Cognitivist Theories

These include:

Jean Piaget’s cognitive studies

Poet Noah Perry once

asked, “Who knows the thoughts of a child?” More than anyone, the
famous Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget (1896
—
1980) knew. Piaget concentrated on in-depth studies with small samples of children, including his own daughter. His work has been
tremendously influential in school education for many years, because he outlined the way children developed cognitively in a series of books.
For him,
learning related to the stage of children’s cognitive development. The closer the content to be
learnt matched the level
of cognitive development, the better. In this effort, Piaget’s co worker,Valentine Chatenay, deserves special credit. As Piaget’s wife, the
children they studied were her
children too. She not only supplied the participants; she also made observations and collected data. Their research program, which began
almost as a summer job for Piaget, blossomed into a collaborated marital effort and a lengthy career for him. Piaget is best remembered for
identifying four stages in cognitive development, leading to the
conclusion that a young child’s
understanding of the world is not just inferior to that of an adult. It is fundamentally different.

Piaget’s is a stage theory and can be summarized in the following table, taken from a summary
overview of his work (Jarvis, 1972).
Period Age (in years) Characteristics
Sensory-motor 0-2Infant learns to differentiate between self and objects in the external worldPre-operationalthought2-4Child ego-centric but
classifies objects by single salient features Intuitive 4-7Child thinks in classificatory way but may be unaware of classifications
Concrete operations 7-11Child able to use logical operations such as reversibility, classification and serialization Formal operations 11-15Trial
steps towards abstract conceptualization occur
As can be seen from table, Piaget’s focused upon the fact that as children grows older, so there
ability to conceptualize develops.
Cognitive Processes Schema
is a concept or frame work that exists in an individual mind to organize and interpret information. Children use schemas to construct their
world. Schemas can range from the simple(such as a schema of a car) to complex (such as a schema for what constitutes the universe).
Piaget’s interest in schemas focused on how children
organize and make sense out of their current experience.

Piaget (1952) said that two processes are responsible of how children use and adopt their schemas: assimilation and accommodation.
Assimilation
is a process of using new knowledge into existing knowledge. In assimilation children assimilate the environment into a schema.
Accommodation
occurs when a child adjust to new information. Children adjust their schemas to the environment in accommodation.
Organization

is Piaget’s concept of grouping isolated behaviors into a higher order. Every level
of thought is organized. Continual refinement of this organization is an inherent part of development. Organization occurs within stages of
development as well as across them.
Equilibration
is a mechanism that Piaget proposed to explain how children shift from one stage of thought to the next. The shift occurs as children
experience cognitive conflict or disequilibrium in trying to understand the world. Piaget believed there is considerable movement between
states of cognitive equilibrium and disequilibrium as assimilation and accommodation work in concert to produce cognitive change.

Cognitive Development

Cognitive development is the construction of thought processes, including remembering, problem solving, and decision-making, from
childhood through adolescenceto adulthood. Jean Piaget described the stages of child development. Information is not just poured
fromenvironment and children construct their own cognitive world at different points in theirdevelopment.
Stages of Cognitive Development
According to Piaget there are four stages of cognitive development and believe that all people pass through the same four stages in exactly
the same order.
1.Sensorimotor

2.Preoperational
3.Concrete operational
4.Formal operational

These are the guidelines not labels for all children of a certain age. Children may go through along period of transition between the stages
and may show character of one stage at one time andother in another situation.
Sensorimotor 0-2 years: Infancy
At this stage infants gain knowledge of the world from physical action they perform on it andthey coordinate sensory experiences with these
physical actions. They begin to make use ofimitation memory and thought. They start to think that objects do not cease to exist when
hidden.They move from reflex action to goal directed activity and from reflex to symbolic thought. Thedevelopment at this stage is further
divided into 6 sub-stages.
The Preoperational Stage: Early Childhood to the Early Elementary years.
The stage after sensorimotor is called preoperational because the child has not yet mastered thesemental operations but is moving toward
master. The ability to form and use symbols words,gestures, signs, images, and so on is thus major accomplishment of the preoperational
periodand moves
The Symbolic Function Sub-stage
In this sub-stage, the young child gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present. This ability vastly expands the
child’s
mental world. Young children use scribbledesigns to represent people, houses, cars, clouds, and so on.

Egocentrism
is the inability to distinguish between one own perspective and someone else perspective.
Animism
, another limitation of preoperational thought, is the belief that inanimate objects havelifelike qualities and are capable of action (Gelman &
Offer, 2002). .

The Intuitive Thought Sub-stage

The child has difficulty understanding events that he knows are taking place which he cannotsee. His fantasized thoughts bear
little resemblance to reality. He cannot yet answer the questionwhat if?
Concrete Operational Stage
The concrete operational stage, which lasts approximately from 7 to 11 years of age, is the thirdPiagetian stage. In this stage children can
perform concrete operations (operations that involveconcrete objects) and logical reasoning replaces intuitive reasoning as long as the
reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete expels. For instance, concrete operational thinkers cannotimagine the steps necessary to
complete an algebraic equation, which is too abstract for thinkingat this stage of development.
Conservation

The conservation tasks demonstrate a child ability to perform concrete operations. A concreteoperation is a reversible mental action on real,
concrete objects. Concrete operations allowchildren to coordinate several characteristics rather than focus on a single property of an object.

Formal Operational Stage

The formal operational stage, which appears between 11 and 15 years of age, is the fourth andfinal Piagetian stage. In this stage,
individuals move beyond concrete experiences and think in

abstract and more logical ways. As part of thinking more abstractly, adolescents develop imagesof ideal circumstances.
Abstract, Idealistic, and Logical Thinking

The abstract quality of the adolescent’s thought at the formal operational l

evel is evident in the
adolescent’s verbal problem solving ability. Whereas the concrete operat
ional thinker needs tosee the concrete elements A, B, and C to be able to make the logical inference that if A = B and B= C, then A = C, the
formal operational thinker can solve this problem merely through verbal presentation.

As adolescents are learning to think more abstractly and idealistically, they are alsolearning to think more logically.
Adolescent Egocentrism
David Elkind (1978) has described how adolescent egocentrism governs the way that adolescentsthink about social matters. Adolescent
egocentrism is the heightened self-consciousness ofadolescents, which is reflected in their belief that others are as interested in them as they
arethemselves, and in their sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility Elkind believes thatadolescent egocentrism can be dissected into
two types of social thinking imaginary audienceand personal fable.