Question

list and describe the characteristics in each of piaget's four stages of cognitive development. illustrate a child's abilities and limits at each level of development.

Answer 1

Piaget's theory explain a childs developing behaviour from the time the child is born to certain age. During these stages the infant built up the knowledge from their surrounding environment.As they interact with the surrounding the understand hoe the world works and react upto it.These stages mainly includes memory,language,response and morals.The four main stage's of Piaget's cognitive development are :-

1. Sensorimotor Stage :

• As the name suggests the 'sense' means the reaction through the five senses and 'motor' means the movement .
• A infant born with all the four senses ie touch ,smell, hearing, taste and sight and the basic physical movements like sucking ,touching etc uses these abilities to understand the surrounding worlds.
• This period mainly lasts from the day of birth to 2 years.
• The key goal of this stage is OBJECT PERMANENCE - the child tries to understand that certain thing still exist even though they cannot see or sense . Eg; pee-ka-boo game.
• This stage is further divided into sub stages for better understanding

a) Reflexes : This stage is the 1st month of birth. The child understand the environment,the people surrounded etc through the in-born senses. Eg: The baby starts to open its eyes and analyse the surroundings.

b) Primary Circular Reactions : The stage lasts from 1-4 months.The baby combines its senses with new findings and starts to discover certain new informations .Eg: The child may suck his/her thumb accidently but later realises it as a way of pleasure and continuses to do the same purposefully.

c) Secondary Circular Reactions : Thus stage lasts from 8-12 months. The baby starts to gather more understanding from the senses and the motor. It starts to analyse the surrounding more precisely .Eg: A child may intentionally put a toy into his mouth to trigger the reaction around which results in the parent stopping the child from putting the toy in the mouth.

d)Coordinations of reactions : This stage lasts from the 8-12 months. The child coordinates the surrounding responses to its action and react according to that. The child understands the objects around .The child may also imitate certain things. Eg: during this stage the child may imitate the expressions shown by parents as a apart of fun.

e)Tertiary Circular Reactions- This stage lasts from 12-18 months. This stage is called the trial and error stage. The child tries out certain actions and new sounds.The child may also tries to speak out certain words to understand the reactions to its action.

f)Early Representational Thoughts _ This stage lasts from 18-24 months. The child starts to understand the difference between objects and events. During the stage the child's thoughts become more mental operations.

The main limitation of this stage is the child mainly gathers information through senses only. So try to introduce different texture of toys,food to the child during this stage.

2) Preoperational Stage

• This stage exsist from 2 to 7 months
• The main feature of this stage is the child starts to develop languages.
• This stage has three sub divisions
• During this stage the child starts to understand the surroundings but not in a concrete manner.The child is unable to manipulate between the situations.

a)Egocentrism : The child understands a situation but he fails to understand from a different point of view. The child believes that there is only one point of view through which he could see and hence fails to manipulate from the other's point of view.

b)Conversation : During this stage the child is introduced to weight,mass, numbers etc. Certain children understands the concept far before their age and some other take time.

Limitation during this stage is that not all children develop according to this theory.

3) Concrete Operational Stage :

• This stage lasts from 7 to 11 years.
• During this stage the child think more logically and the thoughts will be more sophisticated.
• The egocentrism will be less in this stage .The child will start to think in others point of view.

a) Logic skils : During this stage the child uses the inductive logic ie if the child always falls down in a particular place next time he will be careful or cautious and try to avoid going to that particular place. The child may struggle with deductive logic.

b) Reversibility : Awareness about the action can be reversed.The child understands the difference between each individual,animal and non-living things and analyse each with its behaviour.

4) Formal Operational Stage :

• This stage lasts from 12 years to adulthood
• During this stage the child understands everything and respond to the surroundings according to the norms and morals.
• The characteristics of this stage is Conceptualizing Balance, Abstraction of ideas , Deductive logic , problem solving etc.