JEAN PIAGET
1896-1980
Cognitive Development
• Spent 60 years charting the
intellectual growth of children
• Children progress from one stage of
thinking to another
• Children’s thought processes are
completely different at different
ages
• According to Piaget, intelligence is a life
process that helps an organism adapt to its
environment.
• Children actively construct new understanding
in their world based on their own experiences.
– No inborn knowledge or ideas
– Not given information by adults or taught how to
think
Cognitive Scheme
• A cognitive structure, or scheme, is an
organized pattern of thought or action that is
used to cope with or explain some aspect of
experience.
• Examples?
Cognitive Schemes
• assimilation: new experiences
interpreted in terms of current
cognitive schemes
• disequilibriums: contradictions between
the child’s understanding and the facts
• accommodate: child modifies existing
schemes to adapt
FOUR STAGES OF
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
• invariant developmental sequence: all
children progress through the stages
in the exact order in which they are
listed
– no stages are skipped
– each stage builds on the previous stage
and represents a more complex way of
thinking
SENSORIMOTOR
• Birth-Age 2
• Infants use sensory and motor capabilities to
explore and gain a basic understanding of the
environment
• Acquire a primitive sense of “self” and “others”
• Imitation: 8-18 months
• Deferred Imitation: 18-24 months
• Object permanence
• Begin to internalize behavioral schemes
Object Permanence
Object Permanence
Object Permanence
PREOPERATIONAL
• Ages 2-7
• Children use symbolism (images and
language) to represent and understand
aspects of the environment
• Thought is egocentric: children think
everyone sees the world the same way
that they do
• Conservation vs. Reversibility (not yet)
• Imaginative in play
CONCRETE
OPERATIONS
• Ages 7-12
• Cognitive operations: children acquire and
use components of logical thought
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–
no longer fooled by appearances
understand basic properties and relationships
understand conservation and reversibility
can begin to infer motives by observing other’s
behavior
Conservation
Conservation
Conservation
FORMAL
OPERATIONS
• Age 12 –beyond
• Thinking is now systematic and abstract
• They can operate on operations, or “think
about thinking”
• Can ponder hypothetical issues
• Systematic, deductive reasoning to
problem solve
PIAGET
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Major influence in educating educators
“curious, active children”
“individualized discovery learning”
“…assessing the impact of Piaget on
developmental psychology is like assessing
the impact of Shakespeare on English
literature or Aristotle on philosophy—
impossible.” (Beilin, 1992)