Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory: Study with Video Lessons, Practice Problems & Examples

Introduction to Piaget's Theory

This video, we're just going to introduce Piaget's cognitive developmental theory. So as you may recall from chapter 1, Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who was very interested in children's cognitive development. And Piaget believed that children think in a fundamentally different way than adults do. So he believed that children's cognition is unique compared to adult cognition in some ways. So, we're just going to be defining cognitive development as the development of children's ability to think, reason, and understand.

And definitely be aware of what your textbook says. Different textbooks will define this slightly differently, but this is kind of the general idea of what cognitive development means. So as children are developing cognitively, they are essentially learning about how they think, how other people think, and about how the world works. Now, Jean Piaget adopted what we call a constructivist view of development, which means he believed that children actively construct their understanding of the world, that children are active participants in their learning and in their development. Now, this sounds a little bit obvious to us nowadays, but remember, at the time, behaviorism was still a really predominant viewpoint.

And behaviorism views children as being very passive, the idea being that the child just kind of sits there and the environment is acting on them all the time. So Piaget having this constructivist viewpoint, which puts children in a very active role, was quite revolutionary at the time. So Piaget went and developed a stage theory of cognitive development. We loved our stage theories back in the day. We're just going to go over kind of the fundamental tenets of this theory, and then we're going to have a separate video talking about each of these stages in more detail.

So the idea behind this stage theory is that Piaget proposed that we're going to see a fundamental change in cognition at each stage. So the idea being that a child in stage 1 thinks in a fundamentally different way than a child in stage 2, etcetera, etcetera. So we're seeing an actual change in cognition as children move through those stages. Now Piaget also claimed that this stage theory had to occur in a fixed order. So basically children have to move through these stages in this exact order, you can't skip stages, and in a typically developing child you would also never go backwards.

And Piaget also claimed that his theory was universal, a very bold claim in psychology and we will talk about that a little bit later. So just to quickly introduce our theories here, stage 1 is called the sensory motor stage. Piaget believed that this would occur from birth to about 2 years of age. Stage 2 is our preoperational stage and Piaget believed that this took place between ages about 2 through age 7. In stage 3 or the concrete operational stage, this was proposed to take place between ages 7 to 11, and then finally stage 4, the final stage, is known as the formal operational stage and this was proposed to be basically 12 and older.

So that final stage, formal operational, does include adult cognition as well. All right. So those are our 4 stages, and I will see you in our next video to start going over them in more detail. Bye bye.

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory Example 1

Alright, so this one asks us, "Which of the following most closely aligns with a constructionist view of development?" Let's just read through them and see what we have here. So option A reads, "Children develop based entirely on how they are reinforced by their environment." And we see reinforcement. We know it's behaviorism.

That's not it. So we're just going to cross that right off. Option B reads, "Development is the result of innate skills emerging over time," and this viewpoint isn't really saying very much about innate skills. I mean, it is true that if children are actively participating in their development, they may be selecting for things that they are more skilled at naturally, but that's not really what the theory was getting at. So we're going to cross that one off because it's just not a central tenet of this theory by any means.

Option C reads, "Children actively construct their knowledge through interactions with the world," and that is exactly what this viewpoint is talking about, believing that children are active participants in their own development. So we're going to circle that one. And then option D reads, "Development is largely predetermined by biological factors." And, again, that's just not really what this theory was interested in. They were much more interested in children being active agents in their own development.

So our answer here is going to be option B. And there you go.

Which of the following developmental psychologists is most well known for their work on cognitive development?

• A. Mary Ainsworth.
• B. G. Stanley Hall.
• C. Jean Piaget.
• D. Murray Bowen.

Step 1: Sensorimotor (Birth - 2 Years)

Alright. So we're going to get into that first stage, the sensory motor stage, which Piaget believed took place from birth to about age 2. The idea behind this stage is that children use their senses and motor skills to better understand the world. They learn about the world essentially by sensing it and moving through it. That's where the term sensory motor comes from.

During this time, children begin to develop intentional goal-directed behavior. They're basically learning that they can be efficacious within their environment, that they can have an impact on their physical and social world, which is obviously very important for that constructivist viewpoint which puts children in a very active role. One big cognitive milestone for this stage is the development of schemas. Schemas are essentially theories or mental concepts about how the world works. For example, if I drop my spoon, it's going to fall. If I cry, mom's going to come. This also includes making mental categories of things. Once children have these schemas, Piaget believes that they're going to do 2 things with them: assimilate and accommodate.

Assimilation is when children apply schemas to novel stimuli, and this is a very efficient and useful way of thinking. For example, let's say the child has a schema of a dog that looks like a beagle. If they were to encounter a Cocker spaniel, they would be able to immediately label this animal as a dog because it shares so many features with their schema. However, despite how efficient this way of thinking can be, assimilation can lead to errors. For instance, if a very young child encounters a new animal like a deer, initially, they might label it as a dog because it shares many features with dogs.

Despite assimilation being efficient, it can also lead to errors. However, these errors eventually get fixed through the process of accommodation. Accommodation is when children begin to adjust or update their schemas based on new information. For example, if a child incorrectly labels a deer as a dog, an adult might correct them by pointing out that deer have unique features dogs don't have, like hooves and antlers. Thus, children would update their schema or adjust it so that they could correctly label this animal as a deer, understanding that deer and dogs can share overlapping features but still remain in separate categories.

One final really big milestone for our sensory motor period is the development of object permanence, which is essentially a child's understanding that an object still exists even when it is out of sight. This applies to both objects as well as other people, so their caregivers are included in this as well. We believe that object permanence begins developing quite early in infancy, but we usually see a pretty big leap in development around 8 months of age, where it becomes apparent that children have begun to master this skill.

Alright. That is our sensory motor stage, and I will see you guys in our next one. Bye bye.

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory Example 2

Okay, so for this example we're going to read through these two scenarios and we're going to label them as either assimilation or accommodation. So, for our first scenario, we have David, a 20-month-old, who has learned that not all 4-legged animals are dogs, and he can now correctly label dogs and cows. So, it sounds like David has basically accommodated or updated his schema. We'll label that as accommodation. So, he now understands that dogs and cows are separate categories with some overlapping traits.

They might both have fur, walk on four legs, and have tails, but cows have some unique features that dogs don't, such as hooves and sometimes horns. Right? So, it sounds like he has accommodated or kind of updated his understanding of those two categories. Next up, we have Sasha, an 18-month-old who sees a hawk flying in the sky and says "bluebird."

So, it sounds like her schema for a bird is probably a bluebird, and so when she sees this hawk she just immediately labels it as a bluebird. It sounds like this would be assimilation. Right? Assimilation can be extremely efficient and extremely useful. She was able to accurately label this hawk in a bird category, which is great, but it sounds like she has to do some updating and accommodation of that schema to figure out that bluebirds and hawks are separate categories of the same species.

Alright. So, there we have our example, and I will see you guys in the next one. Bye-bye.

What does the term object permanence refer to?

• A. An infant's developing ability to understand basic laws of physics (ex: gravity).
• B. A child's preference for adult caregivers who they see the most often.
• C. The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen.
• D. Children's ability to use objects as symbols in play.

Stage 2: Preoperational (2 - 7 Years)

Alright, so now we are going to dive into that second stage, our preoperational stage, which according to Piaget took place between 2 to 7 years of age. And I want to make a quick note here because the term operational is used in 3 out of our 4 stage names, and when Piaget said operational, what he was referring to is essentially the ability to perform complex mental operations and use logic. So the idea with this stage is that children are preoperational. According to Piaget, they cannot do these things quite yet. So one really important milestone that we're going to see in this preoperational stage is children beginning to use mental symbols in order to represent images, objects, and events.

And this ability to use mental symbols leads to much more elaborate pretend play. So, you know, a paper towel tube can be a sword. A set of generic dollhouse characters can represent your family. And we begin to see the emergence of very elaborate and imaginative play during this time. Another kind of classic hallmark of the preoperational stage is a type of thinking called egocentrism.

