Jean Piaget Essay Example Essay Example

Jean Piaget Essay Example Paper Jean Piaget Essay Introduction Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland in 1896. In his youth he studied philosophy and obtained a doctorate in biology by the age of 21. In his work in biology he discovered that molluscs could adapt to different environments and that their shells matured in a different way according to their environment. This discovery led him to consider how humans might adapt and mature differently according to their environment. This new area of interest led him to study developmental psychology and he went on to become one of the most respected and influential figures in the field. The majority of his work in psychology and that which he is most famous for is his theory of cognitive development. Piaget believed that children were born with an innate desire (and need) to adapt to their environment, and that they do this by interacting with it and learning from it. He came up with the idea of à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½schemasà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ which are the basic building blocks of intelligence. Babies start out with mi nimal in-built schemas for things such as sucking and grasping and moving limbs. As the baby grows its schemas are refined and combined to create more complex schemas such as for walking. This development takes place through the processes of à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½assimilationà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½, à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½accommodationà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ and à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½equilibriumà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½. A baby will try and apply its schema of sucking its motherà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s nipple to obtain nutrients to sucking a cup of juice; this is the babyà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s attempt to assimilate the task of drinking from a cup into its existing schemata. The sucking schema is inadequate for the task and the child will be in a state of disequilibrium. In order to restore balance the child must modify its existing schemas to accommodate the new task or experience. This is the process of à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½adaptationà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½. Jean Piaget Essay Body Paragraphs Piaget identified four main stages of cognitive development through which all children pass as they grow older. Each stage is typified by the kind of schemas a child a child has within that stage. The intellectual understanding attained at each stage builds upon that of the previous stage, and the stages are therefore passed through in sequence. Development remains continuous and fluid through all the stages however, rather than jumping from one stage to the next. The first stage is called the sensorimotor stage. This stage occupies approximately the first two years of the childà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s life. It is characterised by the childà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s hands-on approach to discovering the world around it. The child learns by hearing, seeing, smelling (sensory) and grasping, sucking and pulling (motor). The first few months are also characterised by the babyà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s lack of à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½object permanenceà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½. This means that the child is not able to understand that when an object is removed from view the object still exists. To the child, if an object is out of sight it is out of mind. The child is also extremely egocentric; it is unable to make the distinction between itself and the world around it. The second stage in Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s theory of cognitive development is the preoperational stage which lasts from the ages of 2 to 7 years old. During this stage the child greatly develops the ability to use symbols and language. Although the child learns to distinguish between itself and the rest of the world it is still egocentric in that it is unable to see things from other peopleà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s point of view or to à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½put itself in other peopleà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s shoesà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½. The next stage is called the concrete operational stage which last from 7 to 11 years of age. This stage is where the child acquires the ability to perform logical operations. These cognitive operations allow the child to make logical deductions which are not dependant on their perceptions although they still need a grounding in concrete experience. These logical operations are also fully reversible allowing the child to consider a great deal of possibilities. The child also becomes a great deal less egocentric, allowing it to become a lot more sociable and consider various points of view. The fourth and final stage is the formal operational stage which develops from the age of 11 to the age of 16. During this stage the childà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s ability to perform logical operations continues to grow and is freed from the need for actual experience of the object or situation. This enables the child to think in more abstract terms allowing them to consider hypothetical situations as well as real experiences. The child also becomes capable of à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½reflective abstractionà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ which allows them to acquire new knowledge by considering and reflecting upon existing knowledge. Piaget theory is coherent and offers a complete and detailed model of intellectua l development from birth to adulthood. It is the most well-known and possibly the most established theory of its kind. It is also one of the most controversial. Many psychologists have criticised Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s theory, especially with regard to the manner of the experiments he used to explore and prove his theories. One of the first criticisms of Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s work is that he often only used his own three children as test subjects for his experiments. This could introduce several confounding variables and problems with the validity of the results. First of all the use of only three participants for any kind of experiment is too small, especially when the results are to be applied to the whole world. Any kind of anomalies or unusual traits of his three children would be magnified. For instance, if one of his children was able to perform a particular mental operation at a very young age, this could be interpreted as meaning a third of the whole worldà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s children w ould be able to do the same, even though only a tiny proportion actually could. Another problem with Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s use of his own children is that there were many things in the childrenà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s lives and environment which would be unique to them. An important example of this is the fact that their father was one of the worldà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s leading scientists! How many people in the world can say that? This means that Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s great intelligence would have probably been passed on to his children in some way, either through genetics or through his interaction with them as they grew up. This means that they may have been more intellectually developed than the average child of their age and they would also be familiar with their fatherà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s way of thinking and communicating, perhaps helping them to perform better in his experiments. Although Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s theory is fundamentally based largely on his observations of his own children, it is worth noting t hat he also performed larger scale experiments and some of his earlier work with his own children was re-tested by himself and others with not too dissimilar results. Piaget has also been criticised for the wording he used during his experiments. Some say that his wording was often too advanced, abstract or ambiguous for the child to really understand what is required of them. There is also the issue of what each individual child understands of certain words. For instance, when performing a liquid conservation experiment, Piaget would ask the child if one glass had more water in it than the other. Would the child have the same understanding of the word à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½moreà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ as à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½three dimensional volumeà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ that Piaget would have? The child may interpret this as meaning à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½does one glass have more height of waterà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ in it. If so, then this is a different problem of cognition and does not necessarily mean that the child does not grasp the co ncept of conservation. Much of Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s work was based on observations, usually of his own children, which were non-experimental and recorded in a qualitative, yet systematic and comprehensive way. He saw this as the best way to solve the puzzles of cognitive development which concerned him. This kind of procedure produces results which are not easily analysed and do not give definitive à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½black and whiteà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ answers. The data he gathered is therefore open to some interpretation. Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s theory that children aged below seven are intrinsically egocentric has also been cast into serious doubt. Whilst it is generally agreed that youngsterà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s are egocentric to some extent, it has been observed that children as young as four are able to choose suitable gifts for their motherà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s birthday, rather than (as Piaget would have expected) buying toys that they themselves would like. It has also been shown that children as young as four can use à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½child-contingentà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½ language to talk to younger children, meaning that they modify their language making it less complex, so that it can be understood by the toddler. There are many flaws in Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s theory of cognitive development and perhaps even more flaws in the methodology he used to explore and verify it. The volume of criticism that this has generated has left very few people who still entirely agree with Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s theory. Many people dispute his theory as a whole. This revolt however does not necessarily mean that Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s contribution to the field of cognitive development is invalidated, in fact, in some ways it only serves to highlight how important his work has become. All other alternative theories of cognitive development stem from or are inspired by Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s work in one way or another. Some are an attempt to build on or refine his disputed theories into a more practical or rational explanation. Man y new theories are a reaction to Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s, very much at odds with his ideas and often from an opposite viewpoint (such as Vygotsky). If Piaget had not formed and published his theories on cognitive development then Vygotsky and other theorists may never have come to offer their alternative views and the subject of cognitive development may not have been researched nearly as much as it has been to date. For this reason, even if Piagetà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½s theories are eventually largely dismissed or disproven, his contribution to the subject should still be considered of great importance. We will write a custom essay sample on Jean Piaget Essay Example specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Jean Piaget Essay Example specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Jean Piaget Essay Example specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer