MODULE 6

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Learning Outcomes
At the end of this module, you should be able to:
 Describe Piaget’s stages in your own words.
 Conduct a simple Piagetian Task interview with children.
 Match learning activities to the learners’ cognitive stage.

A. Basic Cognitive Concepts

1. Schema - Piaget used the term "schema" to refer to the cognitive structures by which individuals
intellectually adapt to and organize their environment. It is an individual's way to understand or
create meaning about a thing or experience. It is like the mind has a filling cabinet and each drawer
has folders that contain files of thing he has had experience with.
 If a child sees a dog for the first time, he creates his own schema of what dog is. It has four
legs and tail. It barks. It's furry. The child " put his description of a dog on file 'in his mind."
when he sees another dog, he "pulls" out the file (his schema of a dog)in his mind, look at the
animal and say, " four legs, tail, barks, furry .. that’s dog!"

2. Assimilation - This is the process of fitting a new experience into an existing previously created
cognitive structure schema.
 If a child sees a dog, this time a little smaller one, he makes sense what he is seeing by adding
this new information (a different looking dog) into a schema of a dog.

3. Accommodation - This is the process of creating new schema.

 If the child now sees another animal that looks a lil bit like a dog, and say " look mommy",
what a funny looking dog. Its bark is furry too!" Then the mommy explains, that's not a funny
looking dog. That's a goat!" with mommy further descriptions, the child will now create a new
schema, that of a, dog. He now adds a new file in his filling cabinet.

4. Equilibration - Is an achieving proper balance between assimilation and accommodation.

 When our experiences do not match our schemata (plural of schemata) or cognitive
structures, we experience cognitive disequilibrium. This means there is a discrepancy between
what is perceived and what is understood. We then exert effort through assimilation and
accommodation to establish equilibrium once more.

B. Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

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Stage 1. Sensori-motor stage
- The first stage corresponds from Birth to infancy. This is the Stage when a child who is initially
reflexive in grasping, sucking and reaching b ecomes more organize in his movement and Activity.
- The term Sensori-motor focuses onthe prominence of the senses and muscle movement through
which the infant comes to learn about himself and the world. In working with children, teachers
should aim to provide a rich and stimulating environment with appropriate object to play with.
- Object Permanence - this is the ability of the child to know that an object still exists even
when out of sight. This ability is attained in the sensory motor stage.

Stage 2. Pre-Operational Stage

- Covers from about two to seven years old, roughly corresponding to the pre-school years.
Intelligence at this stage is intuitive in nature. At this stage, the child can now make mental
representation an
- This stage is highlighted by the following:
 Symbolic function - This is the ability to represent objects and events. A symbol is a
thing that represent something else. Symbolic function gradually develops in the period
between 2 to 7 years. By the age of 6 to 7 the child can pretend play with object that exist only
in his mind
 Ex. Enzo who is 6, can do a whole ninja turtle routine without any costume nor props
 Egocentrism -This is the tendency of the child to only see his point of view and to assume
that everyone also has his same point of view. The child cannot take the perspective of others.
 Ex. Three-year-old girl who cannot understand why her cousins call her daddy" uncle" and
not a daddy.
 Centration - This refers to the tendency of the child to only focus on one aspect of things
or event and exclude other aspects.
 Ex. When a child is presented with two identical glasses with the same amount of water,
the child will say they have the same amount of water. However, once water from one of
the glasses is transferred to an obviously taller that narrow glass, the child might say that
there is more water that the taller glass. The Chile only focused or "centered" only one
aspect of the new glass, that it is a taller glass.

 Irreversibility - Pre-operational children still have the inability to reverse their thinking.
They can understand that 2+3 is 5 but cannot understand that 5-3 is 2.

 Animism -This is the tendency of children to attribute human like traits or characteristics to
inanimate objects.
 Ex. When at night, the child asked, where the sun is, she will reply, "Mr. Sun is asleep."

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  Transductive Reasoning -This refers to the pre-operational child's type of reasoning
that is neither inductive or deductive. Reasoning appears to be particular to particular.
 Ex. Since her mommy comes home every day around six o'clock in the evening, when
asked why it is already night, the child will say, because my mom is already home."

Stage 3. Concrete-operational stage

- This stage is characterized by the ability of the child to think logically but only in terms of concrete
objects. Covers ages between 8-11 years or the elementary school years.
- The Concrete Operational stage is marked by the following:

 Decentering - This refers to the ability of the child to perceive the different features of
objects and situations. This allows the child to be more logical when dealing with concrete
objects and situations.

 Reversibility - During the stage of concrete operations, the Child can now follow that
certain operations can be done in reverse.
 Ex. They can already comprehend the commutative property addition, and that
subtraction is the reverse of addition.

 Conservation - This is the 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.
 Ex. Because of the development of the child's ability decentering and also reversibility,
the concrete operational chile can now judge rightly that the amount of water in taller
but narrower container is still the same as when the water was in the shorter but wider
glass.

 Seriation - This refers to the ability to order or arrange things in a series based on one
dimension such as weight, volume or size

Stage 4. Formal Operational Stage

- In the final stage of formal operations covering ages between 12 to 15 years, thinking becomes
logical. They can now solve abstract problems and can hypothesize.
- This stage is characterized by the following:

 Hypothetical reasoning - This is the ability to come up with different hypothesis about
a problem and to gather and weigh data in order to make a final decision or judgement. The
individuals can now deal with " what if" questions.

 Analogical reasoning - This is the ability to perceive the relationship in one instance and
the use the relationship to narrow down possible answers in another similar situation or
problem. The individual in the formal operations stage can make an analogy.

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  Ex. If United Kingdom is to Europe, then Philippines is to _____. Asia is the answer.

 Deductive Reasoning - This is the ability to think logically by applying a general rule to a
particular instance or situation.
 Ex. All countries near the North Pole have cold temperatures. Greenland is near the
North Pole. Therefore, Greenland has cold temperature.

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