2.7: Piaget's Cognitive Perspective

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) is one of the most influential cognitive theorists. Piaget was inspired to explore children’s ability to think and reason by watching his own children’s development. He was one of the first to recognize and map out the ways in which children’s thought differs from that of adults. His interest in this area began when he was asked to test the IQ of children and began to notice that there was a pattern in their wrong answers. He believed that children’s intellectual skills change over time through maturation (biologically driven process that happens from within). Children of differing ages interpret the world differently in kind, not just amount.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Jean Piaget.[1]

Tenets of Piagetian theory

Piaget's theory is replete with ideas that he propounded based on his observational research. To understand his theory there are some basic concepts that we need to discuss in more detail.

Equilibrium

Piaget believed our desire to understand the world comes from a need for cognitive equilibrium. This is an agreement or balance between what we sense in the outside world and what we know in our minds. If we experience something that we cannot understand, we try to restore the balance by either changing our thoughts or by altering the experience to fit into what we do understand. When you see an animal that you have never seen before how do you make sense of this animal? You might use them to establish a new category of animal in your mind or you might think about how they are similar to another animal you have a category for.

Schema

A schema or schemes are categories of knowledge. They are like mental boxes of concepts. A child has to learn many concepts. They may have a scheme for “under” and “soft” or “running” and “dog”. All of these are schema. Our efforts to understand the world around us lead us to develop new schema and to modify old ones.

Assimilation

One way to make sense of new experiences is to focus on how they are similar to what we already know. This is assimilation. So the animal we see that is very different may be understood as being “sort of like a dog” or “it has fur and walks on four legs.” Or a new food may be assimilated when we determine that it tastes like chicken!

Accomodation

Another way to make sense of the world is to change our mind. We can make a cognitive accommodation to this new experience by adding new schema. This food is unlike anything I’ve tasted before. I now have a new category of foods that are bitter-sweet in flavor, for instance. This is accommodation. Do you accommodate or assimilate more frequently? Children accommodate more frequently as they build new schema. Adults tend to look for similarity in their experience and assimilate. They may be less inclined to think “outside the box.”

Stages of Cognitive Development

Piaget suggested different ways of understanding that are associated with maturation. His theory is often cited as an example of qualitative theories of development. He divided cognitive development into four stages, claiming that children don't simply have less memory or other cognitive abilities but rather that they think differently at different ages.

Table \(\PageIndex{1}\): - Piaget believed that children go through 4 stages of cognitive development

Name of Stage	Description of Stage
Sensorimotor Stage	During the sensorimotor stage children rely on use of the senses and motor skills. From birth until about age 2, the infant knows by tasting, smelling, touching, hearing, and moving objects around. This is a real hands-on type of knowledge.
Preoperational Stage	In the preoperational stage, children from ages 2 to 7, become able to think about the world using symbols. A symbol is something that stands for something else. The use of language, whether it is in the form of words or gestures, facilitates knowing and communicating about the world. This is the hallmark of preoperational intelligence and occurs in early childhood. However, these children are preoperational or pre-logical. They still do not understand how the physical world operates.
Concrete Operational	Children in the concrete operational stage, ages 7 to 11, develop the ability to think logically about the physical world. Middle childhood is a time of understanding concepts such as size, distance, and constancy of matter, and cause and effect relationships. A child knows that a scrambled egg is still an egg and that 8 ounces of water is still 8 ounces no matter what shape of glass contains it.
Formal Operational	During the formal operational stage children, at about age 12, acquire the ability to think logically about concrete and abstract events. The teenager who has reached this stage is able to consider possibilities and to contemplate ideas about situations that have never been directly encountered. More abstract understanding of religious ideas or morals or ethics and abstract principles such as freedom and dignity can be considered.

Criticisms of Piaget’s Theory

Piaget has been criticized for overemphasizing the role that physical maturation plays in cognitive development and in underestimating the role that culture and interaction (or experience) plays in cognitive development. Looking across cultures reveals considerable variation in what children are able to do at various ages. Piaget may have underestimated what children are capable of given the right circumstances.[2]

Further, not everyone agrees that development is stage-like and discontinuous as Piaget so strongly suggests.

Main Points about Piaget and Cognitive stages of Development

Piaget, one of the most influential cognitive theorists, believed that

• Children think differently than adults do and this difference is one of kind, not only amount
• Understanding is motivated by trying to balance what we sense in the world and what we know in our minds. When presented with new knowledge we may add new schema (categories of knowledge) or modify existing ones.
• Children’s understanding of the world changes as their cognitive skills mature through 4 stages: sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concreate operational stage, and formal operational stage.

Attributions:

Child Growth and Development by Jennifer Paris, Antoinette Ricardo, and Dawn Rymond, 2019, is licensed under CC BY 4.0

[1] Image is in the public domain

[2] Lecture Transcript: Developmental Theories by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (modified by Jennifer Paris)

Exploring Cognition by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0