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Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget is a famous personality in psychology and has been appreciated by the people who criticised his theory of cognitive development. A zoologist from Switzerland, he started working with Alfred Binet on intelligence tests and because of his interest, he also studied child development with focus on their cognitive development. In the course of his study, he also tried to cover moral development.

Piaget is a known radical constructivist, believing only in the first two principles of constructivism according to which every child constructs his or her own knowledge and the function of cognition is an adaptation, not a mere representation of actual reality. Piaget has been criticised for his universalised stage theory, which does not provide adequate and sufficient space to cultural context.

Piaget’s theory is also known as genetic epistemology, which believes that the structures and processes we use for development are inbuilt. These processes are same for all, irrespective of culture; therefore, he called it genetic. And study of knowledge is epistemology.

According to Piaget, the process of adaptation and learning across the cultures is constant and follows a set of order. He points out how a child learns to adapt to the surrounding environment. It is not only the old, but also younger children who explore their surrounding world and try to make sense of it. There is a sequence to this process and Piaget presented this sequence through a stage theory. Therefore, his theory is also known as the stage theory of cognitive development.

Though his stage theory has been highly criticised, it has great significance in development

and learning psychology.

Cognitive Development 

Cognitive development is the construction of thought processes, including remembering, problem-solving, and decision-making, from childhood through adolescence to adulthood.

Cognitive development refers to how a person perceives, thinks and understands his or her world through the interaction of genetics and environment. Among the areas of cognitive development are information processing, intelligence, reasoning, language development and memory. It includes development of sensation, perception, thinking, reasoning and so on.

Fundamentals of Learning and Cognitive Development

Piaget, in his theory, explains certain factors which influence learning. In other words, we can say that there are certain assumptions on which his theory is based. He believes that our biological maturation plays a significant role in our development and learning; thus, heredity plays a major role.

In our daily life, we do a lot of activities. We work at home, in the office and so on. We go out with friends; we discuss many issues among friends and with teachers in school and colleges. In short, we engage ourselves in some kind of activity all the time. Engaging in such activities is important since it is a significant factor that influences cognitive development.

These activities are incomplete unless they are socially transmitted and associated with social experiences. These social experiences help the child to learn to internalise the meanings associated with his or her activities. Most often, the internalisation process happens naturally, but sometimes it creates problem of imbalance between what a child tries to know and he or she knows already. In such a situation, there is a state of disequilibrium from which the child always tries to create balance through a process known as equilibration. This is an ongoing process through which a child tries to create a balance between assimilation and accommodation. With the help of this process, we seek to arrive at a mental balance between cognitive schemes and information from the environment. (As referred by Woolfolk, Anita, 2010)

Important Concept or Tendencies of the Thinking Process

Piaget discussed different mechanisms of the thinking process. He claimed that the thinking process has its own process for execution. According to him, we have a system for organising information in our mind and we do organise information and experiences in our mental system under different categories. The mental system and the categories are known as schema.

Piaget elaborates upon how we adjust with the environment and called this process adaptation. Adaptation has two sub-processes, named assimilation and accommodation. We know so many things already, when we enter the learning process. We also have an existing scheme related to this prior knowledge. In the process of assimilation, we fit the new knowledge or information into the existing schemes.

However, sometimes we see that the existing schemes do not support new information. In such a situation, we generally do two things. First, we alter the existing schema or second, we create a new schema.

To understand the difference between assimilation and accommodation, let us consider

these two examples:

• Young children can go from riding a big wheel to riding a tricycle with no problem. They easily assimilate the change since it is ‘sort of the same’. However, for them to progress to a bicycle there is much accommodation that must take place.
• Shifting to a new house without making any changes to it can be considered as assimilation while altering a house to increase the size of its kitchen and so on can be taken an example of accommodation.

Piaget also talked about disequilibrium, which, he contends, is a state of imbalance that occurs when the present way of thinking does not help to understand a given situation or problem.

Four Stages of Cognitive Development

Piaget has explained and discussed about the different stages of cognitive development. He believed that cognitive development takes place through four fundamental stages. All children have to pass through these stages to reach to the next higher level cognitive thinking. A detailed description of Piaget theory (stage-wise) along with its educational implication is discussed below.

