Jean Piagets Theory

end-to-end history, some(prenominal) people remove made many contri stillions to the school day of psychology. One single is that of Jean Piaget and his theories on the cognitive work upment horizontal surfaces. Jean Piaget was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, where he studied at the university and received a doctorate in biology at the age of 22. Following college he became very kindle in psychology and began to research and studies of the subject. With his research Piaget created a broad speculative system for the development of cognitive abilities.His work, in this way, was much like that of Sigmund Freud, but Piaget emphasized the ways that electric razorren think and acquire knowledge. Piaget referred to his theory as patrimonial epistemology. This is defined as the study of the acquisition, modification, and branch of abstract ideas and the abilities as on the basis of an inherited or biological substrate, an intelligent functioning that fall upons the growth of ab stract theory possible. (Ginsburg 5) Piaget derived his theories from directly observing children and by questioning them rough their thought process.He was less interested in whether the children answered correctly than how they arrived at their answers. Piaget viewed intelligence as an extension of biological adaptation that has a logical structure. One of the primaeval points of his theories was that of epigenesis. This is that growth and development occur in a series of decimal points, severally of which is built on the successful mastery of the previous stop. (Furth 33) Piaget described four-spot major stages leading to the capacity for adult thought.Each stage is a necessity for the following stage, but the rate at which different children move with different stages varies with their heredity and environment. Piagets four stages be the sensorimotor stage, the stage of pre available thought, the stage of concrete operations and the stage of formal operations. The firs t stage that Piaget matte all children go through was the sensorimotor stage. This stage occurs between line and two years of age.This is the stage when Infants amaze to learn through sensational observation, and they gain control of their motor functions through activity, exploration and manipulation of the environment. (Furth 29) From birth, biology and experience work together to produce learned behavior. As infants plough more mobile, one action is built upon another action, forming bare-assed and more complex actions. Infants spatial, visual, and tactile gentlemans gentlemans expand during this purpose in which children actively move with their environment and use previously learned behaviors.The critical achievement of this period is the development of object permanence. This is the indication that a child has the ability to realise that objects have an existence independent of the childs involvement with them. Infants learn to differentiate themselves from the re alness and ar able to maintain a mental image of an object, level when it is not present and visible. (Rotman 40) At about 18 months, infants go to develop mental symbols and to use words. This process is called symbolization. Infants are able to create a visual or mental image of an object to stand for or signify the real object.The attainment of object permanence marks the transmutation from the sensorimotor stage to the preoperational stage. During the stage of peoperational thought, children use language and symbols more extensively than in the sensorimotor stage. Children learn without the use of reasoning, therefore are uneffective to think logically or deductively. Children are able to name the object but they are unable to categorize or class these objects. Preopreational thought is midway between socialized adult thought and the completely ill freudian unconscious. (Furth 57) Events are also not linked by logic.In this stage, children begin to use language and drawing s in more elaborate ways. From once employ one word utterances they begin to use two word phrases, which hold up a single noun and verb. Children in this developmental stage are ecogentric. They see themselves as the center of the universe, therefore they are unable to make for the role of another person. In addition , children use animistic thinking which is the tendency to endow events and objects with lifelike attributes. The stage of concrete operations is so named because in this period children operate and act on the concrete, real, and perceivable world of objects and events.Egocentric thought is replaced by operational thought, which involves dealing with a wide stray of information outside the child. Therefore, children can now see things from someone elses perspective. Children in this stage begin to use limited logical thought and processes and are able to order and group things in classes on the basis of rough-cut characteristics. The child is able to reason and to follow rules and regulations. They are able to consecrate themselves , and they begin to develop a moral sense and a statute of values.Conservation is the ability to recognize that, although the shape of objects may change, the mass and amount remain the same. For example, if you put the same amount of liquid in two containers the child may think there is more in the taller cylinder. Children also begin to understand reversibility, which is the capacity to understand the relationship between things. They begin to come across that one thing can turn into another and back again. The closely important sign that children are still in the preoperational stage is that they have not achieved conservation or reversibility.Dealing with the future and its possibilities occurs in the formal operational stage. The formal operation stage deals with the ages of eleven through the end of adolescence. This stage is characterized by the ability to think abstractly, to reason deductively, and to define concepts. It also is shown by adolescents interest in a variety of issues including philosophy, religion, ethics, and politics. Another main expose of this stage is that of Hypothetic deductive thinking. This is the extravagantlyest organization of cognition and enables people to make a hypothesis or proposition and to test it against reality.Deductive reasoning moves from the public to the item and is a more complicated process than inductive reasoning, which moves from particular to general. (Rotman 44) This step also brings about self-conscious behavior because of the ability to weigh on their own and other peoples thoughts. As adolescents attempt to master new cognitive tasks, they may return to egocentric thought, but on a higher level than in the past. Not all adolescents enter the stage at the same time or to the same degree. Depending on somebody capacity some may not reach the stage at all and may remain in concrete operational sensory system throughout life.D espite the psychiatric applications Piagets theories have been applied more widely in the area of education. Piagets concepts have been used to resolve educational problems, such as assessing intellectual development, scholastic aptitude, grade placement, and reading readiness. Innovative early school programs, such as Head Start can be traced to Piagets think that experience plays a major role in human thought. Throughout his writings Piaget emphasized that the greater richness, complexity, and the diversity of the environment, the greater the likelihood that high levels of mental functioning are achieved.