Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development Summary

Through the developmental study of the child, Jean Piaget composed the Theory of Cognitive Development to illustrate how a child constructs an understanding of the world around them. I aim to describe the key components of Piaget’s theory in order to comprehend how a child establishes their own world and also how the Theory of Cognitive Development might influence me when working with babies, children or adolescents in the future.
The aim of Piaget’s theory was to demonstrate the constancy of cognitive structuring in children at different stages in their lives over a long period of time. Piaget based his studies on his interests in the qualitative characteristics of development and also the qualitative difference in children’s thinking. Piaget

These studies implied that “mental growth was not determined entirely by the unfolding of innate structures nor entirely by the influence of the environment but rather the constant interaction between the two” (Elkind, 1980, pp. vii, viii).
Piaget used cognitive development to describe the nature of intellectual functioning. He has tried to unearth the primary properties of cognitive adaption which can be implied to all of the developmental stages. These fundamental and underlying properties are “found in the function rather than the structural aspects of intelligence” (Flavell, 1963, p.41). Piaget suggests that there are two invariants to his theory, which are organisation and adaptation. Furthermore adaption can be subdivided into two parallel factors, assimilation and accommodation. Cognition is an organized affair. Therefore a key component to Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development includes a schema which can be defined as an internal framework that organises incoming information, thoughts and actions. A schema can be applied to objects, beliefs and also ideas, it is like a building structure that can hold and make sense of

Likewise, the child’s spontaneous notions about the world proves to be false when compared to an adult’s point of view which suggests that their intake of knowledge was a more complex process. Cognitive development begins at birth and terminates in adulthood. It can be said that psychological development evolves towards a form of equilibrium. From the point of view of intellectual functioning, it is easy to clarify the instability and incoherence of a child’s ideas when compared to that of an adults. Piaget used a number of developmental levels or stages to illustrate the intellectual function of the child. Each stage corresponds to a certain era of the child’s life, for example, the sensory-motor stage is equivalent to children aged between 0-2 years. The stages of development can provide a detailed description of intellectual function and development from birth to maturity. Piaget implied that the self and personality correlates to different stages of development. Throughout the stages of development, a child’s self-esteem evolves from one which can be quite egocentric, to one which can take another person’s point of view into