Piaget periodization is a fairly convenient system that allows you to track the intellectual development of any child. The great Swiss psychologist allowed us to take a fresh look at the intellectual development of children. You will learn more about him and his theory from this article.
Periodization of the development of Piaget
To begin with, you should list the stages of this periodization:
- Sensomotor stage: birth and childhood up to 2 years.
- Preoperative stage: age 2 to 7 years.
- Stage of specific operations: from 7 to 11 years.
- Formal logical stage: age 12 years and above.
Piaget believed that children play an active role in the learning process, acting just like little scientists when they conduct experiments, make observations and learn about the world. When children interact with the outside world, they constantly acquire new knowledge, build on existing knowledge and adapt previously implemented ideas to test new information.
History
Piaget was born in Switzerland in the late 1800s and was a child prodigy who published his first scientific work when he was only 11 years old. His early acquaintance with the intellectual development of children came when he worked as an assistant to Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, when they worked to standardize their famous IQ test.
Most of Piaget's interest in the cognitive development of children was inspired by his observations of his own nephew and daughter. These observations reinforced his venerable hypothesis that children's minds were not just smaller versions of adult minds. Up to this point in the history of children, they were mostly considered simply as smaller versions of adults. Piaget was one of the first to determine that what children think is different from how adults do it. This is a great merit of the periodization of Piaget.
Useful Observations
Instead, he suggested that intelligence is something that grows and develops in several stages. According to him, adult children do not just think faster than younger ones. There are both qualitative and quantitative differences between the thinking of young children and older people.
Based on his observations, he concluded that children are no less intelligent than adults, they just think differently. Albert Einstein called Piaget's discovery “so simple that only a genius could think about it.”
The scientific theory of Piaget describes the cognitive development of children. Cognitive development includes changes in the process and abilities. According to Piaget, early cognitive development includes processes based on actions, and then progresses to changes in mental operations.
Piaget periodization stages
Through observations of his children, Piaget developed a scenario theory of intellectual development, which included four different stages. These steps have been listed above, now is the time to consider each of them in more detail.
Sensory-motor stage
Age: from birth to 2 years.
The baby learns the world with its movements and sensations. Children learn about the world through basic activities such as sucking, grabbing, searching and listening. Infants learn that things continue to exist, although they cannot be seen (a matter of object persistence). They are separate beings from the people and objects around them. They understand that their actions can lead to something happening in the world around them.
At this early stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experience and manipulation of objects. The entire experience of the child in the earliest period of this stage occurs through the main reflexes, feelings and motor reactions.
It is at the sensorimotor stage that children experience a period of sharp growth and learning. When children interact with their environment, they constantly make new discoveries about how the world works.
The cognitive development that occurs during this period lasts for a relatively short period of time and is associated with large growth. Children not only learn to perform physical activities, such as crawling and walking, they also learn a lot about the language from the people they interact with. Piaget also divided this stage into several different subitems. It is during the final part of the sensorimotor stage that an early representative thought arises.
Piaget believed that the stable constancy of the object, the understanding that they continue to exist, even when they cannot be seen, was an important element at this stage of development. Having realized that objects are separate and different entities and that they have their own existence outside of individual perception, children can begin to attach names and words to objects.
Preoperative stage
Age: 2 to 7 years.
Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects. Children at this stage are usually self-centered and struggle to see things from the point of view of others. While they learn to handle language and thinking better, they still tend to think about things in very specific terms. The foundations of the development of the language may have been laid at the previous stage, but it is the appearance of the language that is one of the main signs of this stage of development. So tells us the periodization of Piaget.
At this stage, the children learn to pretend, but still struggle with the logic and the point of view of other people. They also often struggle with understanding the idea of permanence. For example, an adult can take a piece of clay, divide it into two equal parts, and then give the child a choice between two pieces of clay to play. One piece of clay is rolled into a compact ball, and the other is broken into a flat pancake shape. Since the flat shape looks larger, therefore, the preoperative child is likely to choose this particular piece, even if the two parts are the same size.
Stage specific operations
Age: from 7 to 11 years.
