Piaget: Cognitive
Development
Jean Piaget(1902-1994)
• This theory identifies two processes: adaptation and equilibration
Equilibration: finding the fit between old schemes and new environmental
experience
Adaptation: assimilation and accommodation (changing existing schemas)
Assimilation: incorporating new experiences into existing schemas
Accommodation: change the existing schema to incorporate new
experiences
1. Incorporation of new experiences
2. More complex understandings
3. New levels of development
Stage 1: Sensorimotor stage (birth-2 years)
-Form reflex reactions-goal directed actions
-Learning; Looking, touching and sucking
-Starts using imitation: memory and thought
-Basic cause and effect
-Symbolic representation- internal depictions of objects or events
-Object permanence- 9 months
-Deferred imitation- mentally represent a past event and imitate at a later stage
(end of this stage)
Stage 2: Preoperational Stage(2-7 years)
-Not yet able to reason logically
-Transductive reasoning: reasoning from one particular event to another-e.g visit
gran on Sunday, if not visit, It is not Sunday
-No conservation: quantities remain the same if appearance changes
-Centration: focus only on one aspect of an object at a time
-Irreversibility: inability to mentally reserve an action
-Egocentrism: unable to adopt another’s perspective; the child assumes everyone
sees the world the way they do
-Animism: human qualities attributed to inanimate objects
Stage 3: Concrete- Operational Stage(7-12
years)
-More logical and less egocentric thought
-Reversibility: the ability to mentally undo something
Development
Jean Piaget(1902-1994)
• This theory identifies two processes: adaptation and equilibration
Equilibration: finding the fit between old schemes and new environmental
experience
Adaptation: assimilation and accommodation (changing existing schemas)
Assimilation: incorporating new experiences into existing schemas
Accommodation: change the existing schema to incorporate new
experiences
1. Incorporation of new experiences
2. More complex understandings
3. New levels of development
Stage 1: Sensorimotor stage (birth-2 years)
-Form reflex reactions-goal directed actions
-Learning; Looking, touching and sucking
-Starts using imitation: memory and thought
-Basic cause and effect
-Symbolic representation- internal depictions of objects or events
-Object permanence- 9 months
-Deferred imitation- mentally represent a past event and imitate at a later stage
(end of this stage)
Stage 2: Preoperational Stage(2-7 years)
-Not yet able to reason logically
-Transductive reasoning: reasoning from one particular event to another-e.g visit
gran on Sunday, if not visit, It is not Sunday
-No conservation: quantities remain the same if appearance changes
-Centration: focus only on one aspect of an object at a time
-Irreversibility: inability to mentally reserve an action
-Egocentrism: unable to adopt another’s perspective; the child assumes everyone
sees the world the way they do
-Animism: human qualities attributed to inanimate objects
Stage 3: Concrete- Operational Stage(7-12
years)
-More logical and less egocentric thought
-Reversibility: the ability to mentally undo something
