Cognitive Development and Piaget’s Stages

Posted on Aug 19, 2024 in Psychology and Sociology

What is Cognitive Development?

It is the set of transformations that occur in the course of life, in the form of knowing and the ability to perceive, think, understand, and solve practical problems of everyday life.

Stages of Cognitive Development by Jean Piaget

Sensorimotor Stage (0 months to 2 years)
Preoperational Stage (2 years to 7 years)
Concrete Operational Stage (7 years to 12 years)
Formal Operational Stage (12 years and up)

Sensorimotor Stage

The infant knows the world through its sensory and motor activity.

Predominantly active interaction with the environment occurs through the motor system. Perceptual discrimination occurs first between sensation, perception, and the sequence.
Information received is recorded after the action; i.e., the action comes first and then the perceptual discrimination.
There is no mental content independent of the launched action.
The child acquires knowledge of self and reality through experience with concrete reality.

1. Sensorimotor Step

The analysis of this period is from three perspectives:

A. Progressive Levels of Organization of Behavior

In the sensorimotor period, three progressive levels of performance differ:

Level of Reflexes: Behaviors are biologically mounted, with a unique structure to be adjusted depending on the exercise. There is a purpose, but only in a biological sense. There is no conscious participation to get your order or to adapt the behavior to obtain that purpose.
Motor Habits: They have a full character; patterns of action are tied together to a particular function. Experience can bring and organize behavior according to the effect that this behavior has, that the effect is interesting for the child, a striking motivator, but there is no prior motivation back.
Intelligent Behavior: Motor or sensory intelligence prior to language practice. There is intent, there is awareness by the subject of the ends to be achieved, and there is a consequent adjustment of the means to achieve the aim. It has the character of a progressive composition, in the sense that behavior is composed of different steps and means to achieve the objective. It has reversible mobility; the child can perform the behavior in the opposite direction. Behaviors have become independent of the situation from which they were generated and can be combined and adapted to an end other than the result of the first action (new purpose).

B. Significance of the Experience

To the extent that the child is attaching meaning to their experience of interaction with reality, they assimilate reality, assimilating it to the behavioral patterns they already have and applying it to new forms of behavior.

This is what allows us to understand the approach of the child as an active being, which gives meaning to reality and applies it to their behaviors to be more adaptive, while the child must gradually differentiate what is the signifier from what is meaning.

The Signifier: The object, the word, the mental image of something.
Meaning: A synthesis or the result of the experience had with that particular signifier.

C. Construction of the Categories of Reality

The newborn, as such, cannot be described as a being who knows reality, nor does it know what it is itself; no differentiation is defined as the period of self-world differentiation.

The ego is in principle at the heart of reality, precisely because it is aware of itself, and sensory-motor intelligence leads to the construction of an objective universe, within which the body appears as one element among others, and this universe opposes the inner life.

This suggests that the child is ordering and knowing reality, understanding and comprehending it progressively. As they get to know the world, they will get to know themselves.

Four processes characterize this intellectual revolution, all such categories as practices and ideas not yet thought:

Notion of the Permanent Object: It is the belief that a perceived figure corresponds to something that will continue to exist even when you stop noticing it. This notion of order is given from the fourth stage and points to object permanence. Let the child know reality as something concrete beyond their actions. First, the infant discriminates itself from the outside world and then discovers that objects can endure in time. As we accomplish this, we are seen as an object in this reality.
Notion of Causality: Pointing to the child acquires knowledge of the causes of certain effects and that action will not produce these effects; the phenomena do not occur just like that. The first notion of causality of the child is related to their activity for a long time; it will be accidental, between an empirical result, which occurs in reality and action: magical causality – phenomenological motivations linked to, e.g., the sun will rise when I am happy. Egocentrism causal primitive. During the second year, the child recognizes the causal relationships of the objects from each other: objective and find the causes.
Notion of Space: It is entirely supportive of the construction of objects. Initially, there are so many spaces, uncoordinated, and sensory fields. And each one focusing on the movements and activities. The space begins to develop from the first stage: first is the mouth area, second-hand space (making objects), third space between objects. After the second year, however, there is a general space that encompasses all others and that characterizes the relationship of objects to one another and contains them in their entirety, including their own body.
Notion of Time: It is parallel to that of causality, time 3 ½ years and 4 years at that age have no notion of yesterday-today-tomorrow.

Analysis of the Sensorimotor Period (Piaget)

Sensorimotor: The task is to learn to coordinate sensorimotor sequences, learning to solve simple problems. You must learn to respond through motor activity.
Logra: The concept of object permanence and deferred imitation.

Substages of the Sensorimotor Stage

Reflexive Exercise: 0-1 months

Begins to master their reflexes.
Coordinates sensory information.
Can edit their response through experience.
Do not understand the objects they observe.

