CDP (Piaget's Theory - CTET & State TET MCQ

According to Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development, assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium are the ways through which children integrate new experiences into already existing cognition structures (schema). 

Key Points 

• According to Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory, accommodation is referred to modifying existing schemas to make sense of new experiences.
• It's a process of adjusting one's understanding to accommodate new experiences or knowledge and altering existing ideas or schemas as a result of new experiences.

​Therefore, it becomes clear that alternating or changing our existing schemes in light of new information is known as accommodation.Additional Information 

• Schema: Schema is already existing mental models in the mind to represent anything. It is a building block of knowledge and is also called a room or packet of information in our minds.
• Assimilation: It is the addition of a new concept or experience into an existing schema. For example, the baby's sucking of the thumb is an initial schema.
• Equilibrium: The cognitive stability or balance arrived by the processes of assimilation and accommodation is the equilibrium obtained.  Equilibration is the balancing act between ‘old’ and ‘new’ perceptions and experiences.

Piaget defined cognitive structure as the patterns of physical/mental action that underlie intelligence. These patterns are also known by the term cognitive schema.

Key Points

• According to Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory, "Assimilation is one of the factors that influences how children learn and grow" assimilation means:

  • Process of taking in information into our previously existing schemas.
  • The way an individual takes and interprets new information in pre-existing mental structures without modifying them. 
  • Addition of a new concept or experience into an existing schema. For example, the baby's sucking of the thumb is an initial schema.
• Children construct their own cognitive worlds and build mental structures to adapt to it. Assimilation occurs as the child incorporates new information into his/her existing schemes. Accommodation is the child’s adjustment of schemes to for new information. 

Thus, it can be inferred that Piaget's term for the cognitive processes that underlie a person's organized patterns of behavior is assimilation.

Additional Information

Piaget’s Key Concepts:

• Adaptation: Piaget believed that learning is a lasting change in behavior due to the acquisitions that result from experience and this learning process occurs at gradual levels, as the existence of previous mental structures built through individual (assimilation and accommodation) are necessary for the adaptation of a coherent system through a balancing self-regulating.
• Schema: A representation in the mind of a set of ideas or actions which go together.
• Assimilation: The process of taking in information into our previously existing schemas.
• Accommodation: Involves altering existing ideas or schemas as a result of new experiences.
• Equilibration: A mechanism that assists children in achieving a balance between assimilation and accommodation.

Make-believe play, also known as pretend play or symbolic play, is a cognitive milestone identified by Jean Piaget in his theory of cognitive development.

Key Points

• It typically emerges during the preoperational stage, which occurs roughly between the ages of 2 to 7 years.
• Make-believe play involves the child using their imagination to create scenarios, pretend roles, and assign symbolic meanings to objects.
• In the described scenario with Arya, a three-year-old child, she engages in make-believe play by pretending to be another person and attributing roles to blocks based on their size (e.g., treating the longer block as a parent and the shorter one as a child).

Hence, the correct answer is make believe play.Hint 

• Intuitive thoughts in Piaget's theory refer to the use of immediate impressions, feelings, or hunches without the need for reasoning. 
• Animistic thinking is a concept in Piaget's theory where children attribute human-like qualities, emotions, or intentions to inanimate objects or natural phenomena. 
• Reversible thinking involves the child's capacity to mentally reverse actions or operations, understanding that certain processes can be undone or reversed.

Piaget’s stage theory describes the cognitive development in children. Cognitive development involves changes in cognitive processes and abilities. In Piaget’s view, early cognitive development involves processes based upon actions and later progresses into changes in mental operations.

Key PointsKey concepts of Piaget’s Theory are - 

• Schemas: Schemas are categories of knowledge that help us to interpret and understand the world.
• Adaptation: Piaget saw adaptation as a fundamentally biological process. All living things adapt, even without a nervous system or brain. Assimilation and accommodation are the two sides of the adaptation process.
• Assimilation: The process of taking in new information into our previously existing schemas is known as assimilation.
• Accommodation: Accommodation involves altering existing schemas, or ideas, as a result of new information or new experiences. New schemas may also be developed during this process.
• Equilibration: Piaget believed that all children try to strike a balance between assimilation and accommodation, which is achieved through a mechanism Piaget called equilibration.

Important Points

• ​ A child in his early childhood, sees a dog for the first time? When he first time sees a dog does he ‘know’ that the animal he sees is a dog? He does not, however, his experience of observing the dog for the first few times, helps him in developing a scheme for understanding dogs.
• The child who now ‘knows’ the animal-type called dog, sees a cat for the first time. He sees that the animal has a tail, is furry, and has four legs – just like his scheme to understand a dog. He now calls the cat a dog. He has used an existing scheme/knowledge of dogs to make sense of a new animal he sees. Despite the fact that the cat does not look exactly the same like the dog he understands the cat as a dog. This fitting of new experience into an already existing scheme is called Assimilation.

​Thus, it is concluded that After seeing a cat a child says it is a dog because the child learns that a dog has 4 legs, This view is a representation of assimilation.

Additional Information

• The processes of assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration are central to the development of cognition.
• These processes continuously lead children to understand the world in a more sophisticated adult-like way as they grow. 

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who is widely known for his contributions to the field of developmental psychology, particularly in the study of cognitive development in children.

Key Points

• In the preoperational stage, when children approach the age of 4-5 years, children are found to be asking a lot of “why” questions.
• For instance, “why is the sky blue?” “Why does the sun shine?” “Who was the mother when everyone was a baby?” “How do we grow?” etc.
• These questions are a signal of increasing curiosity in children and emergence of interest in reasoning and figuring the world they live in.
• This stage has been called intuitive as the children are sure about their knowledge but are not aware of its source. 

