Jean Piaget's Cognitive Theory

Cognitive Theory Humans question why things occur the way that they do. Piaget was an individual who pondered these concepts. Jean Piaget developed an orderly theory in which he outlined the cognitive development in children. He developed the cognitive theory which I will apply when assessing a child. In this piece, I will be observing a young boy (KS), and see if his way of processing and integrating information is true to Piaget’s cognitive theory. I will also see if Piaget’s hypotheses coincide with humankind’s inquiries about cognitive development. I will use the boy’s initials when referring to him, and I will test him to see if he matches all the components of Piaget’s concrete operational model. KS is seven years of age, which puts

According to Piaget, children should want to interact and socialize at this point—however, it was very hard for me to get KS to stand still and try to talk to me, while staying on topic. KS was more interested in playing games and socializing with himself—almost as if he were still in the preoperational stage of Piaget’s cognitive theory. The child was then asked by his parents to pay attention to me and listen to what I had to say—this demonstrated that KS had learned to apply some rules that his parents had laid down for the household. I then continued onward and used some of KS’ blocks, shapes, and stickers in order to test out if he could differentiate and classify these objects in order the way I asked

From this point, I knew that the child could not perform at the optimal level of wellness for Piaget’s concrete operational model. So I had to take things down a notch. I decided to test KS using Piaget’s preoperational model instead of the concrete operational—hoping this model would prove more fundamental to the child; intriguingly, this proved to be KS ideal model. KS has a “schedule” (according to his parents) which he uses to keep up with the tasks of the day. KS checks this schedule when he knows that he needs to accomplish something. It is a very innovative and unique way of getting tasks done—and this proved that the child could understand gestures, as his parents would often point to what he had to pull off the wall. The child would then take the picture of what he was supposed to do and place it on a Velcro piece in the house (which was right near the location of where he had to complete his task). Once at the location, KS would proceed to accomplish his task. Though this was creative, I still needed to see if KS was in the preoperational stage. I then observed how he expressed himself—he could do so very well, though some of his words seemed jumbled or