23rd November 2023

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Rather than attempting to explain individual differences (why some children are more intelligent than others), Piaget was interested in how intelligence changes as children grow. He called this genetic epistemology. According to Piaget, cognitive development occurs through the interaction of innate capacities with environmental events and progresses through a series of hierarchical, qualitatively different stages. These stages, he thought, were invariant (all children pass through these stages in the same sequence) and universal (stages are the same for everyone irrespective of culture). The principal cognitive structure that changes when a child passes through these stages is called schema, which, in other words, is the basic building block or the unit of intelligent behaviour. Underlying the schema changes are the processes of assimilation, accommodation and equilibration. 

Assimilation is how we incorporate new information into the existing schemas. In other words, when we assimilate, we do not change or ‘stretch’ the existing schema. For example, babies will reflexively suck a nipple and other similar objects, such as a finger. But to learn to suck from a bottle or to drink from a cup, the initial sucking reflex must be modified through accommodation. Accommodation is the process of changing the schema to fit the new information. Equilibration, conversely, is the process of seeking the ‘mental balance’ that the child attains by fitting the world into its existing schema (assimilation) or changing its schema to fit the world (accommodation).

Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development

Sensorimotor stage of cognitive development – subdivisions

Key concepts in different stages of cognitive development

Sensorimotor

Object permanence – The critical achievement of the sensorimotor stage is the development of object permanence. This entails the child’s ability to understand that objects have an existence independent of the child’s involvement with them. Children learn to differentiate themselves from the world and are able to maintain a mental image of an object, even when it is not present and visible. When an object is dropped in front of them, they look down to the ground to search for the object. The attainment of object permanence marks the transition from sensorimotor to the preoperational stage of cognitive development. The ‘Hiding object’ experiment is associated with this stage, which is related to object permanence.

Symbolisation – At about 18 months, infants begin to develop mental symbols and to use words, a process known as symbolisation. Infants are able to create a visual image of a ball or a mental symbol of the word ball to stand for or signify the real object.

Preoperational

Deferred imitation – This is the ability to imitate or reproduce something that’s been perceived but is no longer present.

Representational play – Make-believe play involves using one object as though it were another.

Semiotic function – With this ability, children can represent something – such as an object, an event or a concept – with a signifier that serves a representative function. Drawing is a semiotic function initially done as a playful exercise but eventually signifying something else in the real world.

Children in the preoperational stage can not deal with moral dilemmas; they have a sense of immanent justice, the belief that punishment for bad deeds is inevitable. Children also use a type of magical thinking called phenomenalistic causality, in which events that occur together are thought to cause one another (e.g. thunder causes lightning, and bad thoughts cause accidents). In addition, children use animistic thinking, which endows physical events and objects with life-like psychological attributes such as feelings and intentions. Preoperational children are egocentric; that is, they see the world from their own standpoint and can not appreciate that other people might see things differently. The ‘Swiss mountain scene’ test was used to demonstrate egocentrism in preoperational children.

Concrete operational

Egocentric thoughts are replaced by operational thoughts, which involve dealing with a wide array of information outside the child. Therefore, children can now see things from someone else’s perspective. They also begin to use limited logical thought processes and can serialise, order and group things into classes on the basis of common characteristics.

Syllogistic reasoning – Where the logical conclusion is formed from two premises; for example, all horses are mammals, and all mammals are warm-blooded. Therefore, all horses are warm-blooded.

Conservation – It entails the ability to recognise that although the shape of the objects may change, the objects still maintain or conserve other characteristics that enable them to be recognised as the same. For example, if a ball of clay is rolled into a long, thin shape like a sausage, concrete operational children recognise that each shape contains the same amount of clay.

Formal operational

The stage is so named because the young person’s thinking begins to operate in a formal, highly logical, systematic, and symbolic manner. This stage is characterised by the ability to think abstractly, to reason deductively, and to define concepts.

Hypothetico-deductive thinking – This is the highest organisation of cognition that enables persons to make a hypothesis or proposition and test it against reality. Deductive reasoning moves from the general to the particular and is a more complicated process than inductive reasoning, which moves from the particular to the general.

Implications of Piaget’s theory

• Hospitalised children in the sensorimotor stage have not achieved object permanence. Therefore, they can benefit immensely when they can have their parents stay with them during a hospital admission, relieving their separation anxiety.
• Children in the preoperational stage do not understand cause and effect; they may interpret physical illness as punishment for bad thoughts or actions. They also lack the concept of reversibility. They find it difficult to understand that broken bones mend or shed blood is replaced.
• Adolescents may appear overly abstract, which is a normal developmental outcome rather than pathological. Adults, on the other hand, may regress cognitively as well as emotionally under stress. Their thinking can become preoperational, egocentric, and sometimes animistic.
• Piaget’s theory has implications in psychotherapy, especially important in cognitive therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy and developmentally-based psychotherapy.
• In education, concepts of readiness (limits set on learning by a child’s developmental stage), curriculum (what should be taught) and teaching method (how it should be taught) are reliant on Piaget’s model of cognitive development.

References

• Sadock, B. J., & Sadock, V. A. (2007). Kaplan & Sadock’s synopsis of psychiatry: Behavioural sciences/clinical psychiatry (11th ed.). Wolters Kluwer.
• Gross, R. (2020). Psychology: the science of mind and behaviour (8th ed.). Hodder.
• Piaget, J. (1973) the child’s conception of the world. Paladin.