COGNITIVE THEORIES OF LEARNING- JEAN PIAGET

Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence first developed by Jean Piaget. It is primarily known as a developmental stage theory, but in fact, it deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans come gradually to acquire, construct, and use it. To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of biological maturation and environmental experience. Children construct an understanding of the world around them, then experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment. Moreover, Piaget claims the idea that cognitive development is at the center of human organism and language is contingent on cognitive development. Below, there is first a short description of Piaget's views about the nature of intelligence and then a description of the stages through which it develops until maturity.

NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE: OPERATIVE AND FIGURATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Piaget believed that reality is a dynamic system of continuous change, and as such is defined in reference to the two conditions that define dynamic systems. Specifically, he argued that reality involves transformations and states. Transformations refer to all manners of changes that a thing or person can undergo. States refer to the conditions or the appearances in which things or persons can be found between transformations. For example, there might be changes in shape or form (for instance, liquids are reshaped as they are transferred from one vessel to another, humans change in their characteristics as they grow older), in size (e.g., a series of coins on a table might be placed close to each other or far apart) in placement or location in space and time (e.g., various objects or persons might be found at one place at one time and at a different place at another time). Thus, Piaget argued, that if human intelligence is to be adaptive, it must have functions to represent both the transformational and the static aspects of reality. He proposed that operative intelligence is responsible for the representation and manipulation of the dynamic or transformational aspects of reality and that figurative intelligence is responsible for the representation of the static aspects of reality.

Operative intelligence is the active aspect of intelligence. It involves all actions, overt or covert, undertaken in order to follow, recover, or anticipate the transformations of the objects or persons of interest. Figurative intelligence is the more or less static aspect of intelligence, involving all means of representation used to retain in mind the states (i.e., successive forms, shapes, or locations) that intervene between transformations. That is, it involves perception, imitation, mental imagery, drawing, and language. Therefore, the figurative aspects of intelligence derive their meaning from the operative aspects of intelligence, because states cannot exist independently of the transformations that interconnect them. Piaget believed that the figurative or the representational aspects of intelligence are subservient to its operative and dynamic aspects, and therefore, that understanding essentially derives from the operative aspect of intelligence.

At any time, operative intelligence frames how the world is understood and it changes if understanding is not successful. Piaget believed that this process of understanding and change involves two basic functions: Assimilation and accommodation.

ASSIMILATION AND ACCOMMODATION

Through studying the field of education Piaget focused on accommodation and assimilation. Assimilation, one of two processes coined by Jean Piaget, describes how humans perceive and adapt to new information. It is the process of taking one’s environment and new information and fitting it into pre-existing cognitive schemas. Assimilation occurs when humans are faced with new or unfamiliar information and refer to previously learned information in order to make sense of it. Accommodation, unlike assimilation is the process of taking one's environment and new information, and altering one's pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the new information. Through a series of stages, Piaget explains the ways in which characteristics are constructed that lead to specific types of thinking; this chart is called Cognitive Development. To Piaget, assimilation is integrating external elements into structures of lives or environments or those we could have through experience. It is through assimilation that accommodation is derived. Accommodation is imperative because it is how people will continue to interpret new concepts, schemas, frameworks, etc.  Assimilation is different from accommodation because of how it relates to the inner organism due to the environment. Piaget believes that the human brain has been programmed through evolution to bring equilibrium, and to move upwards in a process to equilibrate what is not. The equilibrium is what Piaget believes ultimately influences structures because of the internal and external processes through assimilation and accommodation.

Piaget's understanding is that these two functions cannot exist without the other. To assimilate an object into an existing mental schema, one first needs to take into account or accommodate to the particularities of this object to a certain extent; for instance, to recognize (assimilate) an apple as an apple one needs first to focus (accommodate) on the contour of this object. To do this one needs to roughly recognize the size of the object. Development increases the balance or equilibration between these two functions. When in balance with each other, assimilation and accommodation generate mental schemas of the operative intelligence. When one function dominates over the other, they generate representations which belong to figurative intelligence.

SENSORIMOTOR STAGE

The sensorimotor stage is the first of the four stages in cognitive development which "extends from birth to the acquisition of language"."In this stage, infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating experiences (such as seeing and hearing) with physical, motoric actions. Infants gain knowledge of the world from the physical actions they perform on it. An infant progresses from reflexive, instinctual action at birth to the beginning of symbolic thought toward the end of the stage. Piaget divided the sensorimotor stage into six sub-stages":from birth until the age of two, infants have only senses: vision, hearing, and motor skills, such as grasping, sucking, and stepping.

