Cognitive Development: Piaget

Cognitive Development: Jean Piaget

Piaget and his family

       Jean Piaget (1896–1980) was known best for his work in studying the cognitive development of children and adolescents. Piaget hypothesized that children’s cognitive progress through four critical stages in an orderly sequence manner. The four stages correspond with the age of the child, which include the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational stages.

       Piaget described and explained cognitive development using concepts like schema, assimilation, accommodation and equilibration. Piaget believed that accommodating and assimilating information develop cognitive operations. Knowledge is invented and reinvented by the means of these two important processes as the child develops and constantly interacts with the world around him.

Piaget's concept of cognitive development

           Schema is defined as a pattern of action or a mental structure that is involved in acquiring or organizing knowledge. In other words, schema is a unit of knowledge or understanding that helps us to organize and simplify our knowledge of the world around us. Schema can be applied to different things like objects, animals, actions, beliefs or ideas. It is worth to note that schemas are uniquely varied from person to person as a result of different background and experiences. According to Piaget, schemas are evolving structures in a sense that they are continuously becoming more refined and sophisticated as the child develops. Theoretically, schemas are developed and modified through continuous interweaving processes of assimilation and accommodation.

       Assimilation refers to the process by which someone uses existing schemas to deal with new information and experiences. On the other hand, accommodation is the process of adjusting or modifying schemas to fit new information and experiences. The process of creating an equilibrium or balance between assimilation and accommodation is termed as equilibration. Piaget suggested that equilibration takes place in three phases. First children are satisfied with their mode of thought and therefore are in a state of equilibrium. Then, they become aware of the shortcomings in their existing thinking and are dissatisfied (i.e., are in a state of disequilibration and experience cognitive conflict). Lastly, they adopt a more sophisticated mode of thought that eliminates the shortcomings of the old one (i.e., reach a more stable equilibrium).

           For example, because there is a cat adopted in his house, a child develops a schema that cat is a four-legged animal, furry, and meowing. The child then sees a cat somewhere else and points at it and asks an adult, “cat?” and the adult confirms his query. So here, seeing a cat and correctly labeling it ‘cat’ is a case of assimilating the animal into the child’s cat schema. The child is satisfied and in a state of equilibrium because everything seems to fit his cat schema. Later, he sees an animal that is four-legged and furry, but instead of meowing, this animal barks. This leads to disequilibrium because the new information (barking) does not fit his cat schema and thus causing cognitive conflict to the child. Accordingly, when the child labels that dog as a ‘cat’, an adult then tells him, “It isn’t a cat, it is a dog”. So now, the child accommodates this new information and learns, “Not all four-legged animals are cats, those that barks are dogs”. This demonstrates how the child uses equilibration (through accommodation) and incorporates the term ‘dog’ into his dog schema, putting him into a state of equilibrium again.

Infancy: The Sensorimotor Stage

         The first stage of Piaget’s theory is the sensorimotor stage, which lasts from birth to age 2. It is called sensorimotor because Piaget believed that infants in this period operate cognitively based almost entirely on their sensory experiences (i.e., the things an infant sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels) and motor reflexes (e.g. grasping reflex, sucking reflex, and rooting reflex). There are 6 substages under this stage and each substages have their own milestones. The most important achievement during this stage is to acquire the object permanence schema, which refers to the understanding that an object still exists even when it disappears from sight or other senses. For instance, imagine a game of peek-a-boo. A very young infant will believe that the other person or object has actually vanished and will act shocked or puzzled when the object reappears. On the contrary, older infants who understand object permanence will realize that the person or object continues to exist even when unseen.

i.    Substage 1 - Newborn reflexes (0-1 month)

         During the earliest part of the sensorimotor stage, inborn reflexes are the first schemas that infant have and use to interact with the environment. Reflexive responses such as rooting, sucking, and grasping are how an infant spontaneously responds (assimilates) to external stimuli and does modification (accommodation) accordingly. Take for example the sucking reflex, when an object (e.g., nipple) is placed in infant’s mouth, he will suck that object because it stimulates his sucking reflex. Accordingly, infants will modify (accommodate) the sucking patterns to the shape of the nipple and the rate of flow of fluid.

