1.8: Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a Swiss psychologist and 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 noticed that there was a pattern in their wrong answers.

Piaget observed:

• children’s intellectual skills change over time through maturation.
• children of differing ages interpret the world differently. Because
• children are creating their own meaning

Image Source: Jean Piaget Wikimedia Commons

Definition: Schema

A schema or schemes are categories of knowledge. They are like mental boxes of concepts. Schema theory's primary claim is that our mind has mental frameworks (or schemas) that help organize information. These schemas help us to save our cognitive energy when processing the millions of pieces of information we encounter every day.

A child must learn many concepts. They may have a schema for “under” and “soft” or “running” and “sour.". Our efforts to understand the world around us lead us to develop new schema and to modify old ones.

Fig 1.8. Visualization of schemas - mental frameworks or knowledge categories to help organize information.

Image source: Brain connected to categories. Freepik

Piaget is often called a constructivist. Constructivism, particularly cognitive constructivism, emphasizes that learners actively build their own understanding of the world through experiences and interactions rather than just passively take in information. Knowledge is built on past experiences and interactions with the other people and the learner's environment. Constructivism in psychology explores how individuals actively construct their own meaning and understanding of the world

Piaget believed our desire to understand the world comes from a need for cognitive equilibrium, which represents a state of balance between a learner's existing knowledge and the need to adjust that knowledge to accommodate new information. When new information conflicts with our existing knowledge or understanding, it can create cognitive disequilibrium, a feeling of imbalance or discomfort.

• Restoring equilibrium involves assimilation and accommodation, allowing individuals to continuously refine their understanding and develop more sophisticated cognitive structures. One way to make sense of new experiences is to focus on how they are like what we already know. This is assimilation.
• Another way to make sense of the world is to change our mind. This is accommodation. 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.

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.”

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development suggests there are different ways of understanding that are associated with a child's maturation. The infant and toddler stages are described in Piaget's first two stages.

Fig. 1.8. Jean Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

Name of Stage	Description of Stage
Sensorimotor	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	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. They may, for instance, fear that they will go down the drain if they sit at the front of the bathtub, even though they are too big.
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 can do at various ages. Piaget may have underestimated what children are capable of given the right circumstances.

Key Points to Remember - Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

• Understanding is motivated by trying to balance what we sense in the world and what we know in our minds.
• Understanding is organized through creating categories of knowledge. When presented with new knowledge we may add new schema or modify existing ones.
• Children’s understanding of the world of the world changes are their cognitive skills mature through 4 stages:
  • sensorimotor stage (Birth-2 years)
  • preoperational stage (Ages 2-7)
  • concrete operational stage (Ages 7-11)
  • formal operational stage (Begins around age 12)

Sources

• Lecture Transcript: Developmental Theories. Lifespan Development. Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (modified by Jennifer Paris)
• Exploring Cognition. Lifespan Development. Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC BY 4.0