Piaget's Cognitive Development

Schema- set of ideas about object/ activity that enable an individual to understand and interact with the world.

Assimilation-Using an existing schema to deal with a new situation

Accommodation- Modifying an existing schema by expanding or creating a new one to deal with situation.

Disequilibrium- Existing schemas don’t fit a new situation so need to be adapted.

Equilibrium- Existing skills or schemas can be used to deal with new situations.

Children adapt new experiences into existing schemas. This results in accommodation of the new schemas to the new experiences. This change involves adaptation of the schema to the new experience. If the child assimilates an object or experience that doesn’t fit the situation it results in disequilibrium. Equilibrium can only be restored by the process of accommodation.

Sensory Motor Stage (0-2 years old)

-Child’s knowledge is limited to what their senses tell them

-Exploration brings understanding of object permanence (Ability to recognise something exists when it is out of sight)

à Piaget let children play with a toy, then put it under a blanket and monitored at what age they reached for it. He said that the object permanence developed at around nine months.

HOWEVER Bower conducted a study where he held a teddy out to a child and turned out the lights and the infants still reached for it despite not being able to see it after the light was turned off. This was found to develop at three months.

Preoperational Stage (2-6)

-Some language and some logic mistakes.

-Unable to perform conservation tasks

-Show Egocentrism (believes everyone sees world same as them) centration (focuses attention only on one dimension of object/event) and irreversibility (don’t understand you can undo an action)

à Three mountains…