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  • Piaget's theory of cognitive development Piaget's theory of cognitive development is

  • a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence, first developed

  • by Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget . It is primarily known as a developmental

  • stage theory but, in fact, it deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans

  • come gradually to acquire, construct, and use it. To Piaget, cognitive development was

  • a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of biological maturation and environmental

  • experience. Accordingly, children construct an understanding of the world around them,

  • then experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in

  • their environment. Moreover, Piaget claimed the idea that cognitive development is at

  • the center of human organism, and language is contingent on cognitive development. Below

  • is a short description of Piaget's views about the nature of intelligence, followed by a

  • description of the stages through which it develops until maturity.

  • Nature of intelligence: operative and figurative Piaget noted reality in the sense of as a

  • dynamic system of continuous change and, as such, is defined in reference to the two conditions

  • that define dynamic systems. Specifically, he argued that reality involves transformations

  • and states. Transformations refer to all manners of changes that a thing or person can undergo.

  • States refer to the conditions or the appearances in which things or persons can be found between

  • transformations. For example, there might be changes in shape or form (for instance,

  • liquids are reshaped as they are transferred from one vessel to another, humans change

  • in their characteristics as they grow older), in size (for example, a series of coins on

  • a table might be placed close to each other or far apart), or in placement or location

  • in space and time (e.g., various objects or persons might be found at one place at one

  • time and at a different place at another time). Thus, Piaget argued, if human intelligence

  • is to be adaptive, it must have functions to represent both the transformational and

  • the static aspects of reality. He proposed that operative intelligence is responsible

  • for the representation and manipulation of the dynamic or transformational aspects of

  • reality, and that figurative intelligence is responsible for the representation of the

  • static aspects of reality. Operative intelligence is the active aspect

  • of intelligence. It involves all actions, overt or covert, undertaken in order to follow,

  • recover, or anticipate the transformations of the objects or persons of interest. Figurative

  • intelligence is the more or less static aspect of intelligence, involving all means of representation

  • used to retain in mind the states (i.e., successive forms, shapes, or locations) that intervene

  • between transformations. That is, it involves perception, imitation, mental imagery, drawing,

  • and language. Therefore, the figurative aspects of intelligence derive their meaning from

  • the operative aspects of intelligence, because states cannot exist independently of the transformations

  • that interconnect them. Piaget stated that the figurative or the representational aspects

  • of intelligence are subservient to its operative and dynamic aspects, and therefore, that understanding

  • essentially derives from the operative aspect of intelligence.

  • At any time, operative intelligence frames how the world is understood and it changes

  • if understanding is not successful. Piaget stated that this process of understanding

  • and change involves two basic functions: assimilation and accommodation.

  • Assimilation and accommodation Through his study of the field of education,

  • Piaget focused on two processes, which he named assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation

  • describes how humans perceive and adapt to new information. It is the process of fitting

  • new information into pre-existing cognitive schemas. Assimilation occurs when humans are

  • faced with new or unfamiliar information and refer to previously learned information in

  • order to make sense of it. Unlike it, accommodation is the process of taking new information in

  • one's environment and altering pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the new information.

  • Through a series of stages, Piaget explains the ways in which characteristics are constructed

  • that lead to specific types of thinking. This chart is called cognitive development. To

  • Piaget, assimilation is integrating external elements into structures of lives or environments,

  • or those we could have through experience. It is through assimilation that accommodation

  • is derived. Accommodation is imperative because it is how people will continue to interpret

  • new concepts, schemas, frameworks, and more. Assimilation is different from accommodation

  • by how it relates to the inner organism due to the environment. Piaget believes that the

  • human brain has been programmed through evolution to bring equilibrium, which is what Piaget

  • believes ultimately influences structures by the internal and external processes through

  • assimilation and accommodation. Piaget's understanding is that these two functions

  • cannot exist without the other. To assimilate an object into an existing mental schema,

  • one first needs to take into account or accommodate to the particularities of this object to a

  • certain extent. For instance, to recognize (assimilate) an apple as an apple, one must

  • first focus (accommodate) on the contour of this object. To do this, one needs to roughly

  • recognize the size of the object. Development increases the balance, or equilibration, between

  • these two functions. When in balance with each other, assimilation and accommodation

  • generate mental schemas of the operative intelligence. When one function dominates over the other,

  • they generate representations which belong to figurative intelligence.

