Jean Piagets Cognitive Stages of Development1 A young child understands of fantasy and reality is certainly different from an adults.

Just as childs body and physical abilities change, his or her ways of knowing or perceiving the world also grows and changes. Major Assumptions, Terms and Concepts of Piagets Theory Perhaps the best way to approach an understanding of Jean Piaget is to recognize that his background was as a biologist. Thus, his saw human cognition as only one of the on going processes of biology. Piaget believed that we are all born with an innate drive toward knowledge as part of our overall need for survival. Just as food is taken in and then digested into forms that are useful for the organisms biological survival, information is taken in the human brain and digested in ways that also helps the individual to survive. The cognitive processes are the digestive mechanism that helps humans adapt to their environment. Intelligence is that ability to make adaptive choices. To understand the process of adaptation, we need to understand three major Piagetian concepts: schemata, assimilation and accommodation. I. Schemata Schemata or schemas are the basic units of the intellect. They are cognitive factors that organize our interactions with the environment, and they grow and differentiate with experience. II. Assimilation and Accommodation Assimilation and Accommodation- are two major processes that allow schemas to grow and change over time. Assimilation is the process of taking new information that easily fits into an existing schema. In assimilation, the person changes the environment so as to fit the existing structures in the mind (Infants use their sucking schema not only in sucking nipples but also in sucking fingers, blankets and so on) If we keep on assimilating only, then growth is not possible. We have to engage in the complimentary process known as accommodation. Accommodation enables us to deal with new knowledge from the environment by changing our own structures or behaviors. Accommodation occurs when new information or stimuli cannot be assimilated and old schemas are changed to adapt new situations (i.e., the infant changes her existing sucking schema to adjust to the new situation of eating with a spoon). As a result of assimilation and accommodation, the childs cognitive abilities undergo an orderly series of increasing complex changes. When enough changes have occurred, the individual undergoes a large developmental shift in his or her point of view. Piaget called these developmental shifts stages in development. According to Piaget, all children go through at approximately the same age, regardless of the culture in which
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Condensed by Mr. Roland L. Aparece, MA from Readings in General Psychology vol. 1 compiled by Lolita Teh and Ma. Elizabeth Macapagal, Quezon City: Ateneo De Manila University Press, 1999.)

they live. No stage can be skipped, since the skills acquired at the earlier stages are essential to the mastery of the later stages. The Stages of Cognitive Development. I. Sensorimotor Stage (from birth - 2 years) During the Sensorimotor stage, which last from birth until the time of significant language acquisition (at about age 2) children explore the world and develop their schemas primarily through their senses and motor activitieshence sensorimotor. Objective permanence, the awareness that an object continues to exist even when it is not present. II. Preoperational Stage (2-7 years) At this stage children have acquired object permanence and can now understand that sound can be used as symbols for objects (knowledge of objects must precede the use of languageyou have to acknowledge an object before you label it). This ability for symbolic thinking, i.e., the ability to make something stand for something, expands the cognitive world of the child. The child is now able to engage in symbolic play (e.g., putting a box over ones head and calling it a hat) and to use language to represent objects and persons. In preoperational stage, we know what the child knows by talking to the child, i.e., through language. We also know how the child knows by looking at how the child plays. A lot of the childs knowledge is manifested in or evidenced by symbolic play. What are the implications of this on selecting proper toys for children in this age bracket? It is better to give children unstructured materials instead of toys which are exact replicas of objects around us (like water, sand, mud, clay, blocks and other unstructured materials for which the childs imagination and symbolic activities can be facilitated). Important Limitations of this stage: i) Egocentrism refers to the preoperational childs inability to consider anothers point of view. They assume that others see, hear, feel and think exactly what they do. They feel that people and objects in the world exist only for their use and benefit. This kind of thinking of the child is due to limitations on her cognitive structure. Unfortunately, we tend to judge the intellectual deficit as a moral deficit. We punish the child for a moral standard she cannot simply fulfill because she cannot understand yet. ii) Animism refers to the preoperational childs belief that all things are living or animated and capable of intentions, consciousness, and feelings. iii) Inability to decenter. This refers to the childs tendency to focus attention on only one part of a whole at a time. They cannot think simultaneous thoughts at the same time.

iv) Inability to conserve. This refers to the childs inability to follow transformation mentally. The child tends to make judgments based only on what she sees and not on what actually is. Some conservation principles which children have not yet mastered at this stage are: conservation of liquid, conservation of number, conservation of mass, conservation of length. III. Concrete Operational stage (7-11 years) At this point the child can now think logically about objects and events in a concrete way, but not on an abstract/conceptual level yet. The child now has the ability to perform operations Many competent and important thinking skills emerge. Now they can perform such operations as counting and classifying, and can understand and think about relationships. They also have the ability to understand principles of conservation. Egocentric thinking decreases at this point. The child is better able to imagine how things look from another perspective, and how other people think and feel. III. Formal Operational This is the highest stage of cognitive development. The child, who is now in the stage of adolescence, reasons logically, starting from premises and drawing conclusions; entertains hypotheses, deduces consequences, and uses these deductions to test hypotheses; and solves problems by tackling all possibilities systematically. Mental acts at this stage are unlimited by time and space: the range is infinity and eternity. The ability for hypothetical-deductive reasoning develops. This refers to the ability of the person to consider all variables and possibilities simultaneously, to see relationships, and to be able to tackle them systematically no matter what the content is (an abstract or concrete reality). Piaget also calls this logico-mathematical intelligence. Use the pendulum problem to test formal operational thinking. Evaluating Piagets theory Piaget was the forerunner of todays cognitive revolution in psychology, with its emphasis on internal cognitive processes. His theory has inspired more research on childrens cognitive development than any other theorist. Piagets theory also revolutionized teaching method for children. Understanding how children think has help many teachers know what topics are more appropriate for children at given ages. Criticism of Piagets method and theory: 1. Piagets theory focuses mainly on the average childs cognitive development. His theory does not take into account individual differences, or the ways in which other factors like culture and personality affect intellectual development. 2. Many of Piagets ideas emerged from his personal observations of his own three children, and not from scientific research.