Discuss evidence which suggests cognitive development involves the child passing through a sequence of discrete developmental stages. An individual goes through many changes throughout their lives. They begin to mature and develop new skills as they grow older. One of the area’s of development that psychologists have looked into is cognitive development, which involves mental abilities including memory, perception, language and intelligence. Jean Piaget’s was well known for his theory of cognitive development. Piaget described the stages that individuals go
I will be looking into Piaget’s theory and looking at some of the demonstrations and evidence he used to back up his ideas of children passing through the four stages. I will be giving brief details of what other theorist have to say about his theory and if they agree or disagree. I will start this assignment by explaining the four stages of cognitive development according to Piaget. Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years) In this stage babies view the world through their own senses instead of through mental operations. According to Piaget Infants are driven to explore the world by their congenital reflexes which they are born with. Within this stage there are 6 sub- stages throughout. Piaget believed that it was in the 8-12 month stage that object permanence developed within a child.
Piaget did a test on infants where he used an attractive toy. After showing it to the infant he would then cover it with a beret to see if the infant would search for the toy. He noticed that infants younger than 6 months did not look for the toy and came to the conclusion that infants don’t understand that even though an object cannot be perceived it still exists (object permanence). At 6-7 months the baby will try and attain a recognisable object even if it is not all visible.
This suggests that the baby understands that the rest of the object is attached. However if the whole object was covered in front of the child, the child would not look for it. By 8 months infants start to display memory for things that are not visible. Piaget demonstrated limited object permanence of babies between 8 and 12 months. The baby first sees a ball placed under a cloth on her left but retrieves it. However, when the baby sees the ball placed under the cloth to her right she continues to look in the first hiding place, under the cloth to her left. According to Piaget it is at the age of 12 months that a child will search for an object where it was last hidden.
Stage 2: the pre-operational stage (2-7 years) Children in this stage begin to use internal images, symbols and language which are all essential for sense of awareness. This stage is further divided into the preconceptual stage (2-4years), where the main characteristics are egocentric thinking and animistic thought and the intuitive stage (4-7 years), where children start to problem-solve using mental activities.Piaget believed that children in this stage were not capable of carrying out mental operations because they were too young. According to Piaget Instead of a child using logical principles they tend to be influenced more by how things look. For instance a 5 year old may find the amount of water in a short wide glass a more appropriate amount than if it was poured into a tall thin glass D.G. Myers, (2007)pg150. This supports Piaget’s idea that children in this stage do not understand that regardless of the shape, the quantity can stay the same, he said they lack the concept of conservation.
A major characteristic of the preoperational stage is egocentrism. Piaget believed that children could only see things from their own point of view He believed that children were self-centred or egocentric; they could only see things from their own point of view and found it difficult to perceive things from another’s point of view. Piaget demonstrated egocentrism with the Swiss mountain scene (Piaget and Inhelder, 1956).
The child was then asked to choose an image out of 10 showed, which represents how the doll saw the scene. 4 year olds found this task very hard as they only could see things from their own perspectives, hence the reason why they chose the picture that matched their view. 6 year olds showed some awareness but usually still picked the wrong image. But 7-8 year olds were consistent and chose the correct image that represented the dolls view. This demonstration therefore proved that there is truth that children are self centred and as they go through the stages they start to use mental activities. Hence the reason why 4 year olds failed the task as they were still in the preconception stage and a child at 7-8 years who was moving from the intuitive stage were highly successful doing the task.