During the 1960's and the 1970's, the Psychoanalytic theory of Freud was dominant, and current methods of analysis were required for the study and analysis of human behavior. Jean Piaget, a Philosopher from Switzerland, offered a new alternative through his new proposed theory of cognitive development. In this time, other predominant theories existed, but it took the flaws of these theories to enable Piaget's approach to provide the new avenue of remedies that the field of Psychology required. The summary of Piaget's successful theory has been further expounded in this paper.
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Among the significant and brilliant contributions to the field of Psychology within the 20th century is Piaget’s theory of child development. The significant contribution to his intellectual development of children came as a result of a study he conducted on his nephew and daughter. The observations made him to concretely conclude that children’s thoughts were different from the adult’s version of ideas. The significant of the view came at a time when children had all along been treated as a smaller version of adults. His suggestions were as crucial to the contributions that had been brought earlier with Psychologists such as Abraham Maslow. His proposed thinking has aided to facilitate the solution of significant development crises hence this study aims to expound on Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development.
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Isaacs (2013) states that Piaget described the four stages of development as well as the four processes of cognitive development as follows: schema, assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium. Consequently, these are ordinarily known as the sensorimotor stage which starts at 0-2 years, the peri operational stage which takes place within 2 to 7 years, the concrete operational stage which continues at 7 to 11 years, and the formal operations which takes place from 11 years to the years beyond.
Piaget four stages of cognitive development
Sensorimotor Stage
Piaget states that this period that starts at 0 to 2 years is the foundation of the steps of cognition development. Ordinarily, Isaacs (2013) states that the persons (children) at this phase are often preoccupied with coordination of senses with the motor response and the sensory curiosity about the world. All these shapes the children at this phase as explorers. All the children want to do is to see, taste, hear, and touch everything around. At this stage Isaacs states (2013) that children generally don’t appear to be contemplating what they do since they have no obvious rationale behind their motives.
The sensorimotor stage is also one which sets the children to revel and enjoy their experience, and this makes them improve their abilities and take in new skills. Children use language catalog objects within their disposal like “horsey,” or “doggie,” to make demands to their custodians. The children’s sensory stimuli are also paired up with voluntary sensory/body coordination, and voluntary motor responses to fully get established. The syntax and grammar of these children have also not been developed, and this makes the relations between concepts that are not completely understood at best. At the late sensorimotor stage of cognitive development, children start learning the concept of “object permanence.” All that is entailed here is that children learn that objects still exist even if they cannot sight them.
Preoperational phase
At around the age of two, children step into the preoperational stage where they learn how to understand symbolic concepts, think abstractly, and use language in more technical ways (Isaacs, 2013). At this developmental phase, children become instantly curious, and they start enquiring about the things they see. They begin to imagine people or objects that do not exist (such as monsters), and at this stage, they can make up their games, and get ready with other children.
Piaget’s theory of development states that at this developmental phase, children can understand object permanence, but then, they are still not acquainted with the idea of conservation (Wals & Dillon, 2013). Children cannot comprehend that hanging a substance’s appearance does not interfere with its quantity or properties.
Concrete Operational Stage
At the time children become seven years old, they start understanding much more complex abstract concepts like space, time and quantity. Children can apply these concepts to hard situations, but they have problems when thinking about them independently of those situations (Wals, & Dillon, 2013) Jean Piaget points out that at this phase, the children’s concepts about time and space may become inconsistent at this stage, but the main logic that governs the children’s cognitive operations often exist. Children have a mastery of their environment, and they can learn and adapt quickly to rules when they do not indeed logically understand the implications of the regulations in unusual situations.
Formal Operations Stage
The period starts at around 11 years old. Piaget states that at this stage, the children become more capable of more hypothetical, abstract, and theoretical reasoning. Children can apply to a variety of situations to engage in counterfactual thinking. The availed example includes, “If reptiles were birds, they would have warm blood.” Personalities “children” at this stage can accept this as valid reasoning, even though the claim is false (Wals & Dillon, 2013).
At this phase of cognitive development, Piaget states that formal logic becomes possible and verbal explanations of concepts usually are sufficient without demonstration (Wals, & Dillon, 2013). Strategy-based games become more enjoyable, while rote games like chutes-and-ladders” become repetitive.
The significance of Piaget’s theory to my life choices
In my future career, I would like to deal with the scientific analysis of personalities. Intelligence and the cognitive reactions are the basis of how humans form characters, and my career has been shaped towards the field of Psychology which requires me to deal with characters from their tender age as far as age zero. It is very ordinary for me to study the active process of integration of the human beings from the time that they are tender to their current stages of life for me to build up the correct hypothesis that can be used to understand them. In this regards, Piaget’s theory can increase my understanding of the human cognition as appropriate.
First, Piaget’s theory is ordinarily complete since it outlines a detailed account of cognition that starts from birth until the age of adolescence. Besides, the approach also deals with the scientific analysis of adults. The breadth of the experimental data and experiences of these periods of life also makes it essential (Johnson-Laird, 2013). The age between 5 to 9 years is a critical age of old schoolers, and Piaget’s theory has done extensive cognitive research that covers this age group (Johnson-Laird, 2013). Piaget’s cognitive theory deals with the fundamental problems that have often been inadequately covered by other Psychological theories; these include, the relative role of the subject and the environment, the relationship between cognition and biologicals activities. And the links between various aspects of cognition like reasoning, perceptions, and memory.