  • Sensorimotor stage The sensorimotor stage is the first of the

  • four stages in cognitive development which "extends from birth to the acquisition of

  • language". In this stage, infants progressively construct knowledge and understanding of the

  • world by coordinating experiences (such as vision and hearing) with physical interactions

  • with objects (such as grasping, sucking, and stepping). Infants gain knowledge of the world

  • from these physical actions they perform within it. They progress from reflexive, instinctual

  • action at birth to the beginning of symbolic thought toward the end of the stage.

  • The child learns that he/she is separate from the environment and that aspects of the environment

  • continue to exist, even though they may be outside the reach of the child's senses. In

  • this stage, according to Piaget, the development of object permanence is one of the most important

  • accomplishments. Object permanence is a child’s understanding that objects continue to exist

  • even though they cannot be seen or heard. Piaget divided the sensorimotor stage into

  • six sub-stages". By the end of the sensorimotor period, the

  • child sees objects as both separate from the self, and permanent.

  • Pre-operational stage Piaget's second stage, the pre-operational

  • stage, starts when the child begins to learn to speak at age two and lasts up until the

  • age of seven. During the Pre-operational Stage of cognitive development, Piaget noted that

  • children do not yet understand concrete logic and cannot mentally manipulate information.

  • Children’s increase in playing and pretending takes place in this stage. However, the child

  • still has trouble seeing things from different points of view. The children's play is mainly

  • categorized by symbolic play and manipulating symbols. Such play is demonstrated by the

  • idea of checkers being snacks, pieces of paper being plates, and a box being a table. Their

  • observations of symbols exemplifies the idea of play with the absence of the actual objects

  • involved. By observing sequences of play, Piaget was able to demonstrate that, towards

  • the end of the second year, a qualitatively new kind of psychological functioning occurs,

  • known as the Pre-operational Stage. The pre-operational stage is sparse and logically

  • inadequate in regard to mental operations. The child is able to form stable concepts

  • as well as magical beliefs. The child, however, is still not able to perform operations, which

  • are tasks that the child can do mentally, rather than physically. Thinking in this stage

  • is still egocentric, meaning the child has difficulty seeing the viewpoint of others.

  • The Pre-operational Stage is split into two substages: the symbolic function substage,

  • and the intuitive thought substage. The symbolic function substage is when children are able

  • to understand, represent, remember, and picture objects in their mind without having the object

  • in front of them. The intuitive thought substage is when children tend to propose the questions

  • of "why?" and "how come?" This stage is when children want the knowledge of knowing everything.

  • Symbolic function substage At about two to four years of age, children

  • cannot yet manipulate and transform information in a logical way. However, they now can think

  • in images and symbols. Other examples of mental abilities are language and pretend play. Symbolic

  • play is when children develop imaginary friends or role-play with friends. Children’s play

  • becomes more social and they assign roles to each other. Some examples of symbolic play

  • include playing house, or having a tea party. Interestingly, the type of symbolic play in

  • which children engage is connected with their level of creativity and ability to connect

  • with others. Additionally, the quality of their symbolic play can have consequences

  • on their later development. For example, young children whose symbolic play is of a violent

  • nature tend to exhibit less prosocial behavior and are more likely to display antisocial

  • tendencies in later years. In this stage, there are still limitations,

  • such as egocentrism and precausal thinking. Egocentrism occurs when a child is unable

  • to distinguish between their own perspective and that of another person. Children tend

  • to stick to their own viewpoint, rather than consider the view of others. Indeed, they

  • are not even aware that such a concept as "different viewpoints" exists. Egocentrism

  • can be seen in an experiment performed by Piaget and Swiss developmental psychologist

  • rbel Inhelder, known as the three-mountain problem. In this experiment, three views of

  • a mountain are shown to the child, who is asked what a traveling doll would see at the

  • various angles. The child will consistently describe what they can see from the position

  • from which they are seated, regardless of from what angle they are asked to take the

  • doll's perspective. Egocentrism would also cause a child to believe, "I like Sesame Street,

  • so Daddy must like Sesame Street, too". Similar to preoperational children's egocentric

  • thinking is their structuring of a cause and effect relationships. Piaget coined the term

  • "precausal thinking" to describe the way in which preoperational children use their own

  • existing ideas or views, like in egocentrism, to explain cause-and-effect relationships.

