Jean Piaget: The theory of cognitive development
Between 1925 and 1931, Piaget’s wife gave birth to three children. The births were a particularly important impetus for Piaget to understand the changing cognitive processes. During those years, he developed the basis of what is still the most widely accepted theory of cognitive development. In fact, Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is the most detailed, systematic interpretation of any aspect of human development. This theory, although largely based on Piaget’s observations of his children rather than on formal scientific inquiry, is a guideline for understanding the changing thought process throughout childhood and adolescence. Furthermore, this theory has given cognitive developmentalists a specific basis from which to begin their investigating. An awareness of this theory is critical to a thorough understanding of motor development because cognitive and motor development constantly interact. Cognitive development strongly depends on the movement capabilities the individual has acquired; similarly, motor development depends on intellectual capabilities. This interactive process is apparent in Piaget’s theory. The four major stages in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The ages Piaget cited for each stage are only guidelines. Individual variation is expected, although it is believed that most children approximate the course of development Piaget suggested. Furthermore, not everyone achieves Piaget’s highest level of cognitive development, formal thought. But children do follow the same sequence through the stages regardless of the level of cognitive ability they eventually attain. In other words, the stages are always experienced in the same order, and no stage is ever skipped, although the rate and degree of completion vary with each child. Also, each stage is increasingly more complex than its predecessor and builds on the cognitive abilities gained in the previous stage.
Adaptation
According to Piaget, cognitive development occurs through a process he called adaptation. Adaptation is adjusting to the demands of the environment and the intellectualization of that adjustment through two complementary acts, assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is a process by which children attempt to interpret new experiences based on their present interpretation of the world. This process of perceiving experiences relative to a past mode of thinking is exemplified by an infant who with one hand attempto grasp a ball slightly too large for the small hand . The one-handed “plan” to grasp the ball was in the child’s cognitive repertoire as a result of previous experiences with rattles or smaller objects. Thus, the infant tries to incorporate the ball, the new experience, using an already established mode of thinking. In accommodation, the second facet of adaptation, the individual attempts to adjust existing thought structures to account for, or accommodate, new experiences. In the case of the infant trying to obtain the large ball, accommodation could occur when the child recognizes that the ball is larger than the more familiar rattle. The infant then modifies the approach to obtaining the ball by either adapting the one-handed grasp or by using the other hand to help. Therefore, the child has made an adjustment to accommodate the ball. A new experience or environmental event has altered the child’s behavior and past understanding or interpretation of the event. According to Piaget, assimilation and accommodation always work together. Assimilation suggests that the individual always experiences new events according to what is already known; accommodation infers that the environment always challenges the individual to modify actions relative to the specific situation. As we saw in the earlier example of the infant trying to get the large ball, both components of adaptation are highly dependent on the individual’s movement, especially during Piaget’s first stage of cognitive development, the sensorimotor stage. Adaptation and its two facets, assimilation and accommodation, arbasic to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and emphasize the importance he placed on the role of the environment in human development. Source:«Human Motor Development”-A Lifespan approach (Greg Payne, Larry Isaacs) Recent Articles