This does not mean that little kids have big egos or anything like that. This is referring to a difficulty in thinking about and understanding other people's perspectives. So this applies to both physical perception, thinking, 'other people can see whatever I see,' as well as knowledge, thinking 'other people must know whatever I know.' So, it's almost like a barrier in thinking where kids this age have a really difficult time understanding other people's perspectives. So to give you a kind of a cute example of this, my daughter is two and a half and whenever she draws a picture she'll run up to me and say, "Mommy, mommy, look what I drew!"

And she'll hold it just like this with the blank side facing me. But she does that because she can see the picture, though she assumes I can see the picture as well. It's like classic egocentrism. It's very, very cute. So we usually see that during this age.

Now one other kind of hallmark of our preoperational stage is that children at this age have not yet developed a skill called conservation. So conservation is understanding that the physical properties of an object will remain the same even if its appearance changes. So I'm going to walk you through a really classic conservation task just to kind of show you what that means. So what you might do for a conservation task is show a child two identical cups. So these cups are the exact same size, and they would have the same amount of orange juice in them.

Okay? And then you would ask the child, does this one have more, does this one have more, or are they the same? And most kids this age can easily say, 'oh, these are the same,' which is the correct answer. What you would then do in front of the child, so they're watching the entire thing, you would bring out two new cups. You'd bring out, like, a very short kind of wide cup and a very tall narrow cup. And then you would pour those identical amounts of juice into the two new cups, again, while the child is watching you. And then you would present them with these two new cups and then you would say the exact same prompt. Does this one have more? Does this one have more? Or are they the same?

And most preoperational children are going to point to that tall skinny glass and they're going to say, "Oh, this one has more." So even though they saw identical amounts of juice getting poured into those two cups they get tricked by this illusion because the physical appearance has changed. This one now looks physically taller, "quote unquote". And so they can't understand that the physical properties have been conserved or are the same because the appearance looks so different. I know it's a little bit weird to talk about a skill that children don't have, during this stage, but quite honestly, conservation tasks are usually done on preoperational kids.

You can think of it as, like, failing a conservation task is sort of a hallmark or, like, a signifier that children are still in this preoperational way of thinking. Alright. So that is our preoperational stage, and I will see you guys in our next video. Bye bye.

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory Example 3

Alright. So Jake is a 3-year-old doing a task in a psychology lab. The research assistant shows him 2 identical balls of clay and asks him which one is larger or if they are the same. They then squish one of the balls flat and ask him the same question. Based on Piaget's pre-operational stage, how would you expect Jake to answer each question?

What is being described here is a pretty classic conservation task, and so we know, at this age, if we are showing Jake 2 identical balls of clay, he can probably identify that they are the same size pretty easily. So most kids get that part of the task correct. But then if we were to change the appearance of one of those balls of clay by squishing it flat and ask him the same question, "Does this one have more, does this one have more, or are they the same?" It is very likely that Jake would get tricked by this change in the physical appearance. So there's a good chance that he would say, "Oh, you know, these are different," and he might point, for example, to that fully intact ball of clay and say, "This one has more."

Because of Jake's responses, we would know he has not yet developed the skill of conservation. Essentially, he cannot understand that the physical properties of these objects remain the same even if their appearance changes. Alright, so there we have it, and I will see you guys in the next one. Bye bye.

Egocentrism in the preoperational stage refers to:

• A. Children's tendency to be selfish.
• B. Children's inability to understand that others have different perspectives.
• C. Children's inability to solve abstract problems.
• D. The development of children's ego and self-esteem.

Which of the following is NOT typically associated with the preoperational stage?

• A. Egocentrism.
• B. Children's use of mental symbols.
• C. The emergence of more elaborate pretend play.
• D. The development of object permanence.

Stages 3 & 4: Concrete (7 - 11 Years) and Formal Operational (12+ Years)

This video, we're going to go over the concrete operational stage, which Piaget believed was ages 7 to 11, and the formal operational stage, which he believed was ages 12 plus. And we put these in the same video because they have fewer milestones than our previous two stages and they kind of build off of each other in a pretty intuitive way. So remember, when Piaget was saying operational, he was referring to the ability to do complex mental operations and use logic. So the idea behind our concrete operational stage is that these children are able to think logically about concrete objects and events. So they have to be thinking about something tangible.

