2.

1 Cognitive development: The theory of Jean Piaget

Cognition refers to the processes of thinking and memory, and the

cognitive development to the long-term changes of these processes. One
One of the most well-known perspectives of cognitive development is the theory of
cognitive stages of a Swiss psychologist named Jean Piaget. Piaget created and
studied a report on how children and young people
gradually become capable of thinking logically and
scientific.

Piaget believed that learning occurred through the interaction between assimilation.
(adjustment of new experiences to previous concepts) and
the accommodation (adjustment of concepts to new experiences). The va-
and comes from these two processes leads not only to a learning at
short term, but also to a long-term development change. The
long-term developments are really the focus of the theory
Piaget's cognitive.

After carefully observing children, Piaget suggested that the

cognition develops in distinct stages from birth to the end of
adolescence. By "stages", he meant a sequence of thought patterns.
presenting four essential characteristics:

The steps always take place in the same order.

No step is ever skipped.

Each step is a significant transformation of the previous step.

Each subsequent step incorporates the previous steps within itself.

Basically, it is a 'staircase' development model. Piaget proposed

four major stages of cognitive development, which he called (1)
["sensorimotor intelligence","pre-operational thought","thought"]
concrete operational and (4) formal operational thought. Each stage
is correlated to a period of childhood, but only in a way
approximate.

The sensorimotor stage: from birth to age 2

In Piaget's theory, the sensory-motor stage occurs first and is

defined as the period when children think through their senses and the
motor actions. As any parent could testify, children
they touch, manipulate, look at, listen to, and even bite and chew the
objects endlessly. According to Piaget, these actions allow children to
to know the world and its importance for their development.

The infant's actions allow the child to represent (i.e., construct simple concepts)
of) objects and events. A toy animal may be just a confusing array of sensations
at first, but by looking, feeling, and manipulating it repeatedly, the child
gradually organizes her sensations and actions into a stable concept: toy
animal. The representation acquires a permanence lacking in the individual
experiences of the object, which are constantly changing. Because the
representation is stable, the child “knows,” or at least believes, that toy animal
exists even if the actual toy animal is temporarily out of sight. Piaget called this
sense of stability object permanence, a belief that objects exist whether or not
they are actually present. Object permanence is a major achievement of
sensorimotor development, and marks a qualitative transformation in how
older infants (~24 months) think about experience compared to younger
infants (~6 months).
During much of infancy, of course, a child can only barely talk, so sensorimotor
Development initially happens without the support of language. It might
therefore seem hard to know what infants are thinking. Piaget devised several
simple, but clever, experiments to get around their lack of language, and these
experiments suggest that infants do indeed represent objects even without
being able to talk (Piaget, 1952). In one, for example, he simply hid an object
(like a toy animal) under a blanket. He found that doing so consistently
prompts older infants (18-24 months) to search for the object, but fails to
prompt younger infants (less than six months) to do so. (You can try this
experiment yourself if you happen to have access to young
infant.) Something motivates the search by the older infant even without the
benefit of much language, and that 'something' is presumed to be a
permanent concept or representation of the object.

The Preoperational Stage: Age 2 to 7

In the preoperational stage, children use their new ability to represent objects.
in a wide variety of activities, but they do not yet do it in ways that are
organized or fully logical. One of the most obvious examples of this kind of
Cognition is a dramatic play, or the improvised make-believe of preschool.
children. If you have ever had responsibility for children of this age, you have
likely witnessed such play.

Children engaged in imaginative activities are thinking on two levels at once—

one imaginative and the other realistic. This dual processing of experience
makes dramatic play an early example of metacognition, or reflecting on and
the monitoring of thinking itself. Because metacognition is a highly desirable
skill for success in school, teachers of young children (preschool, kindergarten,
and even first or second grade) often make time and space in their classrooms
for dramatic play, and sometimes even participate in it themselves to help
develop the play further.

The concrete operational stage: From 7 to 11 years old

As children progress through elementary school, they become

capable of representing ideas and events in a more flexible manner
more logical. Their thought processes still seem very basic compared to
to adult standards and generally operate unconsciously,
but they allow children to solve problems in a more
systematically than before, and therefore succeed in numerous tasks
schoolchildren. In the concrete operational stage, for example, a child can follow

unconsciously the following rule: "If nothing is added or taken away, then the
the quantity of something remains the same.

This simple principle helps children understand certain tasks.

arithmetic (such as adding or subtracting zero from a number) thus
to conduct certain scientific experiments in class (like those that
consistent in calculating the combined volume of two distinct liquids). Piaget has
called this period the concrete operational stage, because children 'operate'
mentally on concrete objects and events. However, they do not
are not yet able to operate (or think) systematically on
representations of objects or events. The manipulation of
Representations is a more abstract skill that develops later.
in adolescence.
Concrete operational thinking differs from preoperational thinking.
two ways, each making children more capable as students.
The first difference is reversibility, that is to say the ability to think about
steps of a process in any order. Imagine an experience
simple scientific, for example an experiment that explores why the
objects sink or float by asking a child to place an assortment
of objects in a basin of water. The preoperational child and the child
concrete operational can both remember and describe the steps of
this experience, but only the concrete operational child can recall them in
any order (e.g. chronological, reverse chronological, etc.). This
skill is very useful for any task involving multiple steps -
a common characteristic of classroom tasks. To teach a new
vocabulary from a story, for example, the teacher can tell the
students: "1) Every time you come across a word you do not know
no, write it. 2) Then, find and write the definition of this word before
go back to the story. 3) When you have made a list of all the words
If you don't know, ask a friend to test you on your list.
These instructions involve repeatedly reminding oneself to do
round trips between a second stage and a first - a task that the
concrete operational students - and most adults - find it easy, but
that preoperational children often forget to do or find
confusing. For young children to be able to accomplish this task of
reliably, they may need external incentives, for example
that the teacher periodically reminds them to return to the history to
look for other unknown words.

The other new characteristic of thought that develops over the course of
The concrete operational stage is the child's ability to decenter, or to
focus on more than one characteristic of a problem at a time. We find some
indices of decentration in the dramatic play of preschool children,
which requires being aware of two levels at once - knowing that a banana can
to be both a banana and a "telephone". But the decentralization of the step
concrete operational is more deliberate and conscious than children's play
preschool age.

The other new characteristic of thinking that develops during

The concrete operational stage is the child's ability to decenter, or to
focus on more than one characteristic of a problem at a time. We find some
decentration indices in the dramatic play of preschool-aged children
which requires being aware of two levels at the same time - knowing that a banana can
to be both a banana and a 'phone'. But the decentralization of the stadium
Concrete operational is more deliberate and conscious than play.
of preschool children's imagination. The child can now
to take care of two things at once quite deliberately. Let's assume
that you give the students a sheet that contains a selection of
subtraction problems, and you asked them to do this: 'Find
all the problems that involve a subtraction of two digits and that
involve a borrowing in the following column. Circle and solve
only these problems. Following these instructions is entirely possible.
for a concrete operational student (as long as they listened!) because
the student can take care of both subtasks simultaneously - find the
two-digit problems and identify those that actually involve a
loan. (The question of whether the student really knows how to
"to borrow" is, however, a distinct question.

In real classroom tasks, reversibility and decentration are

often produce together. A well-known example of joint presence
is that of Piaget's experiments on conservation, the belief that a
quantity or amount remains the same even if it changes in size or shape
apparent form (Piaget, 2001; Mathews, 1998). Imagine two balls
identical items made of clay. Any child, whether they are preoperational or
concrete operational, it will be suitable for both balls to contain
effectively the same quantity of clay, simply because they
look alike. But if you crush one of the balls to make a 'hot dog'
long and thin, the preoperational child will probably say that the amount of clay
has changed - either because its shape is longer, or because it is more
fine, but in any case because it now has a different appearance. The child
concrete operational will not make this mistake, thanks to the new ones
cognitive skills of reversibility and decentration: for him, the
the quantity is the same because "you could roll it back into a ball"
reversibility) and because "it may be longer, but it is also
"finer" (decentering). Piaget would say that the concrete operational child "has the

conservation of quantity

Notice the difference between the two youngest children.

(preoperational) and the slightly older child (concrete operational) in this
video while they are performing the conservation task:

The examples in class described above also involve reversibility.

and the decentration. As we have already mentioned, the activity of
the vocabulary described previously requires reversibility (back and forth
between the identification of words and the search for their meaning); but it
can also be interpreted as an example of decentration (keeping to
the mind two tasks at the same time - the identification of words and the search in the
dictionary). And as we mentioned, the arithmetic activity requires
decentralization (to look for problems that meet two criteria and them
résoudre), mais elle peut aussi être interprétée comme un exemple de
reversibility (going back and forth between subtasks, as for the activity of
vocabulary). Nevertheless, the development of operational skills
concrete tasks help students accomplish many basic school tasks;
In a sense, concrete operational skills make work possible.
ordinary schooling. The formal operational stage: 11 years and older

During the last Piagetian stage, the child becomes capable of reasoning not
only on tangible objects and events, but also on
hypothetical or abstract objects. That is why it is called a stage
formal operational - the period in which the individual can 'operate' on 'forms'
or representations. With students at this level, the teacher can ask
hypothetical problems (or contrary to the facts): "What if the world had
never discovered oil?
had first settled in California rather than on the East Coast of the United States
Unis?" To answer such questions, students must use a
hypothetical reasoning, that is to say they must manipulate ideas that
varies in several ways at the same time, entirely in their head.

Compare the child and the young woman in this video and notice the
difference in their abilities to reason hypothetically:

The hypothetical reasoning that concerned Piaget primarily involved scientific

problems. His studies of formal operational thinking therefore often look like
problems that middle or high school teachers pose in science classes. In one
problem, for example, a young person is presented with a simple pendulum, to
which different amounts of weight can be hung (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). The
The experimenter asks: 'What determines how fast the pendulum swings: the '
length of the string holding it, the weight attached to it, or the distance that it
is pulled to the side?

The young person is not allowed to solve this problem by trial-and-error with
the materials themselves, but must mentally reason a way to the solution.
do so systematically, he or she must imagine varying each factor separately,
while also imagining the other factors that are held constant. This kind of
Thinking requires facility at manipulating mental representations of the
relevant objects and actions—precisely the skill that defines formal operations.

As you can imagine, students who are able to think in a way

hypotheses have an advantage in many types of schoolwork:
by definition, they need relatively few "accessories" to solve
the problems. In this sense, they can in principle be more autonomous than the
students who rely only on concrete operations - a quality
certainly desirable in the opinion of most teachers. It is appropriate
however, it should be noted that formal operational thinking is desirable - but
not sufficient - to solve all school problems, and that it is far away
to be the only way for students to succeed in their education. The skills
Formal thinking does not guarantee that a student is motivated or well-behaved.
for example, no more than they guarantee other skills
desirable, such as aptitude for sports, music, or art. The
The fourth stage of Piaget's theory actually concerns a particular type of
formal thinking: the one that is necessary to solve problems
scientific and design scientific experiments. Given that of
many people do not face such problems in the
in the normal course of their lives, it is not surprising that research reveals
that many people never manage to reach or use the
formal thought in a complete or coherent manner, or that they do not use it
that in selected areas with which they are very familiar
(Case & Okomato, 1996). For teachers, the limitations of Piaget's ideas
suggest the need to resort to other theories on development -
theories that focus more directly on social issues and
interpersonal relationships of childhood and adolescence. The following sections

describe some of these theories.