Jean Piaget

Psychology

Researched

• Children• 1920s• Cognition• Children think differently• 50 years of research!!!

Schemas

• “Mental ideas or plans” that you use to understand and live in your world.

Example: Example for a toddler for getting food: toddler may pull on the pant leg of the nearest adult or start to cry.

Millions of examples for everyone:How to start your car that is on it’s “last leg”, how to

go about asking someone for a date, etc.

How are schemas developed?

• 1. Assimilation= interpreting your new experiences in terms of your existing schemas.

• Ex. 1 year boy goes to the zoo and calls every animal a “dog-dog”. He was trying to assimilate every animal into the "dog-dog" label to conform to his limited animal schema. 

How are schemas developed?

• 2. Accommodation= Adapting or changing your mental categories to incorporate new info.

Example: As he ( the 1 year old) got older, he was able to correctly identify the names of all the animals at the zoo, because he had changed his animal schema to accommodate the different types of animals. 

Other examples

• Driving a different vehicle• Getting a new cell phone• Playing with a new gaming system

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Stages.

• Stage One: Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to age 2)• Learns through concrete actions• Coordinating sensory info. w/ bodily movements.• Movements become more purposeful.

Stage 1• Major accomplishment at this stage: OBJECT

PERMANCE: things continue to exist even when you cannot see or hear them.

• Helps explain why peek-a-boo is so fun for infants, but not for two year olds

Stage Two

• Preoperational stage (ages 2 to 6 or 7)• Use language but cannot yet think logically.• Sense of self begins to emerge.• Piaget focused on what children cannot do

at this stage.

Stage Two

1. Egocentric thinking (my point of view)

2. Animistic thinking (inanimate objects have life)

Stage Three

• Concrete operations stage (ages 7 to about 11).

• Thinking is grounded in concrete experiences and concepts. (Black and White Thinking)

Stage Three• New ability important cognitive ability emerges

“CONSERVATION”= properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.

Stage 4

• Formal Operational Stage (ages 12 and over)

• Abstract reasoning• Think about future possibilities• Search systematically for answers to

problems.

Current Research…

• 1. Cognitive abilities develop in continuous manner

• 2. Preschoolers are not as egocentric as Piaget thought.

• 3. Culture influences cognitive development.

• 4. Piaget overestimated the cognitive skills of teens and adults. Some adults never reach stage 4!!!!!!!!!!