Question

2) How accurately do you believe Piaget's stages (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, formal operations) represent childhood cognitive development?

Answer 1

Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget is one of the known names who developed a theory of cognitive development of children. Piaget believed that children actively construct their environment to acquire knowledge. They are not passive learner but rather active constructors of their cognitive development. hence Piaget is also called a constructivist.

Piaget derived this theory from observation of his own daughters and tracking their development process. He observed their actions and infered their internal thought based on vicarious inputs and also on the way the result was achieved.

Piaget primarily spoke of two concepts assimilation and accomodation which refers to the basic understanding as how knowledge is achieved. Assimilation refers to how we acquire knowledge and add it into our already present cognitive structure.

Accomodation refers to the changes we make in the structure already present to accomodate any outlier or divergent information.

These two concepts are rational and accurate to their operation. they do exist simultaneously and seemlessly, without much ado.

Sensorimotor refers to the first stage from 0-2years where the child gains knowledge based on sensory and motor activities of the child. The ability of object permanence exists here. This stage is rather a stage of dynamic learning and explorations . The child is actively learning and exploring his environment through sensory inputs and is laying foundation for the next stage.

Compared to what Piaget has propunded, the sensorimotor stage , By evolution and by the virtue of Flynn effect, infants are capable to do much more than once predicted. there has been a tremendous shift in the capacities and capabilities of the child.

The preoperational , concrete operational and the formal operational stages too just give a glimpse of the entire ambit of skills and abilites a child masters in his cognitive development. Piagets theory lacks the depth and the representation of various skills in his theory.

The theory is valid but incomplete in its nature. Piagets theory gives only a minor snapshot of the gamut.

Hence instead of checking if its just "accurate", checking how holistic it is, is more significant.