Piaget's theory of cognitive development Flashcards
What are the 4 stages of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor stage (0–2 years old)
Preoperational stage (2–7 years old)
Concrete operational stage (7–11 years old)
Formal operational stage (11 years old through adulthood)
What are the 6 Substages of the Sensorimotor stage?
Use of reflex - 0 -2 months
Primary Circular reactions 1- 4 months
Secondary circular reactions 4- 8 months
coordination of secondary schemes 8 - 12 months
Tertiary circular reactions 12 -18 months
Mental Combinations 18 -24 months
What is the Sensorimotor stage
The sensorimotor stage is the first phase of children’s cognitive development. During this stage, children primarily learn about their environment through their senses and motor activities.
Children’s behavior moves from being reflex driven to more abstract.
What happens in the use of reflexes stage?
During this stage, children typically use their reflexes. They cannot consolidate information from their sensory organs into a single, unified concept
What happens in the primary circular reactions stage
Children start to consolidate information from different sensory organs. They start to engage in behavior that satisfies the way their body feels or their needs. For example, they repeat pleasurable behaviors, and they adapt their behavior to feed from different objects. They turn to respond to sounds and sights in their environment.
What happens in Secondary Circular reactions stage?
Children’s behaviors become more intentional, and the types of behaviors that they repeat expand to include those that result in interesting responses external to their body. For example, they might push buttons on a toy. Children also start to take more interest in their environment. They repeat behaviors that generate interesting responses.
What is the coordination of secondary schemes stage?
At this point, children’s behaviors become more goal oriented, and they can combine different behaviors to achieve goals.
What is Tertiary Circular reactions stage?
Instead of performing the same actions, children try new behaviors and actions to achieve different results. These behaviors are not spontaneous or by accident, but are purposeful. Unlike primary and secondary reactions, children can combine more complicated behaviors and even perform a behavior similarly but not the same to get the desired result.
Mental Combinations 18 -24 months
Children start to rely on mental abstractions to solve problems, use gestures and words to communicate, and can pretend. Instead of relying on numerous attempts to solve problems/puzzles, children can deliberate and carefully choose their actions.
What is the Preoperational stage?
start to use mental abstractions
Examples of abstract representations include engaging in pretend play and talking about events that happened in the past or people who are not currently in the room.
Children also understand identities, where items and people remain the same even if they look different. For example, at some point during this stage, a caregiver dressing up as Santa Claus might not be as convincing.
What cognitive processes develop in the Preoperational stage?
Children tend to consider their own viewpoint and perspective.
Children fail to understand that two things can be the same, even if they appear different (more about this in the next section on Conservation).
Children struggle to take someone else’s point of view.
What is the Concrete Operational stage?
During this stage, children are more capable of solving problems because they can consider numerous outcomes and perspectives. All of their cognitive abilities are better developed in this stage.
What improves in the Concrete Operational Stage?
Categorization abilities improve
Their numerical abilities improve a lot, and they can perform more complicated mathematical operations.
Their spatial abilities are better.
What do children understand in the Concrete Operational Stage?
They understand reversibility
They can decenter
They better understand identity
What is the formal operational stage?
Abstract thought characterizes this stage. Children can think about abstract concepts and are not limited to a current time, person, or situation
They can think about hypothetical situations and various possibilities, like situations that don’t exist yet, may never exist, or might be unrealistic and fantastical