The first stage is called the Sensorimotor stage (birth to about age 2). In this stage knowledge of the world is limited (but developing) because it’s based on physical interactions/experiences. The child learns that he is separate from his environment and that aspects of his environment continue to exist even though they may be outside the reach of his senses. Behaviors are limited to simple motor responses caused by sensory stimuli. In this stage according to Piaget, the development of object permanence is one of the most important accomplishments at the sensorimotor stage. (Object permanence is a child’s understanding that objects continue to exist even though they cannot be seen or heard).

Sub-Stage	Age	Description
1 Simple Reflexes	Birth-6 weeks	"Coordination of sensation and action through reflexive behaviors".Three primary reflexes are described by Piaget: sucking of objects in the mouth, following moving or interesting objects with the eyes, and closing of the hand when an object makes contact with the palm (palmar grasp). Over the first six weeks of life, these reflexes begin to become voluntary actions; for example, the palmar reflex becomes intentional grasping.).
2 First habits and primary circular reactions phase	6 weeks-4 months	"Coordination of sensation and two types of schemes: habits (reflex) and primary circular reactions (reproduction of an event that initially occurred by chance). Main focus is still on the infant's body." As an example of this type of reaction, an infant might repeat the motion of passing their hand before their face. Also at this phase, passive reactions, caused by classical or operant conditioning, can begin.
3 Secondary circular reactions phase	4–8 months	Development of habits. "Infants become more object-oriented, moving beyond self-preoccupation; repeat actions that bring interesting or pleasurable results." This stage is associated primarily with the development of coordination between vision and prehension. Three new abilities occur at this stage: intentional grasping for a desired object, secondary circular reactions, and differentiations between ends and means. At this stage, infants will intentionally grasp the air in the direction of a desired object, often to the amusement of friends and family. Secondary circular reactions, or the repetition of an action involving an external object begin; for example, moving a switch to turn on a light repeatedly. The differentiation between means and ends also occurs. This is perhaps one of the most important stages of a child's growth as it signifies the dawn of logic.
4 Coordination of secondary circular reactions stages	8–12 months	"Coordination of vision and touch--hand-eye coordination; coordination of schemes and intentionality." This stage is associated primarily with the development of logic and the coordination between means and ends. This is an extremely important stage of development, holding what Piaget calls the "first proper intelligence." Also, this stage marks the beginning of goal orientation, the deliberate planning of steps to meet an objective.
5 Tertiary circular reactions, novelty, and curiosity	12–18 months	"Infants become intrigued by the many properties of objects and by the many things they can make happen to objects; they experiment with new behavior." This stage is associated primarily with the discovery of new means to meet goals. Piaget describes the child at this juncture as the "young scientist," conducting pseudo-experiments to discover new methods of meeting challenges.
6 Internalization of Schemes	18–24 months	"Infants develop the ability to use primitive symbols and form enduring mental representations." This stage is associated primarily with the beginnings of insight, or true creativity. This marks the passage into the preoperational stage.

By the end of the sensorimotor period, objects are both separate from the self and permanent. Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched. Acquiring the sense of object permanence is one of the infant's most important accomplishments, according to Piaget.

PREOPERATIONAL STAGE

Piaget's second stage, the Pre-operational Stage, starts when the child begins to learn to speak at age 2 and lasts up until the age of 7. During the Pre-operational Stage of cognitive development, Piaget noted that children do not yet understand concrete logic and cannot mentally manipulate information. Children’s increase in playing and pretending takes place in this stage, however the child still has trouble seeing things from different points of view. The children's play is mainly categorized by symbolic play and manipulating symbols. Such play is demonstrated by the idea of checkers being snacks, pieces of paper being plates, and a box being a table. Their observations of symbols exemplifies the idea of play with the absence of the actual objects involved. By observing sequences of play, Jean Piaget was able to demonstrate that towards the end of the second year, a qualitatively new kind of psychological functioning occurs, this is known as the Pre-operational Stage.

 (PRE)OPERATORY THOUGHT

The Pre-operational stage is sparse and logically inadequate in regards to mental operations. The child is able to form stable concepts as well as magical beliefs. The child however is still not able to perform operations, which are tasks that the child can do mentally rather than physically. Thinking in this stage is still egocentric, meaning the child has difficulty taking the viewpoint of others; The Pre-operational stage is split into two substages, The Symbolic Function Substage and the Intuitive Thought substage. The symbolic function substage is when children are able to understand, represent, remember, and picture objects in their mind without having the object in front of them. Intuitive thought substage is when children tend to propose the questions of why and how come. This stage is when children want the knowledge of knowing everything.

