Cognitive Development Part 1 –Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Piaget proposed the Theory of Cognitive Development which he combined it with his interest in zoology and epistemology. Epistemology is the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge. By these, he was able to develop a new science called genetic epistemology, he defined it as the experimental study of the origin of knowledge.
Piaget's first subject in his studies was his three children when they were still infants. He carefully observed them from the way they start their exploration in new toys, he observes how they solve simple problems that he had prepared, and generally came to understand themselves and their world.
Later on that, Piaget had opportunities to study larger samples of children and this has been known as a clinical method, a flexible question-and-answer technique he used to discover how children of different ages solved various problems and thought about everyday issues. Piaget then was able to formulate his grand theory of intellectual growth.
Intelligence
We all have a different definition of intelligence and it is not only about how you perform in school, or how well you excel in sports, or how good artist is you, or how you do the math, but rather –intelligence is the combination of them all and how you used it to survive life. A life that is outside the four corners of the classroom and much wider than the sports complex, and much complicated than the math quiz bee you used to won. Intelligence is a tool that is used not just to attain goals like medals or being top of the class but it goes beyond that. Piaget defined intelligence as a basic life function that helps the organism adapt to its environment.
Life application:
We can observe this to others and to ourselves, when we were just toddlers we began to crawl and grab objects, later years we learn how to walk and learn the functions of the objects that we grab –like remote, cellphone, and toys. As we reach puberty we start looking for friends, we know who we like and who don’t, we start to share stuff and communicate, -at this stage we learn to coexist in a deeper sense. How about now? We are at the young adult stage, some of us already have jobs while studying, why are we doing this? why are you doing that? Because we want to have or attain that career which we believe could give us a better life than what we have now. So if we look back to our lives, from learning how to walk until now that we have learned how to understand complex subject of this course (Psychology) in a most uncomfortable way –which is distance learning, just to prepare ourselves for that career we have chosen, it’s survival, the way you cope up with the struggles, that’s intelligence.
Intelligence as Piaget had proposed is “a form of equilibrium toward which all cognitive structures tend”. This means all intellectual activity is undertaken with one goal in mind and that is to produce a balance, or harmonious, relationship between one’s thought processes and the environment.
Cognitive equilibrium is the term used by Piaget for the state of affairs in which there is a balance or harmony, the relationship between one’s thought processes and the environment.
Equilibration is the term used for the processes of achieving cognitive equilibrium.
A constructivist is an individual who acts on novel objects and events and thereby gains some understanding of their essentials.
Piaget stressed that children are active and curious explorers who are constantly challenged by many novel stimuli and events that are not immediately understood. To explain further, Piaget believed that the imbalances (cognitive disequilibrium) between children’s mode of thinking and environment is what encourages them to make mental adjustments by finding ways on how to cope with the arising issues or difficulties.
The very important assumption of Piaget in his theory is:
If children are to know something, they must construct that knowledge themselves. Indeed, Piaget describes children as constructivist.
The way children construct their reality depends on the knowledge that is available to them which means if children have limited resources to explore the more limited interpretation of events can a child do.
Life application:
This is a personal experience of mine, when I was a child age from 2-4, I still can recall a memory where I really thought when a lizard grows it will become an alligator. I concluded such a thing because oddly I find them very similar regardless of their size. I was not yet attending a school at that time, and I have no books, I have no adults to talk to about such animals, or any resource that I can use as a basis other than what I think their similarities. But as I grow older and I have been exposed to school and TV shows about animals, I realized how insane my conclusion was.
References: Shaffer, D.R. & Kipp, K. (2010). Developmental psychology: Child and Adolescence (8th ed.). Wadsworth Cengage Learning.