  • Three main concepts of causality as displayed by children in the preoperational stage include:

  • animism, artificialism and transductive reasoning. Animism is the belief that inanimate objects

  • are capable of actions and have lifelike qualities. An example could be a child believing that

  • the sidewalk was mad and made them fall down, or that the stars twinkle in the sky because

  • they are happy. Artificialism refers to the belief that environmental characteristics

  • can be attributed to human actions or interventions. For example, a child might say that it is

  • windy outside because someone is blowing very hard, or the clouds are white because someone

  • painted them that color. Finally, precausal thinking is categorized by transductive reasoning.

  • Transductive reasoning is when a child fails to understand the true relationships between

  • cause and effect. Unlike deductive or inductive reasoning (general to specific, or specific

  • to general), transductive reasoning refers to when a child reasons from specific to specific,

  • drawing a relationship between two separate events that are otherwise unrelated. For example,

  • if a child hears the dog bark and then a balloon popped, the child would conclude that because

  • the dog barked, the balloon popped. Intuitive thought substage

  • At between about the ages of 4 and 7, children tend to become very curious and ask many questions,

  • beginning the use of primitive reasoning. There is an emergence in the interest of reasoning

  • and wanting to know why things are the way they are. Piaget called it the "intuitive

  • substage" because children realize they have a vast amount of knowledge, but they are unaware

  • of how they acquired it. Centration, conservation, irreversibility, class inclusion, and transitive

  • inference are all characteristics of preoperative thought.

  • Centration is the act of focusing all attention on one characteristic or dimension of a situation,

  • whilst disregarding all others. Conservation is the awareness that altering a substance's

  • appearance does not change its basic properties. Children at this stage are unaware of conservation

  • and exhibit centration. Both centration and conservation can be more easily understood

  • once familiarized with Piaget's most famous experimental task.

  • In this task, a child is presented with two identical beakers containing the same amount

  • of liquid. The child usually notes that the beakers do contain the same amount of liquid.

  • When one of the beakers is poured into a taller and thinner container, children who are younger

  • than seven or eight years old typically say that the two beakers no longer contain the

  • same amount of liquid, and that the taller container holds the larger quantity (centration),

  • without taking into consideration the fact that both beakers were previously noted to

  • contain the same amount of liquid. Due to superficial changes, the child was unable

  • to comprehend that the properties of the substances continued to remain the same (conservation).

  • Irreversibility is a concept developed in this stage which is closely related to the

  • ideas of centration and conservation. Irreversibility refers to when children are unable to mentally

  • reverse a sequence of events. In the same beaker situation, the child does not realize

  • that, if the sequence of events was reversed and the water from the tall beaker was poured

  • back into its original beaker, then the same amount of water would exist. Another example

  • of children's reliance on visual representations is their misunderstanding of "less than" or

  • "more than". When two rows containing equal amounts of blocks are placed in front of a

  • child, one row spread farther apart than the other, the child will think that the row spread

  • farther contains more blocks. Class inclusion refers to a kind of conceptual

  • thinking that children in the preoperational stage cannot yet grasp. Children’s inability

  • to focus on two aspects of a situation at once inhibits them from understanding the

  • principle that one category or class can contain several different subcategories or classes.

  • For example, a four-year-old girl may be shown a picture of eight dogs and three cats. The

  • girl knows what cats and dogs are, and she is aware that they are both animals. However,

  • when asked, “Are there more dogs or animals?” she is likely to answermore dogs”. This

  • is due to her difficulty focusing on the two subclasses and the larger class all at the

  • same time. She may have been able to view the dogs as dogs or animals, but struggled

  • when trying to classify them as both, simultaneously. Similar to this is concept relating to intuitive

  • thought, known as "transitive inference". Transitive inference is using previous knowledge

  • to determine the missing piece, using basic logic. Children in the preoperational stage

  • lack this logic. An example of transitive inference would be when a child is presented

  • with the information "A" is greater than "B" and "B" is greater than "C". This child may

  • have difficulty here understanding that "A" is also greater than "C".