Hence, the correct answer is 'it signals an emerging curiosity and interest in reasoning about the world'.

Key Points

• Piaget’s theory aims to explain the mechanisms and processes by which newborns develop into adults.
• He believed that children construct their own knowledge. 
• Piaget believed that language acquisition is just one aspect of a child's overall intellectual development. 
• He argued that a child has to understand a concept before it can acquire the particular language form which expresses that concept.
• Factors that influences one's cognitive development -
  • Biological maturation – Child growing up and biological processes change the thinking pattern.
  • Activity – Children tend to act on the environment as they explore, test, and observe
  • Equilibrium – The tendency to search for balance between the basic tendencies in thinking.

Thus we can conclude that Biological maturation, Activity, and equilibration influences  one's cognitive development.

Additional Information

The following cycle will help you to understand the cycle of assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium.

Examples- 

• Assimilation - Ram sees a dog for the first time. Exclaimed Cow!
• Accommodation – Realising that it barks and is much smaller, Ram calls the Barky baby cow! Later her mother explained it is a dog. Now Ram has accommodated the schema of Dog. 

Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, has made a systematic study of cognitive development in his theory that is categorized into four stages. 

He observed his children and their process of making sense of the world around them and developed a model of how the mind processes new information encountered.

Important Point 

Object permanence developed in the sensorimotor stage of Piaget's theory.

• Object permanence is the concept that things do not vanish from existence if they are no longer in plain sight.
• By understanding the concept of object permanence, children develop the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they can't be seen and touched.
• For example, Parthika demonstrates object permanence when her rattle is taken and hidden under a blanket and she lifts the blanket to look for the rattle.
• In the sensorimotor stage, infants explore the world through sensory and motor activity. They experience, perceive, recognize, feel, and understand the environment through their senses.

Hence, we can conclude that Parthika will lift the blanket to look for the rattle. when he demonstrates object permanence.

Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, has made a systematic study of cognitive development in his theory that is categorized in four stages. 

• He observed his children and their process of making sense of the world around them and developed a model of how the mind processes new information encountered.

Key Points

• The children in the described scenario, are in Piaget’s Concrete-operational stage and showing the ability of seriation.
• It is the ability to order items along a particular dimension such as length or weight. For instance, arranging block from shortest to lightest to the heaviest.
• Interestingly, children can also seriate mentally, that is, they are capable of transitive inference. If Block A is lighter than Block B, and Block B is lighter than Block C, children can draw the mental inference that Block C is the heaviest.

Hence, the children are in Piaget’s Concrete-operational stage.

"Jean Piaget", a Swiss psychologist, is famous for his work on child development. He made a systematic study of cognitive development in his theory that is categorized in four stages.

Key Points

• 'Preoperational stage' lasts around 2 to 6 or 7 years of age. In this stage, the child faces problems with the concept of conservation. 
• Due to the lack of conservation, the child can't understand that a thing remains the same even if it changes in shape or appearance.
• In the scenario with Yash and the playdough, Yash initially agrees that the two balls have the same amount of playdough, demonstrating an understanding of equality.
• However, when one of the balls is rolled out into a long, thin snake shape, Yash disagrees that the remaining ball and the flattened snake have the same amount of playdough.
• This indicates a lack of conservation, as Yash is influenced by the altered appearance (shape) and fails to understand that the quantity of playdough remains constant.

Hence, it is clear that the Yash lacks conservation.

Additional Information

• Animistic thinking/Animism makes the child imagine that toys are living beings and wants them to talk, walk, sit and stand, and to do as s/he says. For example, a child talking to a doll or feeding the doll.
• Seriation is the ability to order items along a particular dimension such as length or weight. For instance, arranging pencils from shortest to longest.
• Class inclusion is a concept in cognitive development that involves understanding the relationship between a whole category (a larger class) and its subcategories (smaller classes). 

Piaget’s stage theory describes the cognitive development in children. Cognitive development involves changes in cognitive processes and abilities. In Piaget’s view, early cognitive development involves processes based upon actions and later progresses into changes in mental operations.

Key Points 

Piaget explained that children progress through four stages and in the same order. The four stages of cognitive development are as follows:-

• The Sensorimotor Stage (0 to 2 years)
• The Preoperational Stage (2 to 7 years)
• The Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 12 years)
• The Formal Operational Stage (12 to adulthood)

Formal operational stage:

• This stage starts from around eleven years and goes on till adulthood. This is the age when the child is in late elementary classes. In this phase as the name suggests children are able to engage in operational thinking.
• That is, they gradually become capable of abstract thinking. That is, their thought is no longer tied only to concrete things; they can think and engage with symbols (like numbers).
• Divergent thinking includes thinking and behaving in divergent ways. It helps come up with multiple ideas that aid creativity. At this age, the child starts solving problems using divergent thinking.

Important Points

At the stage of formal operation, the child displays qualities:

• Systematic analysis (with all possible solutions) of the problem
• Logical approach
• Ability to use a higher-order structure

• Abstract, divergent and scientific thinking
• It is the most crucial stage where mental capabilities can be developed to the maximum level.
• Capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning
• Ability to think abstractly, metacognition, and problem-solving

Thus, it is clear that A child starts solving the problem by using his divergent thinking, According to Jean Piaget in which stage he is at the formal operational stage.