Piaget

4 Pages 968 Words

Outline and critically evaluate piagets theory of cognitive development children.

Jean Piaget’s (1896 - 1980) theory of cognitive development was One of the most important contributions that Piaget made, it established the fact that the cognitive development in children are not simply immature versions of that of an adult, but that they have their very own rules. Having a great influence on the studies of young children and also upon education. Cognitive is referred to as “the mental function of retaining information about a stimuli, events, images ideas etc after the original stimuli is no longer present” (Reber, 1995 p446) this is exactly what Piaget set to find out in his study in infants. In this essay I am going to describe Piagets theory in each of the four stages giving evidence for his research and also critically evaluate it.
Piaget states (Gross P642) that children development is caused through biological “mental functions” development through interaction with the environment and events which occur during stages in childhood. The Childs develops schemas in order to organise experiences and to cope with new ones. This is because according to Piaget(Gross P642) we all have a biological drive to obtain balance and reasoning(equilibration) Schemas are mental organisations which represent our view of the world each unique to the specific person. An infant is born firstly with a set of schemas which then develop into ‘reflexes’. These schemas are then adapted and replaced with contracted schemas which change to adapt to there environment. For example a young infant is born with the innate biological drive off sucking a bottle to survive this is then adapted to sucking a thumb or a dummy. The infant adapts continuously in to different ways, through Assimilation (change environment to adapt to schema) or through accommodation(change schema to adapt to environment).
Piagets theory consist of four stages, an infant ...