The preoperational stage comes to the next stage. By about one and half to two years of age, children have begun to use symbols and acquired representational skills in the areas mental imagery, and especially language (Atkinson et al., 2000). They are very self-oriented, and have an egocentric view; that is, preoperational children can use these representational skills only to view the world form their own perspectives (Encyclopedia of Psychology, 2002).
Between the ages of six or seven to eleven or twelve, as opposed to preoperational children, children are able to take another’s point of view and take into account more than one perspective simultaneously (Atkinson et al., 2000). This stage is called as the concrete operational stage. They can also represent transformations as well as static situations. Although they can understand abstract problems, Piaget would argue that they can perform on only concrete problems (Atkinson et al., 2000).
At the age of eleven or twelve, Children, who attain the formal operational stage, are capable of thinking logically and abstract. They can also reason purely theoretically (Atkinson et al., 2000). According to Atkinson et al. (2000), Piaget considered this the final stage of development, and stated that although the children have to revise their knowledge base, their way of thinking was as powerful as it would get.
Thus, children develop their schemas through these four stages. It can be said several aspects of reality that children can understand are differences in each stages (Miller, 2002). Besides, in general conclusions, although all children progress their schemas in this fixed order, the age given may vary in each child and not all children reach at the final stage (e.g. Smith, 2003).
Piaget stressed that it was also important to explain how and why children develop through cognitive stages (miller, 2002). In Piaget’s concepts, there are some functional invariants which are unchanging aspects of thought at the all ages (Smith, 2003). These are the organization of schemas and their adaptation through assimilation and accommodation. Organization is referred by Piaget to the inborn ability to coordinate existing cognitive structures or schemas, and combine them into more complex systems. In other word, through organization the child can combine each separate operation into a new action that is more complex than each part of action and their schemas grow to be more elaborate (Smith, 2003).
Another basic functional invariant, which called cognitive adaptation, relates to interaction between the organism and the environment. Assimilation involves the interpretation of events by using existing schemas whereas accommodation refers to adjust an existing schema to fit in with the environment (Smith, 2003). Cognitive development consists of a constant effort to adapt to the environment through the complementary processes of assimilation and accommodation.
Through the process of cognitive adaptation, the child achieves an equilibration state. This equilibrium is not permanent. Temporary disequilibrium occurs for adapting new properties of objects (Miller, 2002). Therefore, equilibration refers to the final level of achievement within each stage (Miller, 2002).
Thus, children’s thinking develops changing the state of disequilibrium to equilibrium between the organism and environment through the processes of assimilation and accommodation.
Although Piaget’s theory has had impact on contemporary developmental psychology, it is not a perfect theory. A lot of pros and cons of his theory are reported until the present time. First of all, it can be said that a strength of the Piaget’s theory is that it has a huge amount of support researches. Piaget treated the real world problems which are capable of replicate in his research. Therefore Piaget’s theory has received a lot of longitudinal, cross-sectional and cross-cultural support over many years (Hill, 2001). It also should be stressed that understanding of child cognitive growth, based on Piaget’s theory, has had influence on education, including in child-centred learning methods in nursery and infant schools.
On the other hand, like all theories, Piaget’s theory is not free from criticism. First, much research has demonstrated that children possess many of the cognitive abilities that Piaget outlined at ages much earlier than he expected (Hill, 2001). Second, many researcher argued that Piaget severely underestimated social influences on development. In this point, Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development is quite often compared with Piaget’s one. While Piaget’s assumption that developmental growth was independent of experience and based on a universal characteristic, Vygotsky stressed that child development is effected by social and cultural context, especially language. Vygotsky believed that biological and cultural development do not develop in isolation (Hill, 2001). Inadequate explanation of his concepts is the third problem. For example, although Piaget’s possessed functional invariants is the best framework to examine cognitive change, he did not explain precisely how sensorimotor thought becomes preoperational thought. Child abilities also quite often overlap in two stages. Therefore some researcher suggests that development might be better regarded as a continuous process (Hill, 2001).
Furthermore, more sophisticated research methods revealed some methodological weaknesses of Piaget’s theory. First, a frequent criticism is that Piaget’s experiments were over-complicated. Many tasks require several skills, such as attention, memory, and specific factual knowledge. Therefore there is a possibility that a child may have ability but unable to perform because of lacking one of the other required skills (Atkinson, et al. 2000). Some researcher pointed out that, even in fairly uncomplicated tasks, Piaget’s experiments tend to ignore the child’s social understanding of the test and many have led the child to give a socially describe or expected answer instead of what child really thought and understood (Hill, 2001). Lastly, lacked scientific accuracy of experiments is often pointed out. In Piaget’s infancy research, he observed his own children. The results in this small size sample may have some biases (Miller, 2002).
Thus, although Piaget’s theory is very popular in current psychological field, some important aspects of the theory need to be considered in the light of more recent evidence.
In conclusion, this essay has evaluated Piaget’s theory which is regarded as one of the most famous theory in developmental psychology. First, it has described a centre of Piaget’s theory, how children develop their cognitive structures through these four stages. Second, it has explained that the mechanisms of child development. Children’s thinking develops changing the state of disequilibrium to equilibrium between the organism and environment through the processes of assimilation and accommodation. Third, it has indicated the strengths and weaknesses of the Piaget’s theory. According to this essay, it might be said that although there is a fact that Piaget’s method of observation led him to underestimate some important abilities, many researcher have accepted most of his concepts. It also might be said that his careful and detailed observations of child development enable us to understand child cognitive development deeply. It has brought a great impact on educational practice. His theoretical framework has provided a basis for more scientific studies and will undoubtedly continue to do so hereafter.
Bibliography
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Carlson, N. R., and Buskist, W. (1997). Chapter 12 Life-Span Development. In Psychology: the science of behaviour (5th Ed.). USA: Allyn and Bacon
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Hill, G. (2001). A Level Psychology through diagram (2nd Ed.). Oxford: OUP
Miller, P. (2002). Theories of Developmental Psychology (4th Ed.). Worth Press
Sandwell, J. (2002). Piaget’s Stage Theory of Development. Cognitive Science Dictionrly. [Online] Available: http://web.psych.ualberta.ca/^mike/Pearl_Street/Dictionary/contents/P/piaget%27s_stages.html [01/12/03]
Smith, P. K., Cowie, H., and Blades, M. (2003). Chapter 12. Cognition: Piaget’s theory. In Understanding children’s Development (4th Ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