Primary Circular Reactions: 1-4 months

Repeats pleasurable behaviors that have been discovered by chance.
The focus is on the body, rather than the effects they have on the environment.
Adapts acquired reflexes.

Secondary Circular Reactions: 4-8 months

Is more interested in the environment.
Repeats the lessons learned with objects that are interesting and exciting, prolonged experiences.
The actions are intentional but are not geared to one goal.
Shows partial object permanence.
Can find a partially hidden object.

Coordination of Secondary Schemes: 8-12 months

Can coordinate what they learn in advance (like looking up and grabbing a rattle) and use learned behaviors (such as crawling to reach a toy) to achieve goals; the behaviors become more deliberate and purposeful.
Can anticipate events.
Develop object permanence but only seek an object in the first cache that was placed, but see that there has been removed.

Tertiary Circular Reactions: 12-18 months

Feels curious and deliberately varies their actions to see the results.
Explores their world actively to know when an object, event, or situation is new.
Tries new activities and uses trial and error to solve problems.
Follows the displacement of the object but cannot imagine the movement that they see; they cannot find where they have not seen that it has been hidden.

Mental Combinations: 18-24 months

Has developed a symbolic system like language to represent events and is not limited to trial and error to solve problems.
Their symbolic system allows them to think about events and anticipate their consequences without ever having to resort to action.
Samples of discernment, and object permanence is fully developed.

2. Preoperational Thought (2-7 years)

Acquires the ability to manage the world symbolically or through representations.
The capacity to use symbols and signs, which are substitutes for things, allows humans to rise above space and time.
Once the child reaches the symbolic function, they are capable of thinking, even if they perceive an object or acted on it, appears the socialization of action (exchange between individuals) and the internalization of action as such in terms of images and intuitive mental experiences.

Symbolic Role

The child acquires the ability to manage the world symbolically or through representations (the ability to imagine something instead of doing it) and differentiate meaning (synthesis of the experience you had with this signifier) of significant (gesture, speech, object).
The symbolic function evokes the reality that is not currently seen and understands the internal and external reality that affects us.
The ability to use symbols and signs (the symbol is idiosyncratic, the sign is a social convention) enables a child to balance, is used to better the experience, adaptive purposes.
It allows access to the contents of their thoughts to others.

Manifestations of the Symbolic Role

Deferred Imitation
Symbolic Play
Symbolic Picture
Visualization
Language

Deferred Imitation

Imitation already exists in the sensory-motor period, but here the child imitates a model that it sees before it; it is the beginning of the representation at events but is not present even in thoughts (direct imitation).

Deferred imitation corresponds to a run in the absence of a role model, i.e., displaced in time. It is an internalization of mental images that serve as a model for reproductive action.

For Piaget, imitation plays an important role in the acquisition of the representative system since four of the first five symbolic behaviors rest on it. The language is also acquired in the context of imitation.

Piaget defines imitation as an accommodation, more or less pure external models, i.e., the act by which a specimen.

Mental Images and Memory

Mental images are defined as products within the imitative process of accommodation.

The image is an internalized imitation of the object to which it relates, i.e., the display of an action, internalized without direct observation.

The permanence of objects is one of the first indications of mental images, illustrating the Piagetian belief according to which thought is the prolongation of the action.

Memory allows impressions not to be lost but to remain and can dispose of them.

Evolutionarily develops recognition memory that only works in the presence of the object and which is recognized or not. After evoking the memory of which the possibility to recall the objects in their absence.

Child Drawing

Drawing allows the child to express their thoughts in concrete form but mediated.

The way things are plotted is indicative of the experiences they have had with them.

The drawing reveals the personality traits of the child, conflict, intellectual level, hence its importance as a psychometric test and projective.

For Piaget, the drawing represents the efforts of the child to approach and mimic the real, considered as an intermediary between the game and the mental image that appears between 2 and 2.6 months.

The evolution of the design is integral to the structuring of space.

Child Development Stages of Drawing

I. Clinching Period: 18 months to 2 years

It is rarely found in children’s spontaneous attempts to draw.

II. Scribbling Period: About 2 years

Children begin to scribble with pencils, markers, or chalk. For Piaget, exercises are games devoid of all representative intention.

It is performed first for functional leisure pleasure and then by imitation of parents or siblings when they write or draw. Then the child recognizes shapes in their drawing, without a prior conscious plan.
Subsequently, they were able to play tentatively, as a model memory; here, they achieve the imagination and imitation which is essential in drawing, imaginative thinking.

III. Pre-Schematic Period: 4-7 years

A period of reproduction aware of the forms received, realistic intention prevails here.

Realism frustrated or inability phase synthetic juxtaposed elements, no coordination of these in a whole.
The human figure is the first symbol achieved; draws a circle as the head and two lines that represent the body and legs.
Time of the downstroke, the puppet. For the 6-7 years achieved more elaborate representations of human figures, with arms and ever more elaborate schemes.
Flexibility or variation appears in the drawings, is expressed regardless of the means without asking how it is drawn, draw spontaneously.

