Summary: Piaget’s Stage Theory of Cognitive Development is a description of

cognitive development as four distinct stages in children: sensorimotor,

preoperational, concrete, and formal.

Originator: Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

Key Terms: Sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete, formal, accommodation,
assimilation.
Piaget’s Stage Theory of Cognitive Development
Swiss biologist and psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) observed his children
(and their process of making sense of the world around them) and eventually
developed a four-stage model of how the mind processes new information
encountered. He posited that children progress through 4 stages and that they all
do so in the same order. These four stages are:
 Sensorimotor stage (Birth to 2 years old). The infant builds an
understanding of himself or herself and reality (and how things work) through
interactions with the environment. It is able to differentiate between itself and
other objects. Learning takes place via assimilation (the organization of
information and absorbing it into existing schema) and accommodation (when
an object cannot be assimilated and the schemata have to be modified to
include the object.
 Preoperational stage (ages 2 to 4). The child is not yet able to
conceptualize abstractly and needs concrete physical situations. Objects are
classified in simple ways, especially by important features.
 Concrete operations (ages 7 to 11). As physical experience accumulates,
accomodation is increased. The child begins to think abstractly and
conceptualize, creating logical structures that explain his or her physical
experiences.
 Formal operations (beginning at ages 11 to 15). Cognition reaches its final
form. By this stage, the person no longer requires concrete objects to make
rational judgements. He or she is capable of deductive and hypothetical
reasoning. His or her ability for abstract thinking is very similar to an adult.

Jean Piaget's Background

Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland in 1896. After receiving his doctoral degree at
age 22, Piaget formally began a career that would have a profound impact on both
psychology and education. After working with Alfred Binet, Piaget developed an
interest in the intellectual development of children. Based upon his observations, he
concluded that children were not less intelligent than adults, they simply think
differently. Albert Einstein called Piaget's discovery "so simple only a genius could
have thought of it."
Piaget's stage theory describes the cognitive development of children. Cognitive
development involves changes in cognitive process and abilities. In Piaget's view,
early cognitive development involves processes based upon actions and later
progresses into changes in mental operations.

Key Concepts

Schemas - A schema describes both the mental and physical actions involved in
understanding and knowing. Schemas are categories of knowledge that help us to
interpret and understand the world.

In Piaget's view, a schema includes both a category of knowledge and the process
of obtaining that knowledge. As experiences happen, this new information is used
to modify, add to, or change previously existing schemas.

For example, a child may have a schema about a type of animal, such as a dog. If
the child's sole experience has been with small dogs, a child might believe that all
dogs are small, furry, and have four legs. Suppose then that the child encounters a
very large dog. The child will take in this new information, modifying the previously
existing schema to include this new information.

Assimilation - The process of taking in new information into our previously

existing schema's is known as assimilation. The process is somewhat subjective,
because we tend to modify experience or information somewhat to fit in with our
preexisting beliefs. In the example above, seeing a dog and labeling it "dog" is an
example of assimilating the animal into the child's dog schema.
Accommodation - Another part of adaptation involves changing or altering our
existing schemas in light of new information, a process known as 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. As children progress through the stages of cognitive
development, it is important to maintain a balance between applying previous
knowledge (assimilation) and changing behavior to account for new knowledge
(accommodation). Equilibration helps explain how children are able to move from
one stage of thought into the next.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a biologist who originally studied molluscs (publishing
twenty scientific papers on them by the time he was 21) but moved into the study
of the development of children's understanding, through observing them and
talking and listening to them while they worked on exercises he set.

"Piaget's work on children's intellectual development owed much to his early studies
of water snails"

(Satterly, 1987:622)

His view of how children's minds work and develop has been enormously influential,
particularly in educational theory. His particular insight was the role of maturation
(simply growing up) in children's increasing capacity to understand their world:
they cannot undertake certain tasks until they are psychologically mature enough
to do so. His research has spawned a great deal more, much of which has
undermined the detail of his own, but like many other original investigators, his
importance comes from his overall vision.

He proposed that children's thinking does not develop entirely smoothly: instead,
there are certain points at which it "takes off" and moves into completely new areas
and capabilities. He saw these transitions as taking place at about 18 months, 7
years and 11 or 12 years. This has been taken to mean that before these ages
children are not capable (no matter how bright) of understanding things in certain
ways, and has been used as the basis for scheduling the school curriculum.
Whether or not should be the case is a different matter.

More

Piaget's Key Ideas

Adaptation What it says: adapting to the world through assimilation and
accommodation

Assimilation The process by which a person takes material into their mind
from the environment, which may mean changing the evidence
of their senses to make it fit.

Accommodation The difference made to one's mind or concepts by the process

of assimilation.
Note that assimilation and accommodation go together: you
can't have one without the other.

Classification The ability to group objects together on the basis of common

features.
Class Inclusion The understanding, more advanced than simple classification,
that some classes or sets of objects are also sub-sets of a
larger class. (E.g. there is a class of objects called dogs. There
is also a class called animals. But all dogs are also animals, so
the class of animals includes that of dogs)

Conservation The realisation that objects or sets of objects stay the same
even when they are changed about or made to look different.

Decentration The ability to move away from one system of classification to

another one as appropriate.
Egocentrism The belief that you are the centre of the universe and
everything revolves around you: the corresponding inability to
see the world as someone else does and adapt to it. Not moral
"selfishness", just an early stage of psychological
development.

Operation The process of working something out in your head. Young

children (in the sensorimotor and pre-operational stages) have
to act, and try things out in the real world, to work things out
(like count on fingers): older children and adults can do more
in their heads.

Schema (or The representation in the mind of a set of perceptions, ideas,

scheme) and/or actions, which go together.

Stage A period in a child's development in which he or she is capable

of understanding some things but not others

Stages of Cognitive Development

Stage Characterised by

Sensori-motor Differentiates self from objects

(Birth-2 yrs)
Recognises self as agent of action and begins to act
intentionally: e.g. pulls a string to set mobile in motion or
shakes a rattle to make a noise

Achieves object permanence: realises that things continue

 to exist even when no longer present to the sense (pace
Bishop Berkeley)

Pre-operational Learns to use language and to represent objects by images

(2-7 years) and words

Thinking is still egocentric: has difficulty taking the

viewpoint of others

Classifies objects by a single feature: e.g. groups together

all the red blocks regardless of shape or all the square
blocks regardless of colour

Concrete Can think logically about objects and events

operational
(7-11 years) Achieves conservation of number (age 6), mass (age 7),
and weight (age 9)

Classifies objects according to several features and can

order them in series along a single dimension such as size.

Formal Can think logically about abstract propositions and test

operational hypotheses systemtically
(11 years and up)
Becomes concerned with the hypothetical, the future, and
ideological problems

The accumulating evidence is that this scheme is too rigid: many children manage
concrete operations earlier than he thought, and some people never attain formal
operations (or at least are not called upon to use them).

Piaget's approach is central to the school of cognitive theory known as "cognitive

constructivism": other scholars, known as "social constructivists", such
as Vygotsky and Bruner, have laid more emphasis on the part played by language
and other people in enabling children to learn.

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