Piaget's theory of
cognitive development
may be a comprehensive theory about the character and development of human
intelligence. it had been first created by Swiss developmental psychologist
Piaget (1896–1980). the idea deals with the character of data itself and the
way humans gradually come to accumulate , construct, and use it. Piaget's
theory is especially referred to as a developmental stage theory. Piaget
"was intrigued by the very fact that children of various ages made
different sorts of mistakes while solving problems". He also believed that
children aren't like "little adults" who may know less; children just
think and speak differently.
By Piaget thinking that children have great cognitive
abilities, he came up with four different cognitive development stages, which
he put out into testing. Within those four stages he managed to group them with
different ages. Each stage he realized how children managed to develop their
cognitive skills. for instance , he believed that children experience the
planet through actions, representing things with words, thinking logically, and
using reasoning. To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive
reorganization of mental processes resulting from biological maturation and
environmental experience. He believed that children construct an understanding
of the planet around them, experience discrepancies between what they already
know and what they discover in their environment, then adjust their ideas
accordingly. Moreover, Piaget claimed that cognitive development is at the
middle of the human organism, and language is contingent knowledge and
understanding acquired through cognitive development. Piaget's earlier work
received the best attention. Child-centered classrooms and "open
education" are direct applications of Piaget's views. Despite its huge
success, Piaget's theory has some limitations that Piaget recognized himself:
for instance , the idea supports sharp stages instead of continuous development
(horizontal and vertical décalage).
Cognition refers to
thinking and memory processes, and cognitive development refers to long-term changes in
these processes. one among the foremost widely known perspectives about
cognitive development is that the cognitive stage theory of a Swiss
psychologist named Piaget . Piaget created and studied an account of how
children and youth gradually become ready to think logically and
scientifically. Because his theory is particularly popular among educators, we
specialise in it during this chapter.
Piaget was a psychological constructivist: in his view,
learning proceeded by the interplay of assimilation (adjusting new experiences
to suit prior concepts) and accommodation (adjusting concepts to suit new
experiences). The to-and-fro of those two processes leads not only to
short-term learning, but also to long-term developmental change. The long-term
developments are really the most focus of Piaget’s cognitive theory.
After
observing children closely, Piaget proposed that cognition developed through
distinct stages from birth through the top of adolescence. By stages he meant a
sequence of thinking patterns with four key features:
They always
happen within the same order.
·
No
stage is ever skipped.
·
Each
stage may be a significant transformation of the stage before it.
·
Each
later stage incorporated the sooner stages into itself.
Basically this is often the “staircase” model of development
mentioned at the start of this chapter. Piaget proposed four major stages of
cognitive development, and called them (1) sensorimotor intelligence, (2)
preoperational thinking, (3) concrete operational thinking, and (4) formal
operational thinking. Each stage is correlated with an age period of childhood,
but only approximately.
The
sensorimotor stage: birth to age 2
In Piaget’s theory, the sensorimotor stage is first, and is
defined because the period when infants “think” by means of their senses and
motor actions. As every new parent will attest, infants continually touch,
manipulate, look, listen to, and even bite and chew objects. consistent with
Piaget, these actions allow them to find out about the planet and are crucial
to their early cognitive development.
The infant’s actions allow the kid to represent (or construct
simple concepts of) objects and events. A toy animal could also be just a
confusing array of sensations initially , but by looking, feeling, and
manipulating it repeatedly, the kid gradually organizes her sensations and
actions into a stable concept, toy animal. The representation acquires a
permanence lacking within the individual experiences of the thing , which are constantly
changing. Because the representation is stable, the kid “knows,” or a minimum
of believes, that toy animal exists albeit the particular toy animal is
temporarily out of sight. Piaget called this sense of stability object
permanence, a belief that objects exist whether or not they're actually
present. it's a serious achievement of sensorimotor development, and marks a
qualitative transformation in how older infants (24 months) believe experience
compared to younger infants (6 months).
The
preoperational stage: age 2 to 7
In the preoperational stage, children use their new ability
to represent objects during a big variety of activities, but they are doing not
yet roll in the hay in ways in which are organized or fully logical. one among
the foremost obvious samples of this type of cognition is play , the improvised
make-believe of preschool children. If you've got ever had responsibility for
youngsters of this age, you've got likely witnessed such play. Ashley holds a
plastic banana to her ear and says: “Hello,
Mom? are you able to make certain to bring me my baby doll? OK!” Then she
hangs up the banana and pours tea for Jeremy into an invisible cup. Jeremy
giggles at the sight of all of this and exclaims: “Rinnng! Oh Ashley, the phone
is ringing again! You better answer it.” And thereon goes.