ii.   Substage 2 - Primary circular reactions (1-4 months)

         In primary circular reactions, an infant develops the ability to coordinate various schemas into complex systems, meaning that he can now look, grasp, and suck at the same time. Infants gain a measure of control over their bodies, as they are able to combine them into more complex actions. Infants also begin to show primary circular reactions, involving their own bodies (e.g., thumb sucking). A circular reaction is a behavior that produces an interesting event (initially by accident) and so is repeated. For example, consider an infant who is moving her hands and arms around her head in a random way. Accidentally, her thumb may brush her lips and end up in her mouth, eliciting a sucking reaction. Infant may find this as an “interesting” result, thus will repeat it, continuing to suck the thumb. From the repetition or practice, the “thumb-sucking schema” becomes more refined.

iii. Substage 3 - Secondary circular reactions (4-8 months)

         Secondary circular reactions aim at actions that have effect on the external environment, as opposed to the primary circular reactions, which focus on actions of the infant’s own body. An infant in this stage may accidentally cause something interesting in the environment to happen and then seek to repeat this interesting event. The interesting events in this case are located in the external world, whereas in primary circular reactions the interesting events are occurring within the infant’s body. For example, an infant who accidentally shakes a rattle will keep shaking it because of the pleasure of hearing the sound it produces.

iv. Substage 4 - Coordination of secondary circular reactions (8-12 months)

         In the fourth stage, infants are able to coordinate schemes (combine several actions) to achieve specific goal. For example, an infant may push away an object to grasp a toy behind it. An infant in this stage can also now imitate many gestures and sounds from the observed behaviors of others. Most importantly, infants begin to develop object permanence during this stage. For example, an infant learns that even though his mother leaves the room, she has not ceased to exist and similarly, a ball does not disappear because a cloth is placed over it. However, infants still show A-not-B error, which occurs when infants make the mistake of selecting the familiar hiding place (A) rather than the new hiding place (B).

v.   Substage 5 - Tertiary circular reactions (4-8 months)

         Similar to primary and secondary circular reactions, a tertiary circular reaction begins when some actions accidentally lead to interesting sensory consequences. But rather than just repeating the same behavior, the infant explores new possibilities and varies it in a purposeful, trial-and-error way to find out the consequences. For example, an infant may try out different sounds or actions as a way of getting attention from a caregiver.

vi. Substage 6 - Beginning of mental representation

         Finally, there is the beginning of mental representation in substage six, which is the ability to visualize things that are not physically present and hold an image in mind longer. Because they can symbolically imagine things that cannot be seen, they are now able to fully comprehend object permanence. Also, the child becomes capable of deferred imitation and is able to start to solve certain types of problems mentally without having to go through the physical actions involved. For example, a child may throw a tantrum after seeing another child throw one an hour ago.

Infant's Language Development

         Infants learn language by taking in information through their senses of hearing and sight as they learn to process the meanings behind those sights and sounds. Interestingly, newborns assimilate information immediately and are interested in their surroundings. Few days after birth, infant recognizes familiar faces, voices, and smells and prefers them to unfamiliar ones. Correspondingly, infants channel their energy into seeing and hearing and their first step in communication is by having eye contact with their mothers, which termed as gaze coupling.

         At birth, crying is an infant’s primary means of communication. During the second month, infants begin cooing, that is producing “oohs” and “ahs” sounds. Between 6 and 9 months, infants start babbling which is the first vocalizing that sounds like human speech such as “dada”. At 10 months, infants can imitate sounds by older people. An infant’s first word usually is spoken between the ages of 11 and 13 months. By about 18 months of age, children may be producing up to 50 words. The infant’s vocabulary may increase to more than 300 words at about 18 to 22 months of age.