For example, they can do simple math if they are imagining some, like, tangible objects. So they can do adding if they are imagining little candies, or they can do fractions if they are imagining slicing up a pizza. So they have to kind of attach something concrete in order to perform those complex mental operations was the idea here. At this age, children will also begin to understand the principle of reversibility, which is understanding that objects can be changed and then returned to their original form. So this is essentially the ability to mentally reverse something.

So if you can imagine, you know, water turning into ice and then ice turning back into water, that is mental reversal. And once children can do this mental reversal that helps them to develop the skill of conservation. So of course, just as a reminder, that is the understanding that an object's physical properties remain the same even if the physical appearance of it might change. So if we were to do that conservation task with a concrete operational child, they would be able to mentally reverse pouring the juice from the tall narrow glass and the skinny wide glass back into the original containers to see that this is the exact same amount of juice. So having that skill of reversibility helps these children to develop conservation.

And then finally, in our concrete operational stage, we would expect children to still kind of struggle with abstract thinking as well as hypothetical thinking. So they'd have a hard time thinking, especially thinking logically, about things like justice or freedom, those kind of abstract concepts, and they have a hard time imagining hypotheticals, you know, thinking about the consequences of their own actions and planning for the future. Alright, so that is our concrete operational stage. Now moving into our formal operational stage, which does include adult cognition, so this is just 12 plus. At this point, children are able to think logically about more abstract concepts.

So they can do those complex mental operations and use logic when thinking about completely abstract things, so freedom, equity, love, etcetera. So they'd be able to talk about these abstract concepts without constantly having to refer back to more, like, concrete or tangible examples. At this point, they have fully mastered the skills of reversibility and conservation. That is, like, fully locked in and good to go, And we would expect them to be able to think logically about hypothetical situations, which allows them the ability to plan for the future in a very elaborate and kind of clear way. And to be clear, you know, concrete operational children can think about the future.

They know that the future exists, but they might be, you know, only able to imagine, like, one possible future. Whereas a formal operational child would be able to imagine, you know, if I make these 5 different decisions, I can imagine 5 different futures that would result from that, and they can imagine all of those in a very, like, skilled and logical and, like, elaborate way. Alright. So those are the differences between our concrete operational and formal operational stages. Basically, concrete operational, they do mental operations on concrete ideas, And informal operational, we begin maybe, you know, being able to think about more abstract concepts in a more logical way.

Alright. There you have it, and I will see you guys in our next one. Bye bye.

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory Example 4

Okay. So this one asks us which statements below correctly identify milestones in the concrete operational stage. We will just go through them and check them off if they are correct. So the first one is "Children are able to think logically about abstract concepts," and that is not something that we would expect in the concrete operational stage. That would be formal operational skills.

We're going to cross that one off. Number 2 is "Children are able to think logically about tangible or concrete concepts," and that is absolutely a milestone that we would expect to see in that stage. And then 3 is "Children master the principle of reversibility," and that is also something that we see in the concrete operational stage. Once they've mastered mental reversal, that also helps them to master the skill of conservation, right? So, based on this, our correct answers are 2 and 3. Both of those describe our concrete operational stage very nicely.

And there you go.

A child in the formal operational stage is most likely to:

• A. Have difficulty with mental reversal and conservation.
• B. Successfully think about hypothetical situations.
• C. Struggle with object permanence.
• D. Rely on thinking about concrete objects and events.

Discussion of Piaget's Theory

Okay. So we're going to wrap things up by going over the strengths of Piaget's theory, talking about why it is noteworthy, and going over some limitations as well. So in terms of strengths, this really was the first comprehensive theory of cognitive development. And quite honestly, it is still one of our most comprehensive theories of cognitive development, and he really kind of set, like, the bedrock for the entire field. So it is noteworthy for that reason.

