentric.

http://cdn-3.simplypsychology.org/piaget2.jpg

At the Concrete Operational stage, children are able to see things from different points of view and start to imagine events that occur outside their own live. Through organized, logical thought processes they are now able to order objects by size and color, understand that if 3 + 2 = 5 then 5 - 2 = 3, also understand that a short wide cup can hold the same amount of liquid as a tall thin cup. piaget tested this by setting out a row of counter in front of a child and asked if the child to make another row the same as the one given. After the child is done, Piaget then spread out his row and asked the child if his row had more, less or the same amount of counters as the one the child made. By the age of seven most children could answer correctly, and Piaget concluded that by seven years old children are able to conserve numbers.

http://www.psychologycharts.com/piaget-stages-of-cognitive-development.html

The final stage of the Cognitive Development, Formal Operational stage, is the stage that onsets at the age of puberty. During this stage children are able to to reason in much more abstract ways using more of systematic logic. They have much more of a greater focus on possibilities and ideological issues.

http://savvyauntie.com/ExpertiseDetails.aspx?GroupId=9&Id=3682&Name=Teens+Engaged+With+School+More+Likely+to+Stay+in+School

Sources:

http://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html

http://www.simplypsychology.org/concrete-operational.html

http://www.simplypsychology.org/sensorimotor.html