Summary Of Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget, a psychologist commonly known for his theory of cognitive development that observes and describes how children mentally develop through childhood. He believed that children think and organize their world meaningfully, but different from adults. Piaget’s sought out through cognitive development that children children go through four stages of mental development stages Sensorimotor Child (birth-2), Preoperational (2-7), Concrete Operational (7-11), and Formal Operational (12+). Throughout these stages outside influences force children to grow cognitively, one way being through books and illustrations.
The first stage being Sensorimotor, when a baby is first born he or she is developing both physically and cognitively. In months

Adolescents gain the ability to think further than the concrete--able to imagine the different possible outcome of certain actions.
The book Flotsam written by David Wiesner, is an illustrative book with only pictures and no words, targets children between the ages 5 through 8 which would fall under the Concrete Operational stage. This wordless story takes place on a beach in the summer. A boy is at the beach with his parents, exploring what the tide is bringing in unaware of a large wave that knocks him over, he then discovers an underwater box-camera (p. 7-10). The boy opens and finds film, has it developed and is stunned by the unbelievable photos of life deep in the

At first a child would find this book very pleasing to the eye, the great amount of detail and color in this book may draw them deep into this illustrative story. In contrast to that, being that there are no words, exploring the elements of drama of : role/character, relationship, time and place, tension and focus through movement, voices in the head, improvisation, movement, sound scape, and point of view may be very difficult. On pages 13-20 have a great amount of detail and abstract illustrations forces a child to pay close attention to understand the full meaning behind the story. On these pages it illustrates what takes places beyond the shore, it anthropomorphizes these underwater creatures (nautilus shells with cutout windows, walking starfish-islands, octopi in their living room, pufferfish representing hot air balloons) in which forces children to use their imagination and abstract thinking to create their own narrative. Although these children are not yet at full capacity to think beyond the concrete, it forces them to jump into their next stage of