Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget, (1896-1980) was a Swiss Biologist, Philosopher and a Psychologist. Jean Piaget gives cognitive development theory. Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of mental development. The first stage is Sensory motor stage in first stage senses are teaches, reflex actions, imitative behavior and object performance. Children not only learn how to perform physical actions such as crawling and walking; they also learn a great deal about language from the people with whom they interact. Piaget believed that developing object permanence or object constancy, the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, was an important element at this point of development.   Second stage is Pre-Operational Stage. 2nd stage the emergence of language that is one of the major hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development. At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and talking the point of view of other people. They also often struggle with understanding the idea of constancy. Third stage is Concrete Operational stage while thinking becomes much more logical during the concrete operational state, it can also be very rigid. Kids at this point in development tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts. Fourth Stage is Formal Operational stage.  The ability to thinking about abstract ideas and situations is the key hallmark of the formal operational stage of cognitive development. The ability to systematically plan for the future and reason about hypothetical situations are also critical abilities that emerge during this stage. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development helped add to our understanding of children’s intellectual growth. It also stressed that children were not merely passive recipients of knowledge. Instead, kids are constantly investigating and experimenting as they build their understanding of how the world works.