Jean Piaget: Cognitive Theorist

Jean Piaget: Cognitive Theorist
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Jean Piaget: Cognitive Theorist
Contributions made to the field of learning and cognition
Jean Piaget is the selected theorist, who was born in the year 1896 in Switzerland. His most well-known work is actually his theory on the 4 stages of cognitive development. Piaget was a highly influential researcher in the field of developmental psychology during the twentieth century whose main interest was in biological influences on how a person comes to know, as well as the developmental phases that a person moves through as he/she acquires this ability. This theorist held children play an active role in the development of brainpower and that the child learns by doing (Piaget, 1973). Piaget considered a child as a thinker that sees the world only as she has experienced it. As such, nearly all of Piaget’s inspiration in intellectual as well as cognitive development originated from observing children. He actually observed and examined his own 3 children during every stage of their cognitive development (Singer & Revenson, 1997).
Model associated with Jean Piaget – the Piaget Model of Development
This theorist held that as a child grows and her brains develop, the child moves through 4 different stages of which are typified by differences in the process of thought. In his research, Piaget observed children carefully and presented them with quite a few problems to solve which were related to object permanence, reversibility, as well as deductive reasoning (Piaget, 1973). Every stage actually builds on the knowledge learned during the preceding stage. Jean Piaget’s 4 stages match up with the age of the child, and they are as follows: (i) Sensory-motor – this range from birth to the age of 2 years. In this initial phase, the child’s reflexes, senses, and motor abilities develop very fast. Children at this stage distinguish self from objects, and they recognize self as agent of action and start acting intentionally, for instance shaking a rattle in order to make some noise. The children attain object permanence meaning that they realize that things continue existing even when these things are no longer present to the sense (Piaget, 1973).
(ii) Pre-operational – from the age of 2-7 years. Children learn to make use of language in addition to representing objects by words and images. Thinking of the child is still egocentric in that they have difficulty to take the point of view of others (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2013). Children classify objects by a single feature, for instance she or he groups together all the rectangle blocks together notwithstanding the color or all the white blocks no matter the shape (Piaget, 1973). (iii) Concrete operational – from age 7-11. The young person can ...