  • Concrete operational stage The concrete operational stage is the third

  • of four stages from Piaget's theory of cognitive development. This stage, which follows the

  • preoperational stage, occurs between the ages of seven and 11 years, and is characterized

  • by the appropriate use of logic. During this stage, a child's thought processes become

  • more mature and "adult like". They start solving problems in a more logical fashion. Abstract,

  • hypothetical thinking has not yet developed, and children can only solve problems that

  • apply to concrete events or objects. Piaget determined that children are able to incorporate

  • inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning involves drawing inferences from observations in order

  • to make a generalization. In contrast, children struggle with deductive reasoning, which involves

  • using a generalized principle in order to try to predict the outcome of an event. Children

  • in this stage commonly experience difficulties with figuring out logic in their heads. For

  • example, a child will understand that "A is more than B" and "B is more than C". However,

  • when asked "is A more than C?", the child might not be able to logically figure the

  • question out in their heads. Milestones of the concrete operational stage

  • The primary milestones of a child's concrete operational stage are:

  • Ability to distinguish between their own thoughts and the thoughts of others: children recognize

  • that their thoughts and perceptions may be different from those around them.

  • Increased classification skills: children are able to classify objects by their number,

  • mass, and weight. Ability to think logically about objects and

  • events. Ability to fluently perform mathematical problems

  • in both addition and subtraction. Important processes

  • Important processes during the concrete operational stage include:

  • Classification: the ability to name and identify sets of objects according to appearance, size

  • or other characteristic, including the idea that one set of objects can include another.

  • Hierarchical classification refers to the ability to sort objects into classes and subclasses

  • based on similarities and differences among groups.

  • Conservation: the understanding that, although an object’s appearance changes, it still

  • stays the same in quantity. Redistributing an object does not affect its mass, number,

  • or volume. For example, a child understands that when you pour a liquid into a different-shaped

  • glass, the amount of liquid stays the same. Decentering: the child now takes into account

  • multiple aspects of a problem to solve it. For example, the child will no longer perceive

  • an exceptionally wide but short cup to contain less than a normally wide, taller cup.

  • Reversibility: the child now understands that numbers or objects can be changed and then

  • returned to their original state. For example, a child understands that his or her favorite

  • ball that deflates is not gone and can be filled with air and put back into play again.

  • Another example would be when the child realizes that a ball of clay, once flattened, can be

  • made into a ball of clay again. Seriation: the ability to sort objects in

  • an order according to size, shape, or any other characteristic. For example, different-shaded

  • objects may make a color gradient. Transitivity: transitivity, which refers to

  • the ability to mentally sort objects and recognize relationships among various things in a serial

  • order. For example, when told to put away his books according to height, the child recognizes

  • that he starts with placing the tallest one on one end of the bookshelf and the shortest

  • at the other end. Two other important processes in the concrete

  • operational stage are the elimination of egocentrism and logic.

  • Egocentrism is the inability to consider or understand a perspective other than one's

  • own. During this stage, the child acquires the ability to view things from another individual's

  • perspective, even if they think that perspective is incorrect. For instance, show a child a

  • comic in which Jane puts a doll under a box, leaves the room, and then Melissa moves the

  • doll to a drawer, and Jane comes back. A child in the concrete operations stage will say

  • that Jane will still think it's under the box even though the child knows it is in the

  • drawer. (See also False-belief task.) Children in this stage can, however, only

  • solve problems that apply to actual (concrete) objects or events, and not abstract concepts

  • or hypothetical tasks. Understanding and knowing how to use full common sense has not yet been

  • completely adapted. Piaget determined that children in the concrete

  • operational stage were able to incorporate inductive logic. On the other hand, children

  • at this age have difficulty using deductive logic, which involves using a general principle

  • to predict the outcome of a specific event. This includes mental reversibility. An example

  • of this is being able to reverse the order of relationships between mental categories.

  • For example, a child might be able to recognize that his or her dog is a Labrador, that a

  • Labrador is a dog, and that a dog is an animal, and draw conclusions from the information

  • available, as well as apply all these processes to hypothetical situations.

  • The abstract quality of the adolescent's thought at the formal operational level is evident

  • in the adolescent's verbal problem solving ability. The logical quality of the adolescent's

  • thought is when children are more likely to solve problems in a trial-and-error fashion.

