Jean Piaget’s theory

• Piaget outlined four stages of cognitive development
• Children reach these stages at approximate ages
• Children must master each stage before moving on to the next
• Individual children may progress through the stages at different speeds, but always in the same order
• Piaget believed that younger children do not think the same way as older children
• Children must go through stages of cognitive development to achieve the abilities of older children or adults
• All children go through the stages in the same order
• Piaget's theory suggests that children construct their own knowledge in response to their experiences
• Children learn many things on their own without adult intervention
• Children are intrinsically motivated to learn and do not need rewards from adults to encourage learning
• There are elements of both nature and nurture in Piaget's theory
• Nature includes maturation of brain and body, motor skills development, and the ability to perceive, learn, and act
• Nurture involves adaptation, where children respond to environmental demands to meet their own goals for survival
• Sensorimotor stage: Birth to 2 years old
• Infants only know the world through immediate senses: sight, taste, touch, sound, and motor actions
• Infants lack internal mental schemata and cannot distinguish themselves from their environment
• Infants lack object permanence, failing to see or act on hidden objects
• Building knowledge through reflexes like grasping, sucking, and turning head to listen
• Pre-operational stage: 2 to 7 years old
• Children continue to add or create new schemas during this stage
• Children are influenced by sensory information and appearance of things, showing centration and lack of conservation
• Egocentrism is prominent, where children struggle to understand others' perspectives
• Concrete operational stage: 7 to 11 years old
• Children can carry out mental operations, understand conservation, and de-centre to see others' viewpoints
• They can complete tasks like class inclusion and the three mountains task successfully
• Formal operational stage: Adolescence and beyond
• Physical presence of objects is needed for mental operations, like counting using beads
• Abstract concepts can be understood, and hypothetical problems can be solved using logical thinking
• Ideas can be manipulated mentally, and reasoning deductions can be made without visual examples
• Problems are approached systematically and organized, without the need for physical aids
• Piaget argued that the inability to conserve is due to centration, where children focus on one dimension and fail to consider other aspects
• Children in the pre-operational stage struggle with conservation tasks due to lack of decentration
• Conservation tasks involve understanding that things remain constant despite changes in appearance
• Children search for hidden objects based on previous visual locations during the pre-operational stage
• The inability to conserve is linked to the child's failure to understand constancy despite changes in appearance
• Three physical symptoms of perimenopause:

  • Irregularity in menstruation/menorrhagia (heavy or prolonged bleeding) leading to an eventual cessation of periods
  • Difficulties with becoming pregnant due to irregular ovulation
  • Night sweats/hot flushes due to hormonal fluctuations leading to insomnia/sleeping problems
  • Loss of libido/sex drive often due to vaginal dryness/pain during intercourse
• Intellectual development refers to how individuals organise their ideas and make sense of the world in which they live in
• Intellectual development at each life stage:

  • Infancy and early childhood: a period of fast intellectual development
  • Adolescence and early adulthood: a time when thought processes develop and individuals are increasingly able to use reasoning consistently to come to a conclusion
  • Middle adulthood: past experiences help individuals think through problems and reach a judgement
  • Later adulthood: individuals continue to learn, but memory and speed of recall is affected by age
• Types of intellectual development:

  • Language development: essential to organise and express thoughts
  • Memory: essential for storing and recalling information
  • Problem solving: need to work out things and make predictions
  • Moral development: reasoning and making choices about how to act
  • Abstract thoughts and creative thinking: solve problems using imagination without having to be involved practically
• Stages of Language Development:

  • 3 Months: begin to make babbling noises as they learn to control the muscles associated with speech
  • 12 Months: begin to imitate sounds made by carers, such as 'da da'. This develops into using single words
  • 2 Years: begin to make 2-word sentences. Begins to build their vocabulary
  • 3 Years: begin to make simple sentences, like 'I want drink'. This develops into the ability to ask questions. Knowledge of words grows rapidly
  • 4 Years: begin to use clear sentences that can be understood by strangers. They can be expected to make some mistakes with grammar