COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 1 Preschool Early school age

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COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 1 Pre-school - Early
school age

JEAN PIAGET (1896- 1980)
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BACKGROUND

• Born in Neuchâtel (Switzerland) on August 9,
  1896.
• Died in Geneva on September 16, 1980.
• The oldest child of Arthur Piaget, professor of
  medieval literature at the University, and of
  Rebecca Jackson.
• First published a paper at age 11, on an albino
  sparrow.
• The start of a brilliant scientific career
  publishing over sixty books and several hundred
  articles.

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BACKGROUND contd.

• His interest for mollusks was developed during
  his late adolescence
• Became a well-known malacologist by finishing
  school.
• Published many papers in the field
• Became well known in the field among European
  malacologists who assumed he was an adult.

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THE BEGINING

• While at the University of Neuchâtel he became
  sickly and recuperated in the Mountains
• When he recovered he decided to write down his
  ideas on the nature of life.
• The most influential was
• that in all fields of life (organic, mental
  Social) there exists totalities qualitatively
  distinct from their parts and imposing on them an
  organisation.

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EARLY CAREER

• 1918 Received Doctorate in Science from the
  University of Neuchâtel
• Worked for a year Bleulers famous psychiatric
  clinic during which he exposed to works of Freud
  Jung etc.
• 1919 Taught Psychology Philosophy at Sorbonne
  where he met Simon (of Simon-Binet fame) and
  started working on Intelligence research.

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INTELIGENCE RESEARCH

• He disagreed the existent concepts of
  Intelligence testing and started interviewing
  subjects at a boys school instead.
• Using psychiatric interview techniques he had
  learned previously from the Freudian school, he
  started to investigate reasoning.
• 1921 1st article on Intelligence was published
  and started reasoning research with elementary
  children
• These became his 1st 5 books on child psychology

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FAMILY LIFE

• 1923 Married his co-worker Valentine Chatenay
• 1925, 1927 1931 2 daughters a son was born.
• They immediately became the focus of research
  attention Jean Valentine which produced 3 more
  books.

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PIONEERING RESEARCH

• Piaget found very little Scientific research
  carried out on the nature of thought and the
  development of thinking
• So he pioneered theories explaining the accrual
  and development of knowledge
• Called it Genetic Epistemology

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BASICS OF GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY

• The skills that infants already had with regards
  to objects and their environments he called
  Schema's
• The existent skills that infants impose on new
  objects he called Assimilation
• Adapting old schema to better fit new schema he
  called Accommodation.

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BASICS OF GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY

• Piaget saw assimilation accommodation as the
  pendulum that swings in balance in advancing our
  understanding of the world and our competence
  with it.
• Piaget saw a good balance of these between the
  structure of the mind at the environment and a
  congruence between the 2 indicates you have good
  model of the universe which he called equilibrium.

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COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD

• Contrary to the existing traditions of tabula
  rasa he espoused the belief that the child
  actively constructs their knowledge of the
  world.
• Piaget maintained that thought processes became
  re-organised into distinct stages at several
  points in development.
• The schemes in the early stages lay the
  foundation for later knowledge structures.
• However, the schemas in one stage bear little
  resemblance to the schemas in the next.

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PIAGETS STAGE THEORY

• Progresses through in an invariable sequence.
• Contains a period of formation a period of
  attainment.
• At the beginning of stage schemes are unstable
  loose and towards the end well formed and well
  organised.
• Some children may reach a certain stage quicker
  or slower than others, depending on experience

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SENSORY MOTOR STAGE Birth 2 years

• Differentiates self from objects  Recognises self
  as agent of action and begins to act
  intentionally e.g. pulls a string to set mobile
  in motion or shakes a rattle to make a noise 
• Achieves object permanence realises that things
  continue to exist even when no longer present to
  the sense

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PRE-OPERATIONAL STAGE 2- 7 years

• Learns to use language and to represent objects
  by images and words  Thinking is still
  egocentric has difficulty taking the viewpoint
  of others 
• Classifies objects by a single feature e.g.
  groups together all the red blocks regardless of
  shape or all the square blocks regardless of
  colour 

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CONCRETE-OPERATIONAL STAGE 7-11 years

• Can think logically about objects and events 
  Achieves conservation of number (age 6), mass
  (age 7), and weight (age 9) 
• Classifies objects according to several features
  and can order them in series along a single
  dimension such as size. 

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FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE 11 years

• Can think logically about abstract propositions
  and test hypotheses systematically  Becomes
  concerned with the hypothetical, the future, and
  ideological problems 

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