Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory Essay Example
The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word cognition as; the mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning and judgment (Cognition). Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental theory was a unique concept at the time of its inception. It was the first in depth theory on the subject and remained the standard of the field for quite some time. Throughout this paper, Piaget’s theory will be broken down into its four stages and each will be thoroughly detailed. It is the goal of this paper to see how well Piaget’s ideas withstood the test of time and see what improvements can be made to the existing theory.
Piaget suggested that there were four major cognitive stages in logical development, corresponding to four successive forms of knowledge. During each of these stages, children were hypothesized to think and reason in a different way. These stages, and their approximate ages of occurrence, were: the sensory-motor period (0-2 years), the period of pre-operations (2-7 years), the period of concrete operations (7-11 years) and the period of formal operations (11-12 years on). Piaget recognized that the acquisition of each new way of thinking would not necessarily be synchronous across all the different domains of thought. Instead, he argued that the chronology of the stages might be extremely variable, and that such variability might also occur within a given stage. Thus the ages of attainment that Piaget gave for the different cognitive stages are only approximations (Goswami, 2001). In the sensorimotor stage the child is concerned with gaining motor control and learning about the physical world (Evans, 1973). This stage promotes that thought is based primarily on action. Every time an infant does any action such as holding a bottle or learning to turn over, they are learning more about their bodies and how it relates to them and their environment. Piaget discovered that during this stage infants engage in an act he called
Piaget suggested that there were four major cognitive stages in logical development, corresponding to four successive forms of knowledge. During each of these stages, children were hypothesized to think and reason in a different way. These stages, and their approximate ages of occurrence, were: the sensory-motor period (0-2 years), the period of pre-operations (2-7 years), the period of concrete operations (7-11 years) and the period of formal operations (11-12 years on). Piaget recognized that the acquisition of each new way of thinking would not necessarily be synchronous across all the different domains of thought. Instead, he argued that the chronology of the stages might be extremely variable, and that such variability might also occur within a given stage. Thus the ages of attainment that Piaget gave for the different cognitive stages are only approximations (Goswami, 2001). In the sensorimotor stage the child is concerned with gaining motor control and learning about the physical world (Evans, 1973). This stage promotes that thought is based primarily on action. Every time an infant does any action such as holding a bottle or learning to turn over, they are learning more about their bodies and how it relates to them and their environment. Piaget discovered that during this stage infants engage in an act he called