Cognitive Development

Cognitive development by Jean Piaget is mostly about the developmental stages of human, psychologically and mentally. It is the development of human intelligence though a series of stages in aspects of learning and problem solving. According to Mosby’s Medical Dictionary, cognitive development is the developmental process which human starting from infant, starts to improve his mental ability to think, reason, learn, and abstract by obtaining skills and knowledge as he grows (Elsevier, 2008). There are four stages in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development; Sensory-motor stage, Pre-operational stage, Concrete operations, and Formal operations. According to Piaget’s believes, no one can skip nor change the order of the stages as the person grows up. However, because of different environmental settings and affection given, the child might go through each stage earlier or later.

Firstly, Sensory-motor Stage, which starts from birth to the age of 2. Through interactions with himself and the environment for example by looking, and grasping, the child is able to differ itself from other objects but unable to take into account other people’s needs and interest, thus considered as egocentric. Currently, the child has no or very weak sense of logic. For him, nothing is permanent nor concrete. An example is when a mother leaves her infant in a room, which means she is out of sight, the infant tends to cry as for him, the mother no longer exists. However, Piaget did not evaluate the need for motivation or knowledge for the child to search as they can search if they were thought how to. Secondly, the Pre-operational Stage, occurs at the age of two until six. The way the child thinks is still egocentric. For them, the way they think is how others think too and should understand as it is the only one possible. An experiment had been done asking children to choose a picture at which how they see three mountains and they usually answered correctly. However when they were asked to choose a picture that shows how someone else with a different viewpoint would see the mountains, they pick the picture that shows how they themselves view it. These children also believe in animism; that everything exists is conscious. For example, if a car would not start, it may be because it is too tired or sick. Besides that, the child use symbols in pretending or playing and believes no conservation. For example, if a liquid is poured into another glass with different shape, the pre-operational child may think that there is more or less liquid in the different glass. Developmentalists believed that these experiments were too complex to be questioned for their ability and should be presented in a fun and simpler way.

Thirdly, Concrete Operations, usually starts from the age of seven until eleven, proves that as the children acquire more knowledge through experiences, they began to have logic and conceptual beliefs. They will also be able to