Piaget Cognitive Development Theory

Two process underlie the cognitive construction of the world

Adaptation and Organization

Mentioned the cognitive development stages according to Piaget!

Sensorimotor (0-2), Pre-operational (2-7), concrete operational (7-11), Formal operational (11-onward)

What are important concepts in Piaget theory?

Schemes, assimilation, accomodation, organization, equilibrium, and equilibration

What is schemes?

Action or mental representation that organize knowledge. e.g., : scheme for sucking, scheme for driving

Assimilation

When children using their existing scheme to be used in new environment, or information

Accomodation

When children adjust their schemes to take new experiences or information into account

Equilibrium

occurs when a child's existing knowledge fits well with new information or experiences, allowing them to understand the world easily.

Equilibration

A mechanism that explain children movement from one stage of thought to another stage

Disequilibrium

happens when new information doesn't fit their existing knowledge, causing confusion or discomfort.

Mention and explain the substage in infant (sensorimotor)

Simple reflexes (birth-1 month): Infant rely on innate reflexes;

primary circular reaction (1-4 months): Infant try to accomodate the schemes that suddenly happen and formed (coordinating sensory and motor);

secondary circular reaction: Infant start focus on objects and events in the external environment, repeat actions that bring interesting or pleasurable results

Coord. of secondary circular reaction: Infant start to coordinate the scheme and intentionality; understand the object permanence

Tertiary circular reaction: Infant start to curious and explore and do experiment to look at the result

Internalization of schemes: Infants develop the ability to form mental representations of objects and actions. They begin to use symbols and engage in pretend play

Mention and explain the substage in early childhood (pre-operational)

The symbolic function (2-4), gain the ability to mentally represent the object that is not exist. start doing pretend play, use scribble design to present the house

the intuitive thought (4-7) they start to ask question as the sign of interest in reasoning, has difficulty to understand things that they can not see

Egocentrism

The inability to differentiate between one’s own perspective and other people perspective

Animism

The belief that inanimate object have lifelike qualities and capable of action

Centration

Only focus one thing and elicit the another thing

Conservation

The awareness that altering object’s appearance do not alter the substances

How is the characteristic in concrete operational?

Children can reason logically as long as the reason provided can be applied to specific and concrete examples. They can classify and divide things into different subset and consider the interrelationship. They have gained the ability of seriation and transitivity (the ability to combine relation to draw conclusion).

What are the characteristic of formal operational stage?

They can conjure up make-believe situations (imagine), abstract propositions, and hypothetical events, and can try to reason logically about them, thought of full idealism and possibilities.

Strength of Piaget’s theory?

Help to understand how children act and adapt to their world, how children construct their knowledge, new way to explore how children reasoning,

Weakness of Piaget’s theory?

Undervalue the role of external factors, does not recognize cultural bias, and children’s cognitive function may not stage-like (some cognitive abilities emerge earlier)