Piaget theory of cognitive development
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT refers to how a person perceives, thinks, and gains an understanding of his or her world through the interaction and influence of genetic and learned factors.
Jean Piaget, who was both a biologist and a psychologist. From the 1920s to his death in 1980, Piaget (1929) studied how children solved problems in their natural settings, such as cribs, sandboxes, and playgrounds. Piaget developed one of the most influential theories of cognitive development (Bjorklund, 2005).
Read more topics :
Read more topics :
Piaget believed that from early on, a child acts like a tiny scientist who is actively involved in making guesses or hypotheses about how the world works. For example, when given blocks, 5-month-old Sam puts them into his mouth, while 2-year-old Sam tries to stack them, and adolescent Sam laughs and plays a game of tossing blocks into a can. Piaget believed that children learned to understand things, such as what to do with blocks, through two active processes that he called assimilation and accommodation.
1) ASSIMILATION is the process by which a child uses old methods or experiences to deal with new situations.
2) ACCOMMODATION is the process by which a child changes old methods to deal with or adjust to new situations.
Piaget’s cognitive stages refer to four different stages—sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations , and formal operations—each of which is more advanced than the preceding stage because it involves new reasoning and thinking abilities.
1 THE SENSORIMOTOR STAGE (from birth to about age 2) is the first of Piaget’s cognitive stages. During this stage, infants interact with and learn about their environments by relating their sensory experiences (such as hearing and seeing) to their motor actions (mouthing and grasping).
HIDDEN OBJECTS - At the beginning of the sensorimotor stage, child has one thinking problem: remembering that hidden objects still exist.
OBJECT PERMANENCE refers to the understanding that objects or events continue to exist even if they can no longer be heard, touched, or seen.
The concept of object permanence develops slowly over a period of about nine months. By the end of the sensorimotor period (about age 2), an infant will search long and hard for lost or disappeared objects, indicating a fully developed concept of object permanence.
2 THE PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (from about 2 to 7 years old) is the second of Piaget’s cognitive stages. During this stage, children learn to use symbols, such as words or mental images, to solve simple problems and to think or talk about things that are not present.
During the preoperational stage, two of his cognitive limitations involve having problems with conservation and engaging in egocentric thinking.
CONSERVATION refers to the fact that even though the shape of some object or substance is changed, the total amount remains the same.
EGOCENTRIC (ee-goh-SEN-trick) thinking refers to seeing and thinking of the world only from your own viewpoint and having difficulty appreciating someone else’s viewpoint.
Piaget used the term egocentric thinking to mean that preoperational children cannot see situations from another person’s, such as a parent’s, point of view. When they don’t get their way, children may get angry or pout because their view of the world is so self-centered.
3 THE CONCRETE OPERATIONS STAGE (from about 7 to 11 years) is the third of Piaget’s cognitive stages. During this stage, children can perform a number of logical mental operations on concrete objects (ones that are physically present).
Children gradually master the concept of conservation during the concrete operational stage, and they also get better at classification.
Piaget called this the concrete operational stage is that children can easily classify or figure out relationships between objects provided the objects are actually physically present or “concrete.”
4 THE FORMAL OPERATIONS STAGE (from about 12 years old through adulthood) is Piaget’s fourth cognitive stage. During this stage, adolescents and adults develop the ability to think about and solve abstract problems in a logical manner.
Piaget believed adolescents develop thinking and reasoning typical of adults during the formal operations stage , adolescents also encounter new worlds of abstract ideas and hypothetical concepts.
Along with advances in cognitive abilities, the formal operations stage welcomes the return of EGOCENTRIC THINKING, which refers to the tendency of adolescents to believe that others are always watching and evaluating them, and the belief that everyone thinks and cares about the same things they do. Because adolescents think people are watching their every move, they act as though they are performing in front of an audience.
IMAGINARY AUDIENCE refers to the belief adolescents have that everyone is watching all of their actions.
Another aspect of adolescent thinking related to egocentric thinking is the personal fable. PERSONAL FABLE refers to an adolescent’s belief that he or she is invulnerable, unique, and special.
No comments:
Post a Comment