Describe and evaluate Piagets theory of cognitive development

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Describe and evaluate Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

Piaget studied a vast number of children and developed a theory to describe the way in which children’s thinking changes as they grow older. Piaget believed that as children get older they automatically go through several stages of thinking. It is believed that our cognitive development is invariant, meaning that the stages are always in the same order, and universal, meaning that they apply to all children regardless of culture.

His theory consisted of 4 main stages. The first stage is the sensorimotor stage, which involves children from birth to 2 years old. As the name suggests, these children learn through their senses and actions. They also lack object permanence, so believe that if they cannot see an object then it does not exist. The following stage is the pre-operational stage. Children aged 2 to 7 years old are unable to conserve, and so cannot understand that things remain the same even when their appearance changes. These children are also egocentric, and have an inability to see things from another’s point of view. Children of this stage undergo symbolic thought and play, which is the ability to use one concept to represent another. The third stage is the concrete operational stage, for 7 to 11 year olds. Children in this stage begin to perform logical operations, for example, they are able to conserve and have decentred. This means that they are no longer egocentric and can understand things from a variety of viewpoints. Finally there is the formal operational stage of development, for 11+. In this stage they are able to solve problems in a logical manner and can deal with hypothetical reasoning, so no longer need concrete objects to learn from.

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This theory is supported by many studies into our cognitive development; the three mountains experiment studied further into egocentrism, and Piaget’s core study demonstrates certain children’s inability to conserve. Piaget carried out a cross sectional lab experiment to see if children of various ages could conserve number. They were presented with two identical parallel rows of counters and were asked if they contained the same amount of counters. One row was manipulated to look longer, but no counters were added or removed. They were asked again and children of the pre-operational stage said that one row had more, because ...

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