Piaget's Theory of

Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget (1936)

 the first psychologist to make a systematic study

of cognitive development
 disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a
fixed trait, and regarded cognitive development
as a process which occurs due to biological
maturation and interaction with the environment.
 children are born with a very basic mental
structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on
which all subsequent learning and knowledge are
based.
Basic Cognitive Concepts

Schema
Assimilation
Accommodation
Equilibrium
Basic Cognitive Concepts
Schema

• Basic building blocks of such cognitive models, and enable us to

form a mental representation of the world.
• Piaget called the schema the basic building block of intelligent
behavior – a way of organizing knowledge.
Basic Cognitive Concepts
Assimilation
– process of fitting new experience into a existing or previously
created cognitive structure or schema.
Accommodation
– process of creating a new schema.
Equilibration
-achieving proper balance between assimilation and accommodation
.
• Cognitive disequilibrium – discrepancy between what is
perceived and what is understood.
Stages of Cognitive Development

 1. Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2)

 2. Pre-operational stage (from age 2 to age 7)
 3. Concrete operational stage (from age 7 to age 11)
 4. Formal operational stage
(age 11+ - adolescence and adulthood).
Sensorimotor Stage (Birth-2 yrs.)
Focuses on the prominence of the senses and muscle
movements through which the infant comes to learn
about himself and the world.

Object permanence – ability of the child to know that

an object still exist even when out of sight.
Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)

A child can now make mental representations and is

able to pretend, the child is now ever closer to the
symbols.
Preoperational Stage highlighted by the following:
• Symbolic Function – ability to represent objects and events.

• Egocentrism – tendency of the child to only see his point of view and
to assume the everyone also has his same point of view.

• Centration – tendency of the child to only focus on one aspect of a

thing or event and exclude other aspects.

• Irreversibility – pre-operational children still have the inability to

reverse their thinking.

• Animism – tendency of children to attribute humans like traits or

characteristics to inanimate objects.

• Transductive reasoning – refers to the pre-operational child’s type of

reasoning that is neither inductive nor deductive.
Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years)
Characterized by the ability of the child to think
logically but only in terms of concrete objects.
Concrete-Operational Stage marked by the following:

• Decentering – refers to the ability of the child to perceive the different

features of objects and situations.

• Reversibility – a child can now follow that certain operations can be

done in reverse.

• Conservation – ability to know that certain properties of object like

number, mass, volume, or area do not change even if there is a change
in appearance.

• Seriation – ability to order or arrange things in a series based on one

dimension such a weight, volume or size.
Formal Operational Stage (11 years and over)

A child can now solve abstract problems and can

hypothesize
Formal-Operational Stage marked by the following:

• Hypothetical Reasoning – ability to come up with different

hypothesis about a problem and to gather and weigh data in
order to make a final decision or judgment.

• Analogical Reasoning – ability to perceive the relationship in

one instance and then use that relationship to narrow down
possible answer in another similar situation or problem.

• Deductive Reasoning – ability to think logically by applying a

general a general rule to a particular instance or situation.
References
• Brenda Corpuz, Ma. Rita Lucas, Heidi Grace Borabado,
Paz Lucido. Child and Adolescent Development: Looking
at Learners at Different Life Stages, 2015

Internet Sources

• https://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html