1. Sensory Motor Stage: (0–2 Years)

The main characteristic of this stage is that it involves the senses and motor activities. Children do reflexive activities such as sucking and grasping. In this stage, the child observes and imitates his or her surroundings. Thought and memory also start to develop in a systematic way.

Children learn to recognise objects and understand that objects have their separate permanent existence. As infants grow older, they learn that even if an object is not in front of them, it still exists. Piaget called it object permanence. It is also known as ‘out of sight, out of mind.’

Children also learn to work in a particular direction. Catching particular thing which they are asked to catch, playing with puzzles and so on are common activities they learn to do. They move from simple to complex logical action and thinking. This goal directed thinking helps them to progress to a higher level scheme to achieve a goal.

There are six sub-stages of the first stage given by Piaget: 

1. Stages of Reflex Activities (0–1 month): Inborn reflexes (sucking and looking) help the child to understand the surrounding. 
2. Primary Circular Reactions (1–4 months): Sensations and schemas get coordinated in this stage. Whatever children do in this stage, they tend to do it repeatedly as they derive pleasure from doing so. For example, if a child starts sucking thumb, he or she will continue with this action because it gives the child a soothing feeling. 
3. Secondary Circular Reactions (4–8 months): Children become more focussed on doing actions. They repeat their actions to get a response from the environment. For example, they put things in their mouth and repeat the same action with many objects. 
4. Coordination of Reactions (8–12 months): In this stage, children learn to make a difference between goal and means. They also develop ways to achieve their goals. They also try to generalise the learning and try to use it from one situation to another. 
5. Tertiary Circular Reactions (12–18 months): This is a stage of trial and error. Children explore the things around them. They make mistakes and also tend to repeat these mistakes again. This stage is very important as children learn to be confident in this particular stage. They repeat many actions, because they want attention from their care-giver. 
6. Early Representational Thought (18–24 months): Children start focusing more on mental activities rather than physical actions and they start thinking about objects. At this age, they show the ability to recognise object permanence. They search for the toy even if it is not in their sight.

2. Pre-operational Stage: (2–7 Years) 

This stage is knows as pre-operational stage of cognitive development. It is called ‘pre’ because in this stage, children cannot perform logical operation. This stage is categorised in two parts. The first part is called the pre-conceptual stage (2–4) while the second is termed as the intuitive stage (4–7).

Children begin to process their thoughts at this stage albeit in a manner that is a far less efficient than the logical thought-processing of adults. Their vocabulary expends and develops during this time because they change their working style and habits and start behaving like little adults.

‘Ego-centrism’ is one of the main characteristics of pre-operational children. Children focus on their own perspective and feel that they are correct. They also believe that others also share the same perspective because they think that it is the only perspective which exists. But gradually they understand that there many perspectives and Piaget called it ‘decentering.’ They start believing that they are not at the centre of everything.

Animism is also a characteristic of the pre-operational stage. It is a characteristic by which children believe that all objects or things are living and has some consciousness. An example of this is that children often believe that a table also feels pain, if it is hit or kicked; a car does not get started because it is tired and so on. A child believes that everyone is like him or her.

Children also develop the ability to use symbols, language, pictures, signs or gestures to represent actions or objects mentally. Piaget called this semiotic function or symbolism. Along with this, their ideas of right and wrong are governed by the people around them. They generally focus on one aspect at a time and cannot think of any other possible situation. This is called moral realism. This moral realism makes them believe and respect rules and authority.

Educational Implications of Preoperational Stage: 

• Instructions must include action and should be brief. 
• Students will not be able to follow instructions continuously, they need gaps. 
• Visuals should be used for teaching. 
• The teacher needs to understand that each student may have a completely different understanding about the concept being discussed in the class. 
• Practical experience will help learners to involve more in teaching–learning processes. 
• Play-way method is the most appropriate way to teach this age group. They enjoy playing house, dressing up and so on. Parents and teachers must use this idea while teaching them. 
• Hands-on activities facilitate cognitive development among children in this age group. nn Children should be allowed to explore as much as they can with toys, sand, water and so on. This will help them to learn conservation of various concepts.
• Children should be taught to relate their experiences with what they are being taught. They should be provided opportunities of authentic learning.