In a way, some of Piaget’s work had initially led to the formation of emerging disciplines like cybernetics, and artificial intelligence. Certain concepts of self-regulated systems and feedback specific to cybernetics have been involved in Piaget’s initial work even though the discipline has emerged decades later after Piaget completed his works. The multidisciplinary approach called cognitive science is wholly aligned to Piaget’s theory as it links between Psychology, physics, logic, and biology. Besides, artificial intelligence programs which are expressed in symbolic language expertise involves the mastery of, and this is similar to the Piagetian concept of repeatable action schemes, and recall Piaget’s aims of formalizing mental structures.
Wals & Dillon (2013) maintain that another aspect of Piaget’s work called genetic epistemology that is focused on scientific knowledge as investigated through studies of children has not had much impact outside of Switzerland. On the other hand, Piaget’s theory and works in Psychology discipline have influenced consequent orientations and research throughout social science disciplines.
The findings of Piaget about the reasoning of children has had an impact on Child Psychology. The influence has been strong especially with the regards to the four following stages of cognitive development which entails the sensation, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Indeed, the impact is a contrast to Piaget’s originality of the theory as it was not purposely created to define the general stages of child development. Piaget was concerned with finding the necessary steps in the integration of new forms of knowledge. The profound findings of his theory concerned the emergence of current capacities, like the search for hidden objects in babies, combinatory operations in adolescents, and the conservation of quantity in education among school-aged children, which remain essential landmarks of psychological development even though they cannot be used as psychometric tests (Wals & Dillon, 2013).
Consequently, Johnson-Laird (2013) states that various experiment of several aspects of education in the ensuing years after the theory was developed has been directly inspired by the features of the theory. Examples include the role of the child’s activity and the significance attributed to the general structuring abilities instead of specific learning. Nevertheless, mainstream Education and Psychology, particularly in Anglophone countries, have remained resistant to Piaget’s influence, except for the growth of cognitive developmental psychology (Wals & Dillon, 2013).
Piaget’s Cognitive developmental psychology has emerged as a productive subdiscipline of Psychology from the late 20th century. At present, almost every developmental Psychologist in the globe has imitated or borrowed some knowledge of Piaget’s work and his idea of using the cross-sectional method of studying cognitive development (Johnson-Laird, 2013). Piaget’s writing frequently played the same role as a “theory to contradict” that nativist conception or associationism had played for Piaget (Wals & Dillon, 2013). Even several professionals within the career of developmental Psychology launched their profession with the objective of conducting research that was aimed at pinning down Piaget’s thought. All the same, they ended up in the career. Since the theory has been found convincing by various people, many of these ideas have been banished.
Wals & Dillon (2013) states that Piaget’s work has opened the avenues for the cognitivist revolution in Psychology, from the mid-1960s forward. The theory prompted the Psychologists interest in accomplishing studies concerned with mental states, which had been reserved as a taboo for several decades because of the popular behaviorist conception. The emerging brand of Psychologists could read in Piaget’s work detailed studies of mental states that had been executed throughout several decades (Johnson-Laird, 2013).
Towards the end of the twentieth century, Piaget’s theory had indirect disciplines that were aligned to his theory. All the contributions of disciplines were also linked to developmental science, child psychology, and cognitive science. Piaget’s work had inspired the ideas of the various specialist professionals within the field of education. Latin America and the Francophone speaking countries. Paget’s cognitive theory of development also contributed to the development of functional studies. Generally, the theory is significant to the activities that are present in other disciplines, especially the ones that are linked to Applied Psychology.
The merits of this theory in my line of the career as a future Psychologist means that I will be better positioned to solve specific conservation problems that impact negatively on personalities especially preschool children. It will position me to be able to deal with the societal observations of children especially with regards the challenges they face at school, primarily due to their performance (Johnson-Laird, 2013).
The challenges of the theory.
Like any other theory, Piaget theory has its weaknesses, but its strength overrides the weakness. The theory has often been subjected to criticism over the years by some theorists especially from cross-cultural psychologists, who often place inquiries as to whether the stages of development by Piaget apply to Western European children. In the end, Piaget’s stages are considerably the basi9s to many other Psychological ideas, and this shapes it in line with my basis of a career in the future (Wals & Dillon, 2013).
The most notable weakness of the theory regards the essences of reasoning at various stages in development. Based on this focus on the underlying necessities of cognitive development, the existence of variability in reasoning and any of its role variability and how it might play in the cognitive process of cognitive development must have been downplayed by Piaget. Moreover, Piaget seemed to gloss over both any variations among children within the same stage and any similarities among children across various phases of development. Indeed, if there are researchers who have to accomplish future researches that are meant to support the theory, then they have to delegate the concepts of variability in children’s reasoning (Wals & Dillon, 2013).
Conclusion
The piagetian theory is famous worldwide for its emphasis on the universals in cognitive development. As a result, it is the best theory which can be used to define the essences of how personalities reason especially during their phases of development. Indeed, this primarily points out that it is very pivotal to the study of childhood development. Hence Psychologists deserve to celebrate Piaget’s contribution that has facilitated their career by coming up with the cognitive development theory.
References
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2013). Mental models and cognitive change. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25(2), 131-138.
Isaacs, S. (2013). Social development in young children. Routledge.
Wals, A. E., & Dillon, J. (2013). Conventional and emerging learning theories. International handbook of research on environmental education, 253-261.