  • Adolescents begin to think more as a scientist thinks, devising plans to solve problems and

  • systematically test opinions. They use hypothetical-deductive reasoning, which means that they develop hypotheses

  • or best guesses, and systematically deduce, or conclude, which is the best path to follow

  • in solving the problem. During this stage the adolescent is able to understand such

  • things as love, "shades of gray," logical proofs and values. During this stage the young

  • person begins to entertain possibilities for the future and is fascinated with what they

  • can be. Adolescents also are changing cognitively

  • by the way that they think about social matters. Adolescent egocentrism governs the way that

  • adolescents think about social matters, and is the heightened self-consciousness in them

  • as they are, which is reflected in their sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility.

  • Adolescent egocentrism can be dissected into two types of social thinking, imaginary audience

  • that involves attention-getting behavior, and personal fable, which involves an adolescent's

  • sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility. These two types of social thinking begin to

  • affect a child's egocentrism in the concrete stage. However, it carries over to the formal

  • operational stage when they are then faced with abstract thought and fully logical thinking.

  • Testing for concrete operations Piagetian tests are well known and practised

  • to test for concrete operations. The most prevalent tests are those for conservation.

  • There are some important aspects that the experimenter must take into account when performing

  • experiments with these children. One example of an experiment for testing conservation

  • is an experimenter will have two glasses that are the same size, fill them to the same level

  • with liquid, which the child will acknowledge is the same. Then, the experimenter will pour

  • the liquid from one of the small glasses into a tall, thin glass. The experimenter will

  • then ask the child if the taller glass has more liquid, less liquid, or the same amount

  • of liquid. The child will then give his answer. The experimenter will ask the child why he

  • gave his answer, or why he thinks that is. Justification: After the child has answered

  • the question being posed, the experimenter must ask why the child gave that answer. This

  • is important because the answers they give can help the experimenter to assess the child's

  • developmental age. Number of times asking: Some argue that if

  • a child is asked if the amount of liquid in the first set of glasses is equal then, after

  • pouring the water into the taller glass, the experimenter asks again about the amount of

  • liquid, the children will start to doubt their original answer. They may start to think that

  • the original levels were not equal, which will influence their second answer.

  • Word Choice: The phrasing that the experimenter uses may affect how the child answers. If,

  • in the liquid and glass example, the experimenter asks, "Which of these glasses has more liquid?",

  • the child may think that his thoughts of them being the same is wrong because the adult

  • is saying that one must have more. Alternatively, if the experimenter asks, "Are these equal?",

  • then the child is more likely to say that they are, because the experimenter is implying

  • that they are. Formal operational stage

  • The final stage is known as the formal operational stage (adolescence and into adulthood, roughly

  • ages 11 to approximately 15-20): Intelligence is demonstrated through the logical use of

  • symbols related to abstract concepts. At this point, the person is capable of hypothetical

  • and deductive reasoning. During this time, people develop the ability to think about

  • abstract concepts. Piaget stated that "hypothetico-deductive

  • reasoning" becomes important during the formal operational stage. This type of thinking involves

  • hypothetical situations and is often required in science and mathematics.

  • Abstract thought emerges during the formal operational stage. Children tend to think

  • very concretely and specifically in earlier stages, and begin to consider possible outcomes

  • and consequences of actions. Metacognition, the capacity for "thinking

  • about thinking" that allows adolescents and adults to reason about their thought processes

  • and monitor them. Problem-solving is demonstrated when children

  • use trial-and-error to solve problems. The ability to systematically solve a problem

  • in a logical and methodical way emerges. "However, research has shown that not all

  • persons in all cultures reach formal operations, and most people do not use formal operations

  • in all aspects of their lives". The stages and causation

  • Piaget sees children’s conception of causation as a march from "primitive" conceptions of

  • cause to those of a more scientific, rigorous, and mechanical nature. These primitive concepts

  • are characterized as supernatural, with a decidedly nonnatural or nonmechanical tone.

  • Piaget has as his most basic assumption that babies are phenomenists. That is, their knowledge

  • "consists of assimilating things to schemas" from their own action such that they appear,

  • from the child’s point of view, "to have qualities which, in fact, stem from the organism".

