Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that intelligence changes as children grow. A child's cognitive development is not just about acquiring knowledge, the child has to develop or construct a mental model of the world. Show
Cognitive development occurs through the interaction of innate capacities and environmental events, and children pass through a series of stages. Piaget's theory of cognitive development proposes 4 stages of development.
The sequence of the stages is universal across cultures and follow the same invariant (unchanging) order. All children go through the same stages in the same order (but not all at the same rate). How Piaget Developed the TheoryPiaget was employed at the Binet Institute in the 1920s, where his job was to develop French versions of questions on English intelligence tests. He became intrigued with the reasons children gave for their wrong answers to the questions that required logical thinking. He believed that these incorrect answers revealed important differences between the thinking of adults and children. Piaget branched out on his own with a new set of assumptions about children’s intelligence:
What Piaget wanted to do was not to measure how well children could count, spell or solve problems as a way of grading their I.Q. What he was more interested in was the way in which fundamental concepts like the very idea of number, time, quantity, causality, justice and so on emerged. Piaget studied children from infancy to adolescence using naturalistic observation of his own three babies and sometimes controlled observation too. From these he wrote diary descriptions charting their development. He also used clinical interviews and observations of older children who were able to understand questions and hold conversations. Piaget’s Four StagesJean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of intellectual development which reflect the increasing sophistication of children's thoughts. Each child goes through the stages in the same order, and child development is determined by biological maturation and interaction with the environment. At each stage of development, the child’s thinking is qualitatively different from the other stages, that is, each stage involves a different type of intelligence. StageAgeGoalSensorimotorBirth to 18-24 monthsObject permanencePreoperational2 to 7 years oldSymbolic thoughtConcrete operationalAges 7 to 11 yearsLogical thoughtFormal operationalAdolescence to adulthoodScientific reasoningAlthough no stage can be missed out, there are individual differences in the rate at which children progress through stages, and some individuals may never attain the later stages. Piaget did not claim that a particular stage was reached at a certain age - although descriptions of the stages often include an indication of the age at which the average child would reach each stage. The Sensorimotor StageAges: Birth to 2 Years The first stage is the sensory motor stage, and during this stage the infant focuses on physical sensations and on learning to co-ordinate his body. Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
During this stage the infant lives in the present. It does not yet have a mental picture of the world stored in its memory therefore it does not have a sense of object permanence. If it cannot see something then it does not exist. This is why you can hide a toy from an infant, while it watches, but it will not search for the object once it has gone out of sight. The main achievement during this stage is object permanence - knowing that an object still exists, even if it is hidden. It requires the ability to form a mental representation (i.e., a schema) of the object.
The child begins to be able to store information that it knows about the world, recall it and label it. Learn More: The Sensorimotor Stage of Cognitive Development The Preoperational StageAges: 2 - 7 Years The pre-operational stage is one of Piaget's intellectual development stages. It takes place between 2 and 7 years. At the beginning of this stage the child does not use operations, so the thinking is influenced by the way things appear rather than logical reasoning. A child cannot conserve which means that the child does not understand that quantity remains the same even if the appearance changes. Furthermore, the child is egocentric; he assumes that other people see the world as he does. This has been shown in the three mountains study. Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
By 2 years, children have made some progress towards detaching their thought from physical world. However have not yet developed logical (or 'operational') thought characteristic of later stages. Thinking is still intuitive (based on subjective judgements about situations) and egocentric (centred on the child's own view of the world). Learn More: The Preoperational Stage of Cognitive Development The Concrete Operational StageAges: 7 - 11 Years By the beginning of the concrete operational stage, the child can use operations ( a set of logical rules) so he can conserve quantities, he realises that people see the world in a different way than he does (decentring) and he has improved in inclusion tasks. Children still have difficulties with abstract thinking. Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
The stage is called concrete because children can think logically much more successfully if they can manipulate real (concrete) materials or pictures of them. Piaget considered the concrete stage a major turning point in the child's cognitive development because it marks the beginning of logical or operational thought. This means the child can work things out internally in their head (rather than physically try things out in the real world). Children can conserve number (age 6), mass (age 7), and weight (age 9). Conservation is the understanding that something stays the same in quantity even though its appearance changes. But operational thought only effective here if child asked to reason about materials that are physically present. Children at this stage will tend to make mistakes or be overwhelmed when asked to reason about abstract or hypothetical problems. Learn More: The Concrete Operational Stage of Development The Formal Operational StageAges: 12 and Over The formal operational period begins at about age 11. As adolescents enter this stage, they gain the ability to think in an abstract manner, the ability to combine and classify items in a more sophisticated way, and the capacity for higher-order reasoning. Adolescents can think systematically and reason about what might be as well as what is (not everyone achieves this stage).. This allows them to understand politics, ethics, and science fiction, as well as to engage in scientific reasoning. Adolescents can deal with abstract ideas: e.g. they can understand division and fractions without having to actually divide things up. Solve hypothetical (imaginary) problems. Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
From about 12 years children can follow the form of a logical argument without reference to its content. During this time, people develop the ability to think about abstract concepts, and logically test hypotheses. This stage sees emergence of scientific thinking, formulating abstract theories and hypotheses when faced with a problem. Learn More: The Formal Operational Stage of Development Piaget's Theory Differs From Others In Several Ways:Piaget's (1936, 1950) theory of cognitive development explains how a child constructs a mental model of the world. He disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a fixed trait, and regarded cognitive development as a process which occurs due to biological maturation and interaction with the environment. Children’s ability to understand, think about and solve problems in the world develops in a stop-start, discontinuous manner (rather than gradual changes over time). ▪ It is concerned with children, rather than all learners. ▪ It focuses on development, rather than learning per se, so it does not address learning of information or specific behaviors. ▪ It proposes discrete stages of development, marked by qualitative differences, rather than a gradual increase in number and complexity of behaviors, concepts, ideas, etc. The goal of the theory is to explain the mechanisms and processes by which the infant, and then the child, develops into an individual who can reason and think using hypotheses. To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of biological maturation and environmental experience. Children construct an understanding of the world around them, then experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment. SchemasPiaget claimed that knowledge cannot simply emerge from sensory experience; some initial structure is necessary to make sense of the world.
Schemas are the basic building blocks of such cognitive models, and enable us to form a mental representation of the world. Piaget (1952, p. 7) defined a schema as: "a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning." In more simple terms Piaget called the schema the basic building block of intelligent behavior – a way of organizing knowledge. Indeed, it is useful to think of schemas as “units” of knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world, including objects, actions, and abstract (i.e., theoretical) concepts. Wadsworth (2004) suggests that schemata (the plural of schema) be thought of as 'index cards' filed in the brain, each one telling an individual how to react to incoming stimuli or information. When Piaget talked about the development of a person's mental processes, he was referring to increases in the number and complexity of the schemata that a person had learned.
Operations are more sophisticated mental structures which allow us to combine schemas in a logical (reasonable) way. As children grow they can carry out more complex operations and begin to imagine hypothetical (imaginary) situations. Apart from the schemas we are born with schemas and operations are learned through interaction with other people and the environment. Which of the following represents a characteristic of a child with autism spectrum disorder?Answer: Every individual is different. However, there are primary characteristics that are associated with ASD. The primary characteristics are 1) poorly developed social skills, 2) difficulty with expressive and receptive communication, and 3) the presence of restrictive and repetitive behaviors.
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