At this stage, children begin to think logically about specific events. They begin to understand the concept of conservation - that the amount of liquid in a short wide cup is, for example, the amount in a tall, thin glass. Their thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very specific. Children begin to use inductive logic or reason from specific information to a general principle.
Although children are still too specific and literal in their thinking at this stage of development, they become much more skilled in using logic. Egocentrism at the previous stage begins to disappear when the children begin to think about how other people can view the situation. But the age periodization of Piaget, of course, is not limited to this.
Although thinking becomes more logical in a particular working condition, it can also be very tough. Children at this stage of development tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts.
At this stage, children also become less self-absorbed and begin to think about how other people can think and feel. Children at a particular operational stage also begin to realize that their thoughts are unique to them and that not everyone else necessarily shares their thoughts, feelings and opinions. Nevertheless, the key is still the next stage of Piaget's age-related periodization.
The formal logical stage
Age: 12 and above.
At this stage, the teenager begins to think abstractly and talk about hypothetical problems. There is an abstract thought. Teenagers are starting to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning. They begin to use deductive logic or reason according to the general principle for specific information.
The final stage of Piaget's theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning and an understanding of abstract ideas. Children become able to see numerous potential solutions to problems and reason more scientifically about the world around them.
At this stage, the periodization of Piaget's intellectual development begins to best fit its name. The ability to think about abstract ideas and situations is a key difference in the formal logical stage of cognitive development. The ability to systematically plan the future and discuss hypothetical situations are also critical abilities that arise at this stage.
Refinements
It is important to note that Piaget did not consider the intellectual development of children as a quantitative process. That is, children do not just add more information and knowledge to their existing ones, as they get older. Instead, Piaget suggested that there are qualitative changes in how children think, how they gradually go through these four stages. A child at the age of 7 years not only has more information about the world than at the age of 2 years; there is a fundamental change in the way he thinks about the world. This is the main criterion for periodization of Piaget.
Important concepts
In order to better understand some of the things that happen during cognitive development, it is important to first examine some of the important ideas and concepts proposed by Piaget.
The following are some of the factors that influence how children learn and grow.
Schemes
The diagram describes both mental and physical actions associated with understanding and learning. Schemes are categories of knowledge that help us interpret and understand the world.
According to the periodization of Piaget's mental development, the scheme includes both the category of knowledge and the process of obtaining this knowledge. As this happens, this new information is used to modify, add, or adjust previously existing patterns.
For example, a child may have a diagram about the type of animal, for example, about a dog. If the child’s only experience was in interacting exclusively with small dogs, he can believe that all dogs are small, furry and have four legs. Suppose a child meets a huge dog. The child will accept this new information by modifying a pre-existing scheme to include these new observations.
Assimilation
The process of introducing new information into our existing schemes is known as assimilation. This process is somewhat subjective, because we tend to modify the experience and information a little to fit our previous beliefs. In the above example, seeing a dog and marking it, a “dog” is a case of assimilation of an animal in a child’s dog pattern.
Accommodation
Another part of the adaptation involves changing or adjusting existing schemes in the light of new information - a process known as placement. It involves changing existing patterns or ideas as a result of new information or experience. New schemes can also be developed during this process.
Balancing
Piaget believed that all children are trying to find a balance between assimilation and placement, which is achieved using a mechanism called balancing. As children progress through the stages of cognitive development, it is important to maintain a balance between the application of prior knowledge (assimilation) and behavior change to account for new knowledge (placement). Balancing helps explain how children can move from one stage of thought to another. This, in short, is the essence of the periodization of intellectual development according to J. Piaget.
Conclusion
One of the most important points to remember about Piaget's theory is that he believes that the creation of knowledge and intelligence is an inherently active process.
“I consider myself opponents of the view of knowledge as a passive copy of reality,” Piaget explained, “I believe that knowing an object means acting on it, building systems of transformations that can be performed on or with this object. “Knowledge of reality means building systems of transformations that more or less adequately correspond to reality.”
Piaget's theory of cognitive development has helped psychologists deepen their understanding of children's intellectual growth. He also emphasized that children are not only passive recipients of knowledge. They constantly research and experiment, creating their understanding of how the world works.