Piaget's Cognitive Development

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Child development and socialisation are crucial facets that refer to the psychological and emotional fluctuations that occur in human beings between birth and the end of adolescence, as the individual progresses from acclimatization to maximizing autonomy. Jean Piaget was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development. The cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of biological maturation and environment experiences. [1] Furthermore, Piaget created a cognitive developmental stage theory that described how children’s way of thinking established as they interacted with the world around them. The reason for reviewing this literature was to compare and distinguish research …show more content…
[1] The crucial stages of developments of Piaget consist of sensorimotor (0-2yrs), preoperational (2-7yrs) concrete operational (7-11yrs) and formal operational (11+yrs). The sensorimotor stage of development is when infant quickly begins to build up direct knowledge of the world around them by relating physical actions to perceive results of the actions. During this stage infants learn through the trial and error learning. [1] The next stage of development consists of the preoperational stage. The children in the preoperational stage can mentally represent events & objects and engage in symbolic play. The thoughts and communications of the children in this stage of development are typically egocentric and animism. The key features which the children display during this stage of development refers to the child’s inability to see a situation from another person’s perspective and the belief that objects like toys and teddy bears have human feelings and intentions. To conclude children in the preoperational stage are able to focus only on one aspect or dimension of problems. …show more content…
The two literature reviews that I had obtained did differentiate slightly. The review by McLeod, S. A. didn’t mention that the sensorimotor stage had 6 other stages and that the concrete operational stage is characterized by 7 types of conservations. Whereas, the review by Huitt, W., & Hummel, J. did mention the 6 stages in particular and the 7 types of conservations. In my opinion, I believe that Piaget’s theories were very effective as he researched and tested them, providing evidence and an example of each stage of development. However, his theories were experimented on his own children and this could have a major impact in his research, as other children come from different cultures, traditions and countries and that every child won’t have the same resources available to them and this could have an effect on the cognitive development of the

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