Question

Take a moment to reflect on Piaget's theory of cognitive development and Kohlberg's theory of morality. Choose one theory and explain its implications for how you view development. How might this interpretation vary across cultures given the research in Ch. 4 of Culture and Psychology?

Answer 1

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development explains how human intelligence is developed. This is also known as the developmental stage theories which contains four stages, the first of which is the sensory motor stage, that continues from the time of birth to the time where the person develops or acquires his language. In this stage, the child would develop an understanding of knowledge and the world.

In the second stage of development of the pre operational stage, the child starts to speak and this stage lasts from age 2 to age 7. Here , children have still not gathered logic or the ability to manipulate things, . Children have still not developed the ability to look at things from different points of view. In this stage, there develops a stage of egocentrism, where the child cannot distinguish between what their perspective is and what is the perspective of another person. At this stage, it is important that the infusion of right cultural values imparted to the child creates a mitigation of their ego and helps them take the perspective of other people into their own. It is important to be independent and capable of expressing their own views, but here, it is the work of the parents to create a balance between the independent and accepting self.

The third stage is conceprete operational stage, which occurs after 7 years of age, and lasts up to the age of 11 years, where a child learns to use correct logic. Here, they develop a thought which is more adult like and an abstract thinking is developed. Here, the child would learn a perspective of conservation . Also, here 5he child learns from observation by the process of inductive reasoning. So what the child notices from his culture, is influenced in the same way, such that there is shaping of his cultural principles. Also, the child learns that he could add generalised principles to predict event outcomes, where his version of principles is completely what he observes in the society and this allows shaping if his own generalised principles.

The fourth stage of development is the formal operation stage where this lasts from upto 15-20 years of age, where the child connects abstracts concepts and a basis for assumptions that may not have logic, such as prejudices. Such logics only develop through what the child views in his environment or the culture where he has been brought up. Hence, culture and psychology are intertwined.