Piaget had four phases of cognitive development. These were: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational stages (Nevid, 2009)
This is because they get to have mental accounts of pictures and symbols. They however are not capable of imagining how something would look like from another angle, solving problems by trying out varied ways, recalling their thoughts or having the ability to perform an operation in their head (Steinberg, 2010)
This explains why children are preoccupied with name-calling. To a child in this stage, insulting words often hurt (Coon, Mitterer, Talbot & Vanchella, 2010)
Formal operational Ability to think outside the box (hypothetically) Ability to draw logical conclusions from verbal information (Source: Eddy, 2010) Relevance to Contemporary Education Piaget may not have explicitly linked his theory to education, but contemporary researchers have found the same relevant to the processes of learning and teaching. The concept of discovery learning, which is a key component of the school curriculum today, is based on Piaget's idea that children learn best through active doing (McLeod, 2009)
Piaget's Contribution Sigelman and Rider (2014) refer to Piaget as a giant in the field of cognition. Piaget stimulated research in the field of intellectual development through his questions about how human beings come to understand the world (Sigelman & Rider, 2014)
Individuals at this stage can understand abstract concepts and can process hypothetical situations. Furthermore, their thinking, reasoning, and problem-solving is systematic and logical (Santrock, 2004)
For example, children in this age group believe that objects retain their volume, even when the items are placed in different containers. Only around the ages of twelve to fourteen do children gain the ability to understand abstraction (Baskovic, 2010)
According to George Valliant, a well-adjusted adult has healthy coping mechanisms to deal with discomfort. Such adaptations include "altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship)" (Shenk 2009, p
Piaget believed that infants are born with schemes operating at birth, where in animals, these reflexes control behavior throughout life. However, in human beings as the infant uses these reflexes to adapt to the environment, these reflexes are quickly replaced with constructed schemes (Huitt & Hummel, 2003)
In Piaget's words, "I had the rare privilege of catching a glimpse of science and what it represented before I went through the philosophical crises of adolescence. The early experience of what these two sets of problems constituted, I am sure, the hidden inspiration for my subsequent activity in psychology (Munari, 1994)
Piaget was a Swiss philosopher and psychologist that spent much of his professional life listening to children, watching children and studying the available research on children's actions and thought processes. The main idea underlying Piaget's theory was that children do not think like grownups, and after thousands of interactions with young people often barely old enough to talk, Piaget began to suspect that behind their cute and seemingly illogical utterances were thought processes that had their own kind of order and their own special logic (Pappert, 1999)
Jean Piaget was a world traveler, but he ever returned to his beloved Switzerland, where he died (in Geneva) on September 16, 1980. Though his original theories of childhood psychology have undergone revision by those who followed him in the field, their basic tenets have proven to be lasting ones, and his reputation as a major figure in the scientific investigation of the human mind remains powerful (Bridgewater and Kurtz, 1969)
Piaget proved to be an excellent student and was already attending Neuchatel Latin High School at age eleven. It was at this point that he wrote a short scientific paper about an albino sparrow that was remarkable in its perception and is now considered to be the beginning of a scientific career that would reach towering proportions (Evans, 1973)
Piaget's interest ranged from the common snail to the exotic (and often unfairly maligned) octopus. He published dozens of papers on the topic throughout his career, and the fascination never left him (Piaget, 1976)
Piaget's observations were that these principles develop during the earliest years of a child's development, acting in the manner of a progressive construction of "logically embedded structures superseding one another by a process of inclusion of lower, less powerful logical means into higher and more powerful ones up to adulthood. Therefore, children's logic and modes of thinking are initially entirely different from those of adults" (Smith, 1996)
Situated between his stern-looking parents to his left and his two subdued younger sisters to the right, Piaget sports a mischievous and inviting grin. Photos snapped of him throughout the remainder of his long life generally feature that same inviting, friendly smile (Vidal, 1994)