Jean Piaget: The Reformator of Child Psychology

Jean Piaget is credited with child development theory, cognitive development, and genetic epistemology. Piaget first took an interest in how kids think when he was working in Alfred Binet's IQ test lab in Paris. He observed that the responses of young children were substantially different from those of older children, which made him think that the younger children were not necessarily inarticulate, but instead they responded differently than the older kids because they thought differently (Huitt & Hammuel, 2003). Piaget's theory is based on the notion that children discover and interact with their environment to comprehend individuals, objects and concepts.

McLeod (2018a) introduces the three key components to Piaget’s cognitive theory:

1. schemas
2. the processes of adaptation that allow transition from different stages (equilibrium, assimilation and accommodation)
3. the four stages of cognitive development.

First, schemas are the main components of cognitive models that help us build a mental image of our environment. Piaget addressed how schemas were essential in cognitive development and how they are developed or acquired. A schema can also be defined as a collection of connected world mental representations that are used for the understanding and response of different problems. It is presumed that we save and apply these mental representations whenever necessary. Once we’ve learned different schemas, we are able to adapt them through assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is when we use what we already know about a certain schema to deal with new information. Accommodation however, is when an existing schema doesn’t work in certain situations and needs to be altered as a result of new information. Blake & Pope (2008) mentioned that the goal of development, as said by Piaget, is for a child to have a balance between assimilation and accommodation, also known as equilibrium. When a balance between the mental schemas of children and the outside environment is established, Piaget believes that they’re are in a good state of equilibrium. Students, therefore, have already grasped what was taught and have faith in their ability to do or accomplish the task presented. Students are not in the process of gaining or learning additional information during this period.

Disequilibrium happens when children are confronted with new environmental events; however, these new environmental events don't necessarily fit into the mental schemas of children. Curiosity can get the best of children which also causes disequilibrium. Teachers are advised to use disequilibrium to encourage their students because it enables improvements in student’s cognitive constructs. The last component is the stages of cognitive development. According to Kandola (2019), Piaget developed the four stages of cognitive development that follows children’s development as they grow older. The first stage is the sensorimotor stage which is from birth to two years old. In this stage, babies begin to build an understanding of the world by touching, looking and listening to things that are around them. Infants wave their arms around and suck on random things to explore their environment. They also use their five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. They collect information from these encounters to learn how to distinguish between people, things, shapes, sights and how they feel about various situations. In the sensorimotor stage, the most important thing a baby learns is object permanence. This is when an infant acknowledges that things or objects still exist, even though they are not always able to see, smell, touch or hear it.

Piaget divided the sensorimotor stage into six substages: reflexes, primary circular reactions, secondary circular reactions, coordination of reaction, tertiary circular reactions and the early representational thought. The first substage takes place between birth and one month in a child’s life. It is called the reflexes phase and it is when the infant understands the environment through innate reflexes (Cherry, 2019). These reflexes include putting things in their mouth and sucking on them, looking at things that are moving or interesting, and closing their hand when they have a hold of something (Amidon, Monroe & Ortwein, n.d.). The second substage is the primary circular reaction phase, which happens between one through four months of age. This stage involves the coordination of sensations and new schemas. An example that Cherry uses is a baby sucking their thumb on accident, but then intentionally sucking their thumb later on because it feels nice to them. The third substage is the secondary circular reactions phase, which occurs between four through eight months of age. In this stage, the child begins to focus on different objects that are around him/her and do things to get a response or reaction. Cherry gives an example of a baby who grabs a toy so they can put it in their mouth, which is also pleasurable for them. The fourth substage is the coordination of reactions phase which happens between eight to twelve months of age. It is in this stage that children begin to perform actions intentionally and begin exploring their surroundings. They also start to understand that certain objects are able to do things. For example, a child is able to realize that a toy will light up when you touch it. The fifth substage is the tertiary circular reactions, which happens between the ages of 1 to 1 ½ years old. In this stage, children start to do a lot of experimentation. Amidon, Monroe & Ortwein, (n.d.) mentions that children begin to be interested in physical objects and the things they are able to do with different objects. Children become very curious at this age and like to explore and get ahold of anything that they can. Finally, the sixth substage is the early representational thought phase which occurs in children ages 1 ½ to 2 years old. In this stage, children are able to use symbols to serve as objects in their surroundings. In this final phase of the sensorimotor stage, children begin to utilize their brains to be able to make sense of their environment, instead of using physical actions (Cherry, 2019).

This then leads into the second stage of cognitive development, the preoperational stage, which is between two to seven years old. Here, children begin to learn how to talk and think, and are able to play pretend, draw and recall things that have happened before. During this stage of a child’s life, they show five key behaviors, which include: imitation, symbolic play, drawing, mental imagery, and verbal evocation of events. Scott & Cogburn (2019) give examples of each of these characteristics. First, they say imitation is when a child sees someone doing something and is able to mimic their behavior or actions even when a person leaves. An example they give is a child mimicking a person that walks with a limp even after they’ve left. The second behavior, symbolic play is when kids start playing “play pretend” and are able to create scenarios. For example, a child pretending to be a mom and a stuffed toy is her child. The third behavior, drawing, occurs early on in the preoperational stage and involves both play and imitation. Drawing usually starts with random lines and scribbles, but then progresses to graphic imagery, which usually portrays things found in the child's everyday surroundings. When children attempt to draw their family, for example, they can’t draw perfect portraits of them so they draw stick figures instead. The child understands that their stick figures represent their family, and it’s not what their family actually looks like. The fourth behavior is mental imagery which is the result of a child’s perception. Children ask adults what certain objects are and what they’re called in order to connect its name with the mental image of the object.