IV. Schematic Period: 7-9 years

The concept is called a schema that the child has reached about an object; it represents their working knowledge of the object.

Stage of intellectual realism: the child draws taking into account the essential characteristics of objects, without worrying about the visual perspective of the same.
Phenomena of transparency draws hidden parts of objects, X-ray mode, it expresses the juxtaposition of two different expressions that are expressed in a single space.
The major discovery at this stage is the existence of an order in spatial relationships, incorporates a baseline and locates objects based on her.
It moves even in a two-dimensional space.

V. Visual Realism Period: 8-9 Years to 12 Years

The design conforms to what is visible from a particular perspective and takes into account an overall plan, which includes certain proportions metric.
The scheme is already inadequate to represent it is concerned with the details.
There is more visual awareness so that you no longer need a baseline, use the horizon line.
Become aware of the overlap, and natural proportions are observed.

The Game, the Symbol, and Reality

Roleplaying, illusion, or fiction are peculiar to this age.

In them, the child interprets the characters with extraordinary intensity, sometimes with complete identification and self-forgetfulness.

They confuse reality and fiction. But ultimately, children recognize the reality of their role as if.

The child uses symbols invented by them to transform at will according to their wishes and imagination and to express everything that cannot express their experience through verbal language.

Symbolic play is the main means for the child to exercise their schemes unopposed in response to their emotional and intellectual needs because there is no opposition directed towards adaptation to the real world.

The game is a pure assimilation of reality to the child. In emotional and social terms, symbolic play can express and regulate conflicts as domestic needs. Play with collective monologues.

Piaget Distinguishes Four Types of Games

The set of exercises appears in the sensorimotor stage, whose role is to consolidate newly acquired knowledge.
Symbolic play.
The set of rules has a strong social component.
Building set or problem-solving (chemistry set, questionnaires, mechanical engineering).

Language

The verbal evocation of absent objects or events involving using differentiated signifiers in relation to the meanings evoked.

Language allows the child to get out of this, which is confined by the action of the sensorimotor period, can remember the past or predict the future and out of the immediate spatial context and to remember other realities located.

Unlike other symbolic behaviors, language is not entirely built by the child, for it is made up of a code, fully prepared to contribute actively to encouraging the development of thought.

Language is a useful logical development while a privileged channel of communication interpersonal.

Substages of the Preoperational Stage

Preconceptual Stage (3-4 years)

Progressive use of symbols, symbolic play, deferred imitation.
These are capabilities that allow the child to represent.
The child cannot distinguish between mental, physical, and social.
They expect the inert world to respond to their orders. (Apart from the physical laws moral).

Intuitive Stage (5-7 years)

Children begin to understand the causal.
They begin to separate the mental life of physics.
Understand new concepts of relationship, albeit inconsistent and incomplete.
Although rational development begins, explain events with magic and symbolic representation.

Characteristics of Preoperational Thinking

It is defined, as the name implies, in terms of operating capacities, that is, from what it has, by default.

Then the characteristics of pre-operative thinking are defined by its limitations.

Limitations of Preconceptual Thinking (2 to 4-5 years)

Egocentrism
Centration
Transductive Reasoning
Non-reversibility
Preconceptions

Egocentrism

No conscious thought is something internal; it strives to adapt its communication with others, believing that they understand and think like the other. There is an inability to take another perspective, to take another point of view other than their own. It is a form of concentration.

Prejudices

They are schemes that are among the generality of the concept and the individuality of its component schemes; they are not yet logical concepts. The prejudice is to assimilate the concept or perceived object as evoked by the performance but not united into classes or general relations but meanings for familiar images of objects that are most common, object type specimen.

Transductive Reasoning

It results from the absence of generalized concepts; it is thought that links the pre-concepts and does not proceed by deduction but by immediate analogies that relate contiguous events in time, although there is no causal relationship between them.

The child is linked to the particular individual and thus directly compares the singular to the singular, adherence to preventing them from immediate perception generalizing.

Centration

Children tend to focus on one situation and ignore others. This prevents conservation. The inability to move off of a dimension or perspective takes the child to one-dimensional reasoning.

No Maintenance or Static Thought

Thought pre-operational is static; it cannot take into account the transformations.

The child reasons about the pictures, about what they see, unable to take into account changes that have preceded it or that will occur later.

The child is carried away by the look of things; one of the consequences of that thinking is that the child does not see the obvious contradictions in their logic.

Irreversibility

An essential feature of the mental operation is reversible. I.e., the mental ability that an action can be reversed (canceled) with an opposite action, the child of this period still does not acquire the reversibility so they cannot keep.

Animism

Any object that has some activity for men, sees it as living and provides them with intentions.