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Jean Piaget’s Theory of
Cognitive Development
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Jean Piaget stressed that
children actively construct their own cognitive worlds and information is not
just poured into their mind from the environment.
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There is difference between
the Psychoanalytic theories and Cognitive theories.
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Psychoanalytic theories
stress the importance of the unconscious thoughts of the children, while
cognitive theories emphasize their conscious thoughts. In fact, cognitive
theory in other words is a theory of knowledge.
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This is also a collective
term for philosophical theories, which seek to explain the nature, mechanisms
and value of cognition by studying the general relationship between subject
and object, thought and world. There are two important cognitive theories:
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•THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
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•INFORMATION PROCESSING
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First :THE Theory of
Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget believed that all children pass through a series of distinct
stages in intellectual development. Many of his ideas came from the
observations of his own children as they solved various thought problems.
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Piaget’s observations
convinced him that intellect grows through processes of assimilation and
accommodation.
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The intellect of children is
fundamentally different from the grownups.
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It is this assumption that
is central to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development that children
undertake.
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Piaget believed that
children adapt their thinking to include new ideas because additional
information furthers understanding.
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He saw mental processes,
especially intelligence, as apparatuses for interaction with the world.
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Piaget also believed that we
all go through four stages in understanding the world.
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He also believed that each
of the stage is age-related and consisted of distinct ways of thinking.
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(1) Motor or Individual
Stage : (Birth to 2 years)
In this stage, motor habits assume a ritual character or he responds
according to his own desires.
(2) Co-operative Stage : (2 to 7 years of age)
In this stage, the child’s play is
with a disregard for rules.
(3) Codification of Rules Stage : (7 to 11 years of age)
In this stage, rules are respected through the notion of them is
vague.
(4) Egocentric Stage : (11 to 12 years of age)
In this stage, the child
observes the society’s rules, customs, etc.
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In this way, Piaget
classified the four stages whereby the child proceeds from the mechanical,
motor stage to egocentric individual to social stage of cognitive
development.
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In the social co-operative
stage, rules for very young are sacred realities, while they are matters of
mutual agreement for grown-up youth.
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For the moral judgment of
children, the social facts such as, constraint and unilateral respect is very
important in the life of children.
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And for moral facts
co-operation and mutual respect is very important for their development.
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In this regard, Piaget
wrote:
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"The sense of justice,
though naturally capable of being reinforced by the precepts and the
practical examples of the adult, is largely independent of these influences,
and requires nothing more for its development than the mutual respect and
solidarity which holds among children themselves."
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In Piaget’s theory on moral
development, we can observe that it distinguishes between the morality of
younger children and the autonomous morality of older children.
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Piaget’s ideas on formal
operational are thought to have implications for understanding adolescent’s
moral development.
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