Child Development & Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

The period of early childhood is of great importance for child’s versatile development and this is the reason, why most of the developmental psychologists are interested in researching exactly early childhood years. It is utterly important for the psychologists, teachers and parents understand the major mechanisms of child development, starting from their early years. Thus the sphere of early development of children is rather interesting, challenging and complex, at the same time it is meaningful for the future development of a balanced personality. The stage of human development, which is usually called “early childhood” generally includes the years of toddlerhood and some short time afterwards. In the field of psychology studies the concept “early childhood” should be understood as the period from the birth and till the age of nine to twelve years, covering the period of infancy, kindergarten, and the early school years. The period of early childhood is an important phase of physical growth and development, the significant growth of neural fibers in the brain, especially in the frontal lobes between 2 and 6 the brain size increases from its initial 70% of an adult weight to 90%. The brain growth is certainly related to cognitive development of children during these years. Children start speaking and mastering their hands. Gross and small motor skills are also developed. During this period children come to realize the sense of self, they try to understand the mechanism of building relationship with other people and develop their sociability. Their emotional development includes attachment, personality and expressions.

Cognitive theory is focused upon the development of thought processes by individuals. It considered at the same time the ways how these through processes impact human understanding and communication with the environment.

One of the outstanding pioneers of the cognitive theory was Piaget, who came out with his revolutionary idea that children think differently in comparison to adults. Jean Piaget was biologist and psychologist and he observed his children and the way how they started to make sense about the surrounding world. He was convinced that children are actively engaged into their learning process. He compared children to little scientists, who conducted various experiments in order to obtain broader knowledge about the world. On the basis of his initial observations of his own daughter and nephew Piaget developed his interest in the cognitive development of children. Before children were associated with smaller copies of adults and were treated correspondingly. Piaget was among the first researchers, who concluded that children are absolutely different. Nowadays this idea is widely accepted. Piaget noticed that older children are able to think quicker than young children, in addition he found a number of qualitative and quantitative differences in the thinking processes of young children and older children. He assumed that children should not be considered less intelligent, than adults, the fact is that they just think differently. Piaget worked out his stage theory in order to describe cognitive development of children.  Finally he came to conclude that the stages of cognitive development could be subdivided into four: sensorimotor, preoperational stage, concrete operations and formal operations. Piaget noticed that all children go through these development stages in the same order. Sensorimotor stage lasts from the birth and to 2 years old. During this stage infants are to build their understanding of themselves and reality, coming to conclusion about the ways how things operate in this world. The greatest challenge is to learn how to differentiate between themselves and other objects of the surrounding world. The learning process in this stage includes assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the process of organization of the obtained information in accordance to the already existing schemas. Accommodation is the process of modification of these existing schemas, since the new object can not be assimilated. This is a period of dramatic growth of children and they learn how to interact with their environment and make a great number of new discoveries. For example they learn how to perform such important physical actions as walking and crawling, also they learn some basic aspects of the language in order to communicate with other people around them. Children are to learn that objects are separate and they could exist inside and outside of individual perception.

Preoperational stage is between the ages 2 and 4. During this stage children are not able to conceptualize abstractly, as they require specific physical situations. They learn to classify objects on the basis of simple features. The foundations of language were laid during the previous stage, but the emergence of language belongs to this stage. Children also learn to pretend play and this helps them to develop rather concrete understanding of their environment. The most challenging thing for children during this stage is to understand the idea of constancy. For example if a child is offered two equal pieces of clay, but one is in the form of a sphere and the other is in the form of a pancake, he would choose the second one, as he is convinced that it is bigger. He is not able to understand yet that it just looks bigger, but is of the same size in reality.

The stage of concrete operations lasts from 7 years old to 11 and it is characterized by accumulation and accommodation of physical experiences. Children start to develop and perceive abstract ideas and they learn to create more complex logical structures with the aim to provide explanations for their physical experiences. During this stage the egocentrism of the previous stage loses its meaning and children learn to understand how other people might treat the same situation. At the same time children are challenged by abstract and hypothetical concepts. For example they try to understand the hypothetical concepts, offered by their parents or teachers at school.

The stage of formal operations is the last one in the scheme of Piaget and it starts at ages 11 to 15. This is the final form of cognition. Children do not need any concrete objects for making their rational judgments any more. They learn their deductive and hypothetical reasoning and their abilities to think abstractly are very close to those of adult individuals already. Children learn to develop not only one single, but multiple solutions to the problems and perceive the surrounding world from more scientific point of view. In addition they reveal their abilities of abstract thinking, for example they know how to build plans for the future or consider any hypothetical situations.

Overall, Piaget’s theory of cognitive development provides profound understanding of the major stages of mental development by children and the main advantage of it is that it is not purely focused upon the ways how children obtain their knowledge, rather upon understanding of the nature of their intelligence as well. His theory is highly appreciated for the fact that Piaget did not consider the process of child’s intellectual development as quantitative process, which would mean that children just need more information and knowledge along with their getting older. He underlined the meaning of qualitative changes in children thinking. This qualitative change has to go through four basic stages of children cognitive development

Works cited:

Berger, Kathleen, Stassen. The Developing Person Through Childhood. Worth Publishers; Fifth edition, 2008

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
Available at:

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]
close
Haven't found the right essay?
Get an expert to write you the one you need!
print

Professional writers and researchers

quotes

Sources and citation are provided

clock

3 hour delivery

person