Also, the idea that children actively construct knowledge is now widely supported. Most modern developmental psychologists kind of take this more constructivist approach. And it almost feels like, to us nowadays, it's obvious, but quite honestly, it's obvious to us because of Piaget's influence. So we really have Piaget to thank for that.

And then finally, a lot of the concepts that he identified, things like object permanence, egocentrism, and conservation, are very well supported by modern research, and these are milestones that we look for in children as they develop today. So he was spot on in noticing some important kinds of developmental shifts and milestones that were occurring as children grew. Now in terms of limitations, Piaget's theory does not do a very good job accounting for individual differences, and this is an issue with stage theories more generally, which I will talk about in a moment. But, you know, if you have worked with kids or been around kids or remember being a kid, as I went through those stages, you may have noticed that some of these ages and these milestones just do not match up. And if you noticed that, you were totally correct.

So, a lot of the proposed ages in his theory are just not really well supported by what we know nowadays. So just to give you some examples, a 6-year-old can absolutely take perspective. A 10-year-old can grapple with an abstract concept. Maybe not at the same level as an adult, but they can still begin to do it. They are not trapped thinking only about concrete objects.

Right? So that's just not how development works. And he also did not account for social influences on development. So he really wasn't thinking about how social or cultural influences could potentially speed up or slow down development. So again, for example, you know, egocentrism is something that we see in very young children.

He was totally spot on with that. However, you can teach a child perspective-taking skills. Right? You can take your 3-year-old aside and say, "Oh my gosh. Like, how would you feel if that happened to you? How do you think that person might be feeling right now?" You can build up that skill before this expected milestone, this age 7 that he had proposed. Right? So he wasn't really taking into account how these social influences might change developmental milestones, which is a pretty big deal because humans are very social creatures. Right?

Kids are being raised by somebody, and so there's always going to be a social influence. And so he was not taking that into account very well with his theory. And then finally, stage theories just are not really used anymore. Nowadays, we adopt a more continuous model of development because with stage theories, when you put these really strict age boundaries on development, it never ends well because there is so much variability in humans, how humans develop, and so you're never going to have people fall nice and neat into that little age boundary. You're always going to have people falling on the outside of it, and then the entire stage ends up being meaningless.

So nowadays, we take these more continuous approaches, saying that these are skills that kind of emerge gradually and slowly over time. So in general, Piaget is very noteworthy. He made a huge contribution to the field, kind of set the foundation for the field of cognitive development, and he did notice a lot of really important, cognitive developmental milestones that, again, we still look for today. However, his theory really just failed to take into account individual differences. Again, a lot of the concepts that he noticed were correct, but he did attach inaccurate ages to those milestones.

Alright. So that is Piaget's theory kind of in a nutshell. Great job with this, guys, and I will see you in the next one. Bye bye.

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory Example 5

Okay, so this one is asking us, which of the following is not a critique of Piaget's theory of cognitive development? We will just run through them, we will note all of the critiques, and we will find the one that is not a critique. So a says the theory places inaccurate age boundaries on many of the proposed milestones, and that is a critique of Piaget's theory. Some of the ages that he proposed were just kind of wildly inaccurate based on what we know now. So that is indeed a critique of his theory.

B says that the theory fails to account for social influences on development and that is also a critique of Piaget's theory. He really did not take into account how individual differences, social factors, and cultural factors can potentially speed up or slow down some of these milestones. So that is a critique of his theory. C is that stage theories are now considered outdated due to their overly rigid nature. That is also true and that is a critique of this theory.

We no longer really like stage theories. They're way too rigid. They place very strict boundaries and, like, age limits on things, and that's just not how development works. We now take a more continuous model approach to development, more commonly. And then we're left with D, which is that concepts like conservation and egocentrism are not supported by modern research, and that is not true.

Concepts like conservation and egocentrism are actually very well supported by modern research, and we actually research those topics all the time to this day. So he was kind of spot on with those. Alright. So our answer here is D, that is not a critique of Piaget's theory, and I will see you guys in our next one. Bye bye.