The last behavior is verbal evocation of events which is the child being able to use language to think about and repeat things that have happened before. Having semiotic functions demonstrates that a child can analyze and integrate knowledge (Scott & Cogburn, 2019). Children in this stage are also egocentric, meaning they only focus on the world the way they see it, and can’t understand that other people have different point of views and opinions. Mcleod (2018b) goes over Piaget’s Three Mountains task that helps explain how children are egocentric. The goal of this experiment was to test whether children were egocentric and at what age they stop being egocentric. First, the child would sit at a table that had three different looking mountains. The child was allowed to get up and walk around the table to observe it and would then sit down on one side of the model. Then, a doll was placed on the opposite side of the child. Next, the child is shown ten photos of the mountains from different positions and perspectives and was asked to choose the photo that represents the doll’s point of view. Piaget hypothesized that if the child chose the card that correctly shows the dolls view then they were not egocentric. However, if the child chose the picture that shows his view and says that it is also the dolls view, then they show egocentrism. The results show that children who were 4-years-old usually chose the picture that represented their point of view because they couldn’t comprehend that the dolls view was different from their own. In contrast, 6-year-old children usually picked a picture that had a view different from their own, but rarely picked the correct photo that represents the dolls point of view. Children who were 7 or 8 years old were consistent in choosing the correct picture of the dolls view. Piaget concluded that at about the age of 7, children are no longer egocentric, as they are able to understand that other people have different point of views than they do. Amidon, Monroe & Ortwein (n.d.) says that this stage is also divided into two substages. The first being the symbolic function substage, which is when kids are able to picture an object in their head without having it out in front of them. The second is the intuitive thought substage which is when children begin to ask a lot of questions. They are trying to understand why and how certain things happen.

The third stage of cognitive development is the concrete operational stage which occurs between the ages seven through eleven. Piaget viewed the concrete stage as an important milestone in a child’s cognitive development because it is when they start to think more logically, which means that they can work things inside their head, instead of doing it physically. In this stage, children start to learn about the physicality of objects, such as their height, weight and volume. They also learn conservation, which is being able to acknowledge that even though an object’s physical appearance changes, the quantity of it stays the same (McLeod, 2018a). For example, having 30 mL of water in two different sized beakers: it’s still the same amount of water, but it’s just in different sized containers. This may lead some younger children to believe that there is more water in a beaker that is thinner and taller, than in a beaker that is shorter and rounder. Another example of this is if you have to balls of play dough that have the same amount, but one of them is stretched out a little bit. Children make the common mistake of thinking that the stretched out play dough has more or is bigger because it looks longer.

The last stage is the formal operational stage which is ages eleven and older. In this last stage of cognitive development, the child learns more complex reasoning rules. Logical roles can be used to understand complex ideas and problem solve. The child can now examine the world and form opinions. In this phase, they not only are able to understand things, but they can also problem-solve. It includes the development of theory on the basis of their existing knowledge (Kandola, 2019). During this stage, a person is able to do hypothetical and deductive reasoning, as well as think about abstract concepts. Piaget claimed that during the formal operational stage, hypothetical-deductive reasoning becomes crucial. This type of thinking includes hypothetical 'what if' scenarios and is often needed in science and math. (Amidon, Monroe & Ortwein, n.d.)

According to Piaget (1969), there are five different ways to view the intelligence operation. First, intellectual development can be linked to the influence of the surrounding environment whose characteristics will slowly impose upon the mind of a child. Second, intelligence can be explained by intelligence itself. In other words, it presumes the presence of an activity constructed from the beginnings by applying itself to gradually to rich and complex content. Third, one can find the progression of intelligence to be attributable not only to a faculty provided in a completed state, but also to the realization of a set of structures placed from within on perception and intelligence in relation to the needs of interaction with the environment. Fourth, intelligence can be described as a set of attempts or strategies, influenced by needs and their effects, but chosen from the external environment. This is like in biology, how mutations are natural but their adaptation is in response to a selection following an event. Finally, intelligence can be understood as the development through communication, of an assimilatory process whose functional laws were developed as early as biological life.

Although Piaget’s work is still taught today, there were still critics that found implications on his theories. Hopkins (2011) points out three critiques of Piaget's research. First, with his methodological approach, he hardly mentioned anything about how his participants were selected or about how many children he studied in order to reach his conclusions. In his book The Origins of Intelligence in Children, Piaget only had three “participants” that he observed, which were his own three children. Piaget's second criticism involves the stages in his theory. Stage theories of development are not popularly used in research anymore. While stages are considered valuable heuristics for the analysis of human behavior, a number of issues have caused stage theories to be excluded. One issue is that the dynamics of intraindividual and interindividual transitions in development are often not covered through stages. Additionally, intelligence is now considered a modular system instead of as a unified system of general intelligence. The last criticism is that Piaget insinuated that the formal operational stage marks the end of the development of intelligence in people. Hopkins has trouble believing that nothing more happens in cognitive development after reaching 12-years-old, or that a 12-year-olds cognition is the same as a 25-year-olds.

Despite these criticisms, Piaget’s work is still upheld in psychology and is continued to be taught. Ojose (2008) suggests that Piaget’s work has presented teachers with valuable insights on the way children understand the principles and theories of mathematics concepts. Also, they are useful because they help to understand the cognitive development of children, which aids in planning age appropriate activities to promote learning. Several pre-school and elementary schools take Piaget's theory as a basis for constructivist learning. Two key developmental strategies are discovering learning and encouraging children's new interests as they get older. Parents and teachers are encouraged to challenge their child's skills, but they should not try to introduce or teach things that are too advanced for the child's level. Teachers should also use several kinds of experiences to help the child learn better. For example, use manipulatives such as different pattern blocks or different colored stackable cubes, have children work in groups so they can practice trying to understand other people's thoughts and opinions, or going on field trips (Huitt & Hammuel, 2003).