  • Consequently, these "subjective conceptions," so prevalent during Piaget’s first stage

  • of development, are dashed upon discovering deeper empirical truths.

  • Piaget gives the example of a child believing that the moon and stars follow him on a night

  • walk. Upon learning that such is the case for his friends, he must separate his self

  • from the object, resulting in a theory that the moon is immobile, or moves independently

  • of other agents. The second stage, from around three to eight

  • years of age, is characterized by a mix of this type of magical, animistic, ornonnatural

  • conceptions of causation and mechanical or "naturalistic" causation. This conjunction

  • of natural and nonnatural causal explanations supposedly stems from experience itself, though

  • Piaget does not make much of an attempt to describe the nature of the differences in

  • conception. In his interviews with children, he asked questions specifically about natural

  • phenomena, such as: "What makes clouds move?", "What makes the stars move?", "Why do rivers

  • flow?" The nature of all the answers given, Piaget says, are such that these objects must

  • perform their actions to "fulfill their obligations towards men". He calls this "moral explanation".

  • Practical applications Parents can use Piaget's theory when deciding

  • how to determine what to buy in order to support their child's growth. Teachers can also use

  • Piaget's theory, for instance, when discussing whether the syllabus subjects are suitable

  • for the level of students or not. For example, recent studies have shown that children in

  • the same grade and of the same age perform differentially on tasks measuring basic addition

  • and subtraction fluency. While children in the preoperational and concrete operational

  • levels of cognitive development perform combined arithmetic operations (such as addition and

  • subtraction) with similar accuracy, children in the concrete operational level of cognitive

  • development have been able to perform both addition problems and subtraction problems

  • with overall greater fluency. The ability to perform mathematical operations

  • fluently indicates a level of skill mastery and a readiness to learn more advanced mathematical

  • problems. Teachers who work with children in both the preoperational and the concrete

  • operational levels of cognitive development should adopt suitable academic expectations

  • with regard to children's cognitive developmental abilities. The need for educators to individualize

  • and adopt appropriate academic expectations appears to be most relevant for children at

  • the first-grade level. Postulated physical mechanisms underlying

  • "schemes" and stages In 1967, Piaget considered the possibility

  • of RNA molecules as likely embodiments of his still-abstract "schemes" (which he promoted

  • as units of action)—though he did not come to any firm conclusion. At that time, due

  • to work such as that of Swedish biochemist Holger Hydén, RNA concentrations had, indeed,

  • been shown to correlate with learning, so the idea was quite plausible.

  • However, by the time of Piaget's death in 1980, this notion had lost favour. One main

  • problem was over the protein which, it was assumed, such RNA would necessarily produce,

  • and that did not fit in with observation. It was determined that only about 3% of RNA

  • does code for protein (Mattick, 2001, 2003, 2004). Hence, most of the remaining 97% (the

  • "ncRNA") could theoretically be available to serve as Piagetian schemes (or other regulatory

  • roles now under investigation). The issue has not yet been resolved experimentally,

  • but its theoretical aspects were reviewed in 2008 — then developed further from the

  • viewpoints of biophysics and epistemology. Meanwhile, this RNA-based approach also unexpectedly

  • offered explanations for various other bio-mysteries, thus providing some measure of corroboration.

  • Relation to psychometric theories of intelligence Piaget designed a number of tasks to verify

  • hypotheses arising from his theory. The tasks were not intended to measure individual differences,

  • and they have no equivalent in psychometric intelligence tests. Notwithstanding the different

  • research traditions in which psychometric tests and Piagetian tasks were developed,

  • the correlations between the two types of measures have been found to be consistently

  • positive and generally moderate in magnitude. A common general factor underlies them. It

  • has been shown that it is possible to construct a battery consisting of Piagetian tasks that

  • is as good a measure of general intelligence as standard IQ tests.

  • Challenges to Piagetian stage theory Piagetians' accounts of development have been

  • challenged on several grounds. First, as Piaget himself noted, development does not always

  • progress in the smooth manner his theory seems to predict. "Decalage," or unpredicted gaps

  • in the developmental progression, suggest that the stage model is, at best, a useful

  • approximation. Furthermore, studies have found that children may be able to learn concepts

  • supposedly represented in more advanced stages with relative ease. More broadly, Piaget's

  • theory is "domain general," predicting that cognitive maturation occurs concurrently across

  • different domains of knowledge (such as mathematics, logic, and understanding of physics or language).

