Jean Piaget Theory Analysis

Jean Piaget, in my opinion, was one of the most influential developmental psychologist in psychology. In his early theories, Piaget used his three children to develop his ideas. Piaget divided the cognitive development of children into four different stages. He saw children as being little scientist and explorers trying to understand the world around them. Over the course of a child’s life until adulthood they go through the four stages; sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. During each of these stages a child will develop skills and will grasp an understanding of the world around them.
Piaget described the first stage of cognitive development as the sensorimotor stage. This stage begins from the moment …show more content…
Between two and seven years old children are becoming less egocentric and developing language skills. At the beginning of this stage, children are egocentric, meaning a child assumes that everyone around them sees, feels, and hears the world exactly how they do. As they grow, so does their language as they imitate the vocabulary they are exposed to. Although their minds are growing at a rapid pace, some of their thinking remains slightly primitive. For example, Piaget discovered that children lack understanding the principle of conservation. Children only focus on one aspect of a situation. If they are presented with a tall, narrow glass of water and a short, wide glass of water that contain the same amount of water; the child will insist that the tall, narrow glass has more water. Even if you show them that they both have the same amount of water, they will continually claim that the tall glass has more water. As a child grows their perception of the world will change. They will become less egocentric and engage with others around them. At first a child will engage in parallel play, where they play in the same general area as other children rather than interacting with them. As their imaginations run ramped, they will pretend to be superheroes, animal, doctors, and various other things; some children even develop imaginary friends. As a child matures, they will gradually start interacting with other children and begin to form relationships where they enjoy playing with others. They will begin to have a major turning point in their development and transition into the third stage of development, the concrete operational