The
concrete operational stage: age 7 to 11
As children continue into grade school , they become ready to
represent ideas and events more flexibly and logically. Their rules of thinking
still seem very basic by adult standards and typically operate unconsciously,
but they permit children to unravel problems more systematically than before,
and thus to achieve success with many academic tasks. within the concrete
operational stage, for instance , a toddler may unconsciously follow the rule:
“If nothing is added or removed , then the quantity of something stays an
equivalent .” this easy principle helps children to know certain arithmetic
tasks, like in adding or subtracting zero from variety , also on do certain classroom
science experiments, like ones involving judgments of the amounts of liquids
when mixed. Piaget called this era the concrete operational stage because
children mentally “operate” on concrete objects and events. they're not yet
able, however, to work (or think) systematically about representations of
objects or events. Manipulating representations may be a more abstract skill
that develops later, during adolescence.
The formal
operational stage: age 11 and beyond
In the last of the Piagetian stages, the kid becomes ready to
reason not only about tangible objects and events, but also about hypothetical
or abstract ones. Hence it's the name formal operational stage—the period when
the individual can “operate” on “forms” or representations. With students at
this level, the teacher can pose hypothetical (or contrary-to-fact) problems:
“What if the planet had never discovered oil?” or “What if the primary European
explorers had settled first in California rather than on the East Coast of the
United States?” To answer such questions, students must use hypothetical
reasoning, meaning that they need to manipulate ideas that change in several
ways directly , and do so entirely in their minds.
The work of Lev Vygotsky (1934) has become the inspiration of
much research and theory in cognitive development over the past several
decades, particularly of what has become referred to as Social Development
Theory.
Vygotsky's
Theories
Vygotsky's Theories stress the elemental role of social
interaction within the development of cognition (Vygotsky, 1978), as he
believed strongly that community plays a central role within the process of
"making meaning." Unlike Piaget's notion that childrens' development
must necessarily precede their learning, Vygotsky argued, "learning may be
a necessary and universal aspect of the method of developing culturally
organized, specifically human psychological function" (1978, p. 90). In
other words, social learning tends to precede (i.e., come before) development.
Vygotsky has
developed a sociocultural approach to cognitive development. He developed his theories at round
the same time as Piaget was beginning to develop his ideas (1920's and 30's),
but he died at the age of 38, then his theories are incomplete - although a
number of his writings are still being translated from Russian.
No single principle (such as Piaget's equilibration) can
account for development. Individual development can't be understood without
regard to the social and cultural context within which it's embedded. Higher
mental processes within the individual have their origin in social processes.
1: Vygotsky places more emphasis on
culture affecting cognitive development.
This contradicts Piaget's view of universal stages and
content of development (Vygotsky doesn't ask stages within the way that Piaget
does).
Hence Vygotsky assumes cognitive development varies across
cultures, whereas Piaget states cognitive development is usually universal
across cultures.
2: Vygotsky places considerably more
emphasis on social factors contributing to cognitive development.
(i) Vygotsky
states cognitive development stems from social interactions from guided
learning within the zone of proximal development as children and their
partner's co-construct knowledge. In contrast, Piaget maintains that cognitive
development stems largely from independent explorations during which children
construct knowledge of their own.
(ii) For
Vygotsky, the environment during which children get older will influence how they
think and what they believe .
3: Vygotsky places more (and
different) emphasis on the role of language in cognitive development.
According to
Piaget, language depends on thought for its development (i.e., thought comes
before language). For Vygotsky, thought and language are initially separate
systems from the start of life, merging at around three years aged , producing
verbal thought (inner speech).
For
Vygotsky, cognitive development results from an internalization of language.
4: Consistent with Vygotsky adults
are a crucial source of cognitive development.
Adults
transmit their culture's tools of intellectual adaptation that children
internalize. In contrast, Piaget emphasizes the importance of peers as peer
interaction promotes social perspective taking.
Social
Influences on Cognitive Development
Like Piaget, Vygotsky believes that young children are
curious and actively involved in their own learning and therefore the discovery
and development of latest understandings/schema. However, Vygotsky placed more
emphasis on social contributions to the method of development, whereas Piaget
emphasized self-initiated discovery.
According to
Vygotsky (1978),
much important learning by the kid occurs through social interaction with a
skillful tutor. The tutor may model behaviors and/or provide verbal
instructions for the kid . Vygotsky refers to the present as cooperative or
collaborative dialogue. the kid seeks to know the actions or instructions
provided by the tutor (often the parent or teacher) then internalizes the
knowledge , using it to guide or regulate their own performance.
Shaffer (1996) gives the instance of a lass who is
given her first jigsaw. Alone, she performs poorly in attempting to unravel the
puzzle. the daddy then sits together with her and describes or demonstrates
some basic strategies, like finding all the corner/edge pieces and provides a
few of pieces for the kid to place together herself and offers encouragement
when she does so.
As the child becomes more competent, the daddy allows the kid
to figure more independently. consistent with Vygotsky, this sort of social
interaction involving cooperative or collaborative dialogue promotes cognitive
development.
In order to realize an understanding of Vygotsky's theories
on cognitive development, one must understand two of the most principles of
Vygotsky's work: the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) and therefore the Zone of
Proximal Development (ZPD).
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