A Brief Discussion About the Cognitive Theory
Cognitive theory is concerned with the development of a persons thought processes, it also looks at how these thought processes influence how we understand and interrelate with the world. One of the principal cognitive theorists was Jean Piaget, who proposed ideas that revolutionised how we think about child development and whether children think differently than adults. This essay will introduce Jean Piaget as a theorist, prior to discussing Jean Piaget’s theory ‘stages of children’s intellectual development’ and explore the experiment Piaget carried out to obtain his theory. Furthermore this essay will examine whether the research method for Piaget’s experiment was able to conclude using a different method to the one used.
Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland in 1896, at the age of 10 years Piaget had his work on Molluscs published and after receiving his doctoral degree aged 22, formally began a career in zoology, but Piaget regarded his central interest in epistemology (the study of knowledge and how we understand the world we live in). In 1920, Piaget began working on some of his first intelligence tests by observing children and asking them simple questions. Piaget focused his attention on the origins of knowledge as they manifest in children, he was not interested in the amount of information children possessed but in the ways their thinking and inner representations of outer reality changed at different stages in their development, becoming increasingly intrigued by some of the replies he got from the children after he had asked them questions.
Piaget observed children of the same age tended to make similar mistakes and younger children followed different logical rules from older children, believing
children’s errors were predictable and could be described in terms of stages of development theory, (Eysenck, 2006). This suggested, errors made at certain ages formed stages of development and that these stages formed a sequence, changing the child’s
Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland in 1896, at the age of 10 years Piaget had his work on Molluscs published and after receiving his doctoral degree aged 22, formally began a career in zoology, but Piaget regarded his central interest in epistemology (the study of knowledge and how we understand the world we live in). In 1920, Piaget began working on some of his first intelligence tests by observing children and asking them simple questions. Piaget focused his attention on the origins of knowledge as they manifest in children, he was not interested in the amount of information children possessed but in the ways their thinking and inner representations of outer reality changed at different stages in their development, becoming increasingly intrigued by some of the replies he got from the children after he had asked them questions.
Piaget observed children of the same age tended to make similar mistakes and younger children followed different logical rules from older children, believing
children’s errors were predictable and could be described in terms of stages of development theory, (Eysenck, 2006). This suggested, errors made at certain ages formed stages of development and that these stages formed a sequence, changing the child’s
Bibliography: Cardwell. M, Clark. L, Meldrum. C, (2000). PSYCHOLOGY FOR A LEVEL (2nd edition). Printed by: Harper Collins Ltd, London, UK, 2000. Eysenck. M, (2006). PSYCHOLOGY FOR AS LEVEL (3rd edition). Printed by: Psychology Press, Hove & New York, 2006. Myers. D, (1996). EXPLORING PSYCHOLOGY (3rd edition). Printed by: Worth Publishers, New York, 1996. Roth. I, (1991). OPEN UNIVERSITIES INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY. Printed by: Open University, Kent, Great Britain, 1991. Woods. B, (2002). UNDERSTANDING PSYCHOLOGY. Printed by: Hodder & Stroughton Education, Spain, 2002.