Children are not equipped for certain functions at this stage. For example, they cannot do reversible thinking. While children can do simple logical operations, they face difficulty in understanding reverse counting, extended family relation tree and so on. Along with reversibility, they also face difficulty in conservation of various concepts such as height and width. Conservation is a principle according to which some characteristics of an object remain the same despite change in its appearance. A famous example of conservation is that regarding the conservation of volume, where children said the glass with more height has more water than the other glass, although the volume of water was same in both the glasses. Such examples show that children can think only in one direction and face difficulty in conservation of various concepts. 

Children of this stage are pre-scholars and attend play school and nursery. Observations show that children use a unique form of speech in which, children in a group talk but do not really interact or communicate. Piaget called it collective monologues. They will talk a lot in class, but they do not pay attention to what their peer is saying. They do it because of ego-centrism and lack of decentring.

3. Concrete Operational Stage: (7–11 Years) 

The main characteristic of children at this stage is that they can do operations on concrete objects and situations. However, they will find it hard to solve abstract problems and have difficulty with words like ‘assume’ that relate to mental conjecture. They can do logical thinking if they are allowed to manipulate objects. By comparison, however, it is seen that thoughts are able to be manipulated and the presence of the object is not necessary for the thought to take place in the formal operations stage. 

There is no doubt that thought processing in children of this age group becomes more rational, logical and developed. They start thinking more like mature persons and rarely believe in animism and ego-centrism. However, there may be a few exceptions where some children continue to hold on to these fixations as do some people who carry them well into their adulthood. During the concrete operational stage, children gradually develop the ability to conserve, or learn that objects are not always the way that they appear to be. They start taking many perspectives about concepts. They begin to develop the ability to understand identity, compensation and reversibility. (As referred by Woolfolk, Anita, 2013)

Once children have learned to conserve, they also learn that objects remain the same even after changes in colours, etc. For example, they learn that if they spread out the pencils on the floor, there are still as many as there were before, even though they look different! 

Children learn many things in this stage with reference to conservation such as classification, grouping objects into categories, seriation, arranging of objects in sequential order according to one aspect, such as size, weight or volume.

Educational Implications of Concrete Operational Stage: 

• Provide concrete experiences for learning. Simple experiments with concrete object will facilitate their cognitive development. 
• Avoid giving too much to read. Provide limited reading. More focus should be given on concrete objects and their manipulation.
• Multi dimension modes should be used. 
• Part learning and teaching should be more emphasised than mass practice. 
• Complex ideas should be taught with simple examples. 
• Use analogies to show the relationship of new material to already acquired knowledge.

4. Formal Operational Stage: (11 Years – Adulthood) 
In this stage, children become capable of abstract thinking and are able to understand the combination and coordination of numbers and variables. Children move ahead from concrete objects to abstract concepts. They develop a logical system of intelligence and try to incorporate all possible solutions while working on a problem. They also learn to coordinate between different variables. 

Children in this stage use the formal operations problem solving strategy in which an individual begins by identifying all the factors that might affect a problem and then deduces systematically. Piaget called it hypothetico-deductive reasoning. 

This stage permits adolescents to reason beyond a world of concrete reality to a world of possibilities. Sometimes, they just live in a world of imaginations with no concern about the real world. 

Piaget believes that children overcome egocentrism, but they still tend to believe that everyone share similar thoughts, feeling and concerns. They think why people not understand their need and perspective and therefore, they develop adolescent egocentrism. They feel that everyone notice them, what they do, how they walk, how they talk and so on. Piaget said, children develop an imaginary audience and think they are being observed by people. They spend a long time in front of the mirror before they go out. (As referred by Woolfolk, Anita, 2010)

Educational Implication of Formal Operation Stage: 

• Children involve hypothetical reasoning in their thinking process. Abstract problems can be given to the learner. 
• Imagination based task should be provided to learners and students encouraged to use their imagination to solve the problems. 
• Teachers should provide space to learn and understand concepts, beyond rote recalling of facts. 
• Developing abstract reasoning skills does not mean that the teacher should stop using concrete objects. The teacher should continue to use concrete experiences and objects. 
• Ask students to formulate their questions and let them answer these questions.
• Discussion forms should be formulated to solve the problem scientifically.

A diagrammatical representation of Piaget’s Theory