Jean Piaget

1896 – 1980

Cognitive
Development

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development.
Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called
"genetic epistemology." Piaget placed great importance on the education of children. As
the Director of the International Bureau of Education, he declared in 1934 that "only
education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent, or
gradual." His theory of child development is studied in pre-service education programs.
Educators continue to incorporate constructivist-based strategies.
Piaget created the International Center for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva in
1955 while on the faculty of the University of Geneva and directed the Center until his
death in 1980. The number of collaborations that its founding made possible, and their
impact, ultimately led to the Center being referred to in the scholarly literature as
"Piaget's factory."
According to Ernst von Glasersfeld, Jean Piaget was "the great pioneer of the
constructivist theory of knowing." However, his ideas did not become widely popularized
until the 1960s. This then led to the emergence of the study of development as a major
sub-discipline in psychology. By the end of the 20th century, Piaget was second only to
B. F. Skinner as the most cited psychologist of that era.
Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move
through four different stages of mental development. His theory focuses not only on
understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of
intelligence.
Piaget's stages are:
1. Sensorimotor stage: birth to 2 years
2. Preoperational stage: ages 2 to 7
3. Concrete operational stage: ages 7 to 11
4. Formal operational stage: ages 12 and up
 Piaget believed that children take an active role in the learning process, acting
much like little scientists as they perform experiments, make observations, and learn
about the world. As kids interact with the world around them, they continually add new
knowledge, build upon existing knowledge, and adapt previously held ideas to
accommodate new information.
Piaget was born in Switzerland in the late 1800s and was a precocious student,
publishing his first scientific paper when he was just 11 years old. His early exposure to
the intellectual development of children came when he worked as an assistant to Alfred
Binet and Theodore Simon as they worked to standardize their famous IQ test.
Much of Piaget's interest in the cognitive development of children was inspired by
his observations of his own nephew and daughter. These observations reinforced his
budding hypothesis that children's minds were not merely smaller versions of adult
minds. Up until this point in history, children were largely treated simply as smaller
versions of adults. Piaget was one of the first to identify that the way that children think
is different from the way adults think.
Instead, he proposed, intelligence is something that grows and develops through
a series of stages. Older children do not just think more quickly than younger children,
he suggested. Instead, there are both qualitative and quantitative differences between
the thinking of young children versus older children. Based on 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 to
changes in mental operations.

THE STAGES
The Sensorimotor Stage
Ages: Birth to 2 Years
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
 The infant knows the world through their movements and sensations
 Children learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking,
grasping, looking, and listening
 Infants learn that things continue to exist even though they cannot be seen
(object permanence)
 They are separate beings from the people and objects around them
 They realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world
around them
 During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers acquire
knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects. A child's entire
experience at the earliest period of this stage occurs through basic reflexes, senses,
and motor responses. It is during the sensorimotor stage that children go through a
period of dramatic growth and learning. As kids interact with their environment, they are
continually making new discoveries about how the world works.
The cognitive development that occurs during this period takes place over a
relatively short period of time and involves a great deal of growth. Children not only
learn how to perform physical actions such as crawling and walking; they also learn a
great deal about language from the people with whom they interact. Piaget also broke
this stage down into a number of different substages. It is during the final part of the
sensorimotor stage that early representational thought emerges.
By learning that objects are separate and distinct entities and that they have an
existence of their own outside of individual perception, children are then able to begin to
attach names and words to objects.

The Preoperational Stage

Ages: 2 to 7 Years
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
 Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to
represent objects.
 Children at this stage tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from
the perspective of others.
 While they are getting better with language and thinking, they still tend to
think about things in very concrete terms.

The foundations of language development may have been laid during the
previous stage, but it is the emergence of language that is one of the major hallmarks of
the preoperational stage of development. Children become much more skilled at
pretend play during this stage of development, yet continue to think very concretely
about the world around them. At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still
struggle with logic and taking the point of view of other people. They also often struggle
with understanding the idea of constancy. For example, a researcher might take a lump
of clay, divide it into two equal pieces, and then give a child the choice between two
pieces of clay to play with. One piece of clay is rolled into a compact ball while the other
is smashed into a flat pancake shape. Since the flat shape looks larger, the
preoperational child will likely choose that piece even though the two pieces are exactly
the same size.
The Concrete Operational Stage
Ages: 7 to 11 Years
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
 During this stage, children begin to thinking logically about concrete events
 They begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of
liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example
 Their thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete
 Children begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information
to a general principle

While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this point in
development, they become much more adept at using logic.2 The egocentrism of the
previous stage begins to disappear as kids become better at thinking about how other
people might view a situation. While thinking becomes much more logical during the
concrete operational state, it can also be very rigid. Kids at this point in development
tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts.
During this stage, children also become less egocentric and begin to think about
how other people might think and feel. Kids in the concrete operational stage also begin
to understand that their thoughts are unique to them and that not everyone else
necessarily shares their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

The Formal Operational Stage

Ages: 12 and Up
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
 At this stage, the adolescent or young adult begins to think abstractly and
reason about hypothetical problems
 Abstract thought emerges
 Teens begin to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and
political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning
 Begin to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to
specific information

The final stage of Piaget's theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use
deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas.3 At this point, people
become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems and think more
scientifically about the world around them. The ability to thinking about abstract ideas
and situations is the key hallmark of the formal operational stage of cognitive
development.
The ability to systematically plan for the future and reason about hypothetical
situations are also critical abilities that emerge during this stage. It is important to note
that Piaget did not view children's intellectual development as a quantitative process;
that is, kids do not just add more information and knowledge to their existing knowledge
as they get older. Instead, Piaget suggested that there is a qualitative change in how
children think as they gradually process through these four stages.4 A child at age 7
doesn't just have more information about the world than he did at age 2; there is a
fundamental change in how he thinks about the world.

CONCLUSION
One of the most important elements to remember of Piaget's theory is that it
takes the view that creating knowledge and intelligence is an inherently active process.
"I find myself opposed to the view of knowledge as a passive copy of reality," Piaget
explained. "I believe that knowing an object means acting upon it, constructing systems
of transformations that can be carried out on or with this object. Knowing reality means
constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to
reality." Piaget's theory of cognitive development helped add to our understanding of
children's intellectual growth. It also stressed that children were not merely passive
recipients of knowledge. Instead, kids are constantly investigating and experimenting as
they build their understanding of how the world works.