Cognitive Development Jean Piaget

1. Cognitive DevelopmentJean Piaget By Ann Forshaw

2. Piaget’s Theory ofCognitive Development • Jean Piaget (1896-1980)Swiss psychologist who became leading theorist in 1930s • Piaget believed that children are active thinkers, constantly trying to construct more advanced understandings of the world

3. Key Ideas inThinking • Assimilation- process of taking in new knowledge or a new experience • Accommodation- process by which we change our way of thinking because of new knowledge • These processes build on the knowledge of previous stages

4. Piaget’s Findings • Primary method was to ask children to solve problems and to question them about the reasoning behind their solutions • Discovered that children think in radically different ways than adults • Theorized that development occurs as a series of “stages” differing in how the world is understood

5. Developmental Stages • Piaget identified 4 stages of intellectual growth: -Sensorimotor intelligence (birth – 2 years) - Preoperational (2 – 7 years) - Concrete operations (7 – 11 years) - Formal operations (11 – plus) • Knowledge becomes increasingly abstract and complex from stage to stage. Changes between stages have to be in this sequence.

6. Critique of Piaget’s Theory • Underestimates children’s abilities • Piaget’s theory understates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development • However, Piaget’s theories have shaped the ways in which educators and even parents understand children’s intellectual growth