Piaget’s Theory of Development

Key Concepts of Piaget’s Theory of Development

Cognitive development refers to the changes that occur in an individual’s cognitive structures, abilities, and processes. Marcy Driscoll defines cognitive development as the transformation of the child’s undifferentiated, unspecialized cognitive abilities into the adult’s conceptual competence and problem-solving skill (Driscoll, 1994). However, what exactly changes with development? Piaget believed children’s schemes, or logical mental structures, change with age and are initially action-based (sensorimotor) and later move to a mental (operational) level. (Driscoll, 1994).

Further, Piaget believed the cognitive performance in children is directly associated with the cognitive development stage they are in. So, if a child were in the preoperational stage (age 2 to 6/7), he would not successfully be able to master tasks of a concrete operational stage (ages 6/7 to 11/12) child.

Piaget proposed this theory of childhood cognitive development in 1969. Since that time, there have been many criticisms of Piaget’s theory. Most notably, developmental psychologists debate whether children actually go through these four stages in the way that Piaget proposed, and further that not all children reach the formal operation stage. Despite this criticism, Piaget has had a major influence on all modern developmental psychologists. In addition to his proposed idea that children’s cognitive performance is directly related to the stage they are in, he proposed four major stages of development.

The Sensorimotor Period (birth to 2 years)

During the sensorimotor stage, infants and toddlers "think" with their eyes, ears, hands, and other sensorimotor equipment (http://raven.cc.ukans.edu/~kupsych/dennisk/Cog_Inf.htm). Piaget said that a child’s cognitive system is limited to motor reflexes at birth, but the child builds on these reflexes to develop more sophisticated procedures. They learn to generalize their activities to a wider range of situations and coordinate them into increasingly lengthy chains of behavior.

Preoperational Thought (2 to 6/7 years)

At this age, according to Piaget, children acquire representational skills in the area of mental imagery, and especially language. They are very self-oriented, and have an egocentric view; that is, preoperational children can use these representational skills only to view the world from their own perspective.

Concrete Operations (6/7 to 11/12 years)

As opposed to preoperational children, children in the concrete operations stage are able to take into account another person’s point of view and consider more than one perspective simultaneously, with their thought process being more logical, flexible, and organized than in early childhood. They can also represent transformations as well as static situations. Although they can understand concrete problems, Piaget would argue that they cannot yet contemplate or solve abstract problems, and that they are not yet able to consider all of the logically possible outcomes. Children at this stage would have the ability to pass conservation (numerical), classification, seriation, and spatial reasoning tasks.

Formal Operations (11/12 to adult)

Persons who reach the formal operation stage are capable of thinking logically and abstractly. They can also reason theoretically. Piaget considered this the ultimate stage of development, and stated that although the children would still have to revise their knowledge base, their way of thinking was as powerful as it would get.

REF: http://chd.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/theorists/constructivism/Piaget.htm