  • During the 1980s and 1990s, cognitive developmentalists were influenced by "neo-nativist" and evolutionary

  • psychology ideas. These ideas de-emphasized domain general theories and emphasized domain

  • specificity or modularity of mind. Modularity implies that different cognitive faculties

  • may be largely independent of one another, and thus develop according to quite different

  • timetables. In this vein, some cognitive developmentalists argued that, rather than being domain general

  • learners, children come equipped with domain specific theories, sometimes referred to as

  • "core knowledge," which allows them to break into learning within that domain. For example,

  • even young infants appear to be sensitive to some predictable regularities in the movement

  • and interactions of objects (for example, that one object cannot pass through another),

  • or in human behavior (for example, that a hand repeatedly reaching for an object has

  • that object, not just a particular path of motion), as it becomes the building block

  • of which more elaborate knowledge is constructed. More recent work has strongly challenged some

  • of the basic presumptions of the "core knowledge" school, and revised ideas of domain generalitybut

  • from a newer dynamic systems approach, not from a revised Piagetian perspective. Dynamic

  • systems approaches harken to modern neuroscientific research that was not available to Piaget

  • when he was constructing his theory. One important finding is that domain-specific knowledge

  • is constructed as children develop and integrate knowledge. This suggests more of a "smooth

  • integration" of learning and development than either Piaget, or his neo-nativist critics,

  • had envisioned. Additionally, some psychologists, such as Lev Vygotsky and Jerome Bruner, thought

  • differently from Piaget, suggesting that language was more important than Piaget implied.

  • Post-Piagetian and Neo-Piagetian stages In recent years, several scholars attempted

  • to address concerns with Piaget's theory by developing new theories and models that can

  • accommodate evidence which violates Piagetian predictions and postulates.

  • The neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development, advanced by Case, Demetriou, Halford, Fischer,

  • Michael Commons, and Pascual-Leone, attempted to integrate Piaget's theory with cognitive

  • and differential theories of cognitive organization and development. Their aim was to better account

  • for the cognitive factors of development and for intra-individual and inter-individual

  • differences in cognitive development. They suggested that development along Piaget's

  • stages is due to increasing working memory capacity and processing efficiency. Moreover,

  • Demetriou´s theory ascribes an important role to hypercognitive processes of self-recording,

  • self-monitoring, and self-regulation, and it recognizes the operation of several relatively

  • autonomous domains of thought (Demetriou, 1998; Demetriou, Mouyi, Spanoudis, 2010).

  • Piaget's theory stops at the formal operational stage, but other researchers have observed

  • the thinking of adults is more nuanced than formal operational thought. This stage has

  • been named postformal thought. Postformal stages have been proposed. Kurt Fischer suggested

  • two, and Michael Commons presented evidence for four postformal stages: systematic, metasystematic,

  • paradigmatic, and cross-paradigmatic. (Commons & Richards, 2003; Oliver, 2004) There are

  • many scholars, however, who have critizized "postformal thinking," because the concept

  • lacks both theoretical and empirical verification. The term "integrative thinking" has been suggested

  • for use instead. A "sentential" stage, said to occur before

  • the early preoperational stage, has been proposed by Fischer, Biggs and Biggs, Commons, and

  • Richards. Searching for a micro-physiological basis

  • for human mental capacity, Traill (1978, Section C5.4; - 1999, Section 8.4 ) proposed that

  • there may be "pre-sensorimotor" stages ("M−1L", "M−2L", … … ), which are developed in

  • the womb and/or transmitted genetically. Jerome Bruner has expressed views on cognitive

  • development. Michael Lamport Commons proposed the model

  • of hierarchical complexity. Kieran Egan has proposed stages of understanding.

  • Lawrence Kohlberg developed stages of moral development.

  • Andreas Demetriou has expressed Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development.

  • Loevinger's stages of ego development Ken Wilber has incorporated Piaget's theory

  • in his multidisciplinary field of Integral Theory.

  • The process of initiation is a modification of Piaget's theory integrating Abraham Maslow's

  • concept of self-actualization.

Piaget's theory of cognitive development Piaget's theory of cognitive development is

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