My Personal History
Piaget and Vygotsky
Emily Melton
7/30/2012
This document is a personal history of my life based on Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory. It
includes three examples of Sensorimotor stage, Preoperational Stage, Concrete Operations Stage, and
Formal Operation stage. There are also some examples of Vygotsky’s Social Learning Theory.
Personal History, Piaget/Vygotsky
Some examples of Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage from my life include gross
motor skills, object permanence, and new things through mental combinations.
When I was an infant about 4 months old my mother told me that I really enjoyed
tummy time, I started scooting across the floor using my arms to hold me up, and
eventually crawling. By age 9 months I loved playing peek-a-boo with my mom,
she would hide behind her hands; I would move her hands to see her face.
Sometimes she would hide my older sister behind a blanket and I would look
under it to find her, she said it was one of my favorite games as an infant. At the
age of 19 months old I was in my high chair drinking water from a glass, I dropped
it on the floor, and when it shattered I started crying, and I never did it again
because I was scared.
Preoperational Stage from my life includes animism, “just-right”, and focus of
appearance. When I was very small about three months old, my parents gave me
a big fluffy pink stuffed bunny, I always slept with it, and when I was about three
years old I named him Funny Bunny. He went everywhere with me and to me
Funny Bunny was alive; I would talk to him and he understood what I said. At age
four I had to have my milk warm, I couldn’t drink it cold, and I refused to use a
cup. Instead I used a “sippy” cup, my mom would try to put it in a cup but it just
wasn’t right and it wasn’t the same. In elementary school at about age 6 I was
focused on my hair and freckles, no one else in my class had red hair, and no one
had all these freckles like me. Some kids had freckles but I had so much more they
weren’t like me.
From the ages of six to eleven is the Concrete Operations Stage, children
put things and people into classifications, use transitive inference and logical
thought. As a young child about seven years old I went to an elementary school
with kids in grades kindergarten to sixth grade, I remember thinking that there
were so many school kids. There were my friend in my class, the other third
graders, the fourth graders, and fifth graders and so on, but we all went to Bain.
Another thing I classified into groups was horses, I loved horses, I knew different
breeds like Palominos, Thoroughbreds, Clydesdales, and Pintos, there were tall
ones and black ones, but they were all horses and I always wanted one.
For Christmas one year when I was nine, I got a small microscope, and I would
look at everything. Under the microscope it was so different, and I could see more
details on my skin, which helped me learn there was more to the skin that I could
see with the naked eye.
The last stage is the Formal Operational Stage which starts at age eleven to
twelve and covers a wide range of abstract thought. In junior high school at about
age thirteen, I was introduce to algebra, I didn’t fully understand where these
letters where coming from and why we were multiplying numbers by letters, but I
went along with it. I entertained the thought but didn’t fully grasp it until the end
of the year. When I was a senior in high school I was going through a hard time
and dropped out of school. My dad would ask what I was going to do with my life,
at first I wasn’t sure, so I thought about careers, but I knew I couldn’t go to college
without my diploma; and to me a GED wasn’t good enough, so the next year I
went back to school and graduated. As I turned 21 new responsibilities
flourished, I now had to make a decision whether to drink and drive. I thought
about the possible outcomes of getting in a wreck and hurting someone or
myself, getting a DUI and losing my license. Once I decided it wasn’t worth the
risk, I called for a ride and got home safely.
I feel that Vygotsky had a good theory about social and cultural learning;
the following are examples of his theory from my life. As a young child about 7
years old I had problems concentrating in school, and with read and writing. The
teachers and my mom came up with ideas to help me; they came up with the idea
to put up blinders like a cubicle so I couldn’t see what the others were doing. I
had tutors help me read and teach me writing skills. They provided scaffolding for
me to learn in a way that was best for me. When I was a young child I would
watch my oldest sister and ask her many questions. I thought that she knew a lot
and because she was older, and I wanted to be like her. I would listen to her
music, and try on her clothes; I would even try to hang out with her friends. I
mimicked her style and wore similar clothes. Once I reached junior high, I started
to change, based on the actions of my peers. I wanted to be more like the others
to fit in to my surroundings, so I started to wear makeup and do my hair
differently. I made new friends and acted more like them, and learned by
watching them.