THE SYMBOLIC FUNCTION SUBSTAGE

At about 2-4 years of age, children cannot yet manipulate and transform information in a logical way, however they now can think in images and symbols. Other examples of mental abilities are language and pretend play. Symbolic play is when children develop imaginary friends or role-play with friends. Children’s play becomes more social they assign roles to each other. An example of symbolic play is playing house, or having a tea party.

In this stage, there are still limitations such as egocentrism, animism, and the relationship of cause and effect. Egocentrism occurs when a child is unable to distinguish between their own perspective and that of another person's. Children tend to pick their own view of what they see rather than the actual view shown to others. An example is an experiment performed by Piaget and Barbel Inhelder, this is known as the three-mountain problem. In this experiment three views of a mountain are shown and the child is asked what a traveling doll would see at the various angles; the child picks their own view instead to the actual view of the doll. Egocentrism would also be a child believing, "I like Sesame Street, so Daddy must like Sesame Street, too." A very similar thought process at this time is the idea of animism. This is the belief that inanimate objects are capable of actions and have lifelike qualities. An example is a child believing that the sidewalk was mad and made them fall down, or that the stars twinkle in the sky because they are happy. Another concept that children fail to understand in the preoperational stage transductive reasoning is when a child does not understand the relationships between cause and effect. For example if a child hears the dog bark and then a balloon popped, the child would conclude that because of the dog bark the balloon popped.

THE INTUITIVE THOUGHT SUBSTAGE

Occurs between about the ages of 4 and 7. Children tend to become very curious and ask many questions; begin the use of primitive reasoning. There is an emergence in the interest of reasoning and wanting to know why things are the way they are. Piaget called it the intuitive substage because children realize they have a vast amount of knowledge but they are unaware of how they know it. 'Centration' and 'conservation' are both involved in preoperative thought. Centration is the act of focusing all attention on one characteristic compared to the others. Centration is noticed in conservation; the awareness that altering a substance's appearance does not change its basic properties. Children at this stage are unaware of conservation. For example, in Piaget's most famous task, a child is presented with two identical beakers containing the same amount of liquid. The child usually notes that the beakers have the same amount of liquid. When one of the beakers is poured into a taller and thinner container, children who are younger than 7 or 8 years old typically say that the two beakers no longer contain the same amount of liquid, and the taller container holds the larger quantity. The child simply focuses on the height and width of the container compared to the general concept. Another example of this is when a child is upset by the amount of ice cream they are given in a large bowl. However if the ice cream is switched to a smaller bowl, they are pleased. Even though the amount of ice cream has never changed, their thought process allows them to think in a way that when they see more in quantity, there truly is more. Irreversibility is also a key concept developed in this stage. This is when children are unable to mentally reverse a sequence of events. In the same beaker situation, the child does not realize that the water can be poured from one container to another and still be the same amount of water. Another example of children's reliance on visual representations is their misunderstanding of "less than" or "more than". When two rows containing equal amounts of blocks are placed in front of a child, one row spread farther apart than the other, the child will think that the row spread farther contains more blocks. Another concept that relates to intuitive thought is transitive inference. Transitive inference is using previous knowledge to determine the missing piece, using basic logic. Children in the preoperational stage lack this logic. An example of transitive inference is "a" is greater than "b" and "b" is greater than "c." Children do not understand that "a" is also greater than "c."

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

Parents today still use Piaget's Theory when deciding what to teach or buy for children to keep them active. For example children during this stage would benefit most from toys such as VTech, Leap Frog, Nintendo DS, and club penguin. Children in this stage also learn to ride bikes and watch televisions stations such as PBS Kids and Noggin. All of these things help a child's mind to develop in a healthy way. Teachers also use Piaget's Theory, in that they often decide what they will teach students based on their age and grade.

CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE

The concrete operational stage is the third of four stages from Piaget's theory of cognitive development. This stage, which follows the preoperational stage, occurs between the ages of 7 and 11 years and is characterized by the appropriate use of logic. During this stage, a child's thought processes become more mature and "adult like." They start solving problems in a more logical fashion. Abstract, hypothetical thinking has not yet developed, and children can only solve problems that apply to concrete events or objects. Piaget determined that children are able to incorporate inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning involves drawing inferences from observations in order to make a generalization. In contrast, children struggle with deductive reasoning, which involves using a generalized principle in order to try to predict the outcome of an event. Children in this stage commonly experience difficulties with figuring out logic in their heads. For example, a child will understand A>B and B>C, however when asked is A>C, said child might not be able to logically figure the question out in their heads.