Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland on August 9, 1896. Piaget is referred to a psychologist, bioligist, and scientist. His greatest interest was young children and how they think. He created 4 stages (Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development) that he called schema, and that's what I'm going to be discussing today.
Piaget created a stage for 4 age groups: infant-2 years old, 2-6 or 7 years old, 7-11 years old, and 12-adulthood.
The first stage is the sensorimotor stage. Starting from birth to two, young children learn through their senses: touch, hearing, looking, mouthing, and grasping. However, one thing almost all children of this group fail to GRASP is object permanence. Babies do not understand that objects still exist even when they cannot be seen; out of sight, out of mind. By around 8 months, babies will look for the object for a very short amount of time before their attention span is distracted.
Another phenomena that this group experiences is stranger anxiety. Again, the same sort of idea. If mommy and/or daddy are gone, they're gone and not coming back. I babysit and this sort of anxiety is so sad to witness because there is no way for a child (around 2 years old) to grasp the fact that mommy and daddy WILL come back eventually. I've had a two year old cry for 3 straight hours before falling asleep because she couldn't find mommy and daddy and I spent the first hour trying to reassure her they would.
The next stage is the pre-operational stage, centering around children 2 to 7 years old. Not in a bad way, but younger children of this group are egocentric. Again, in a non-negative way. Preschool age kids especially find it difficult to understand that we can't see what they see and they can't see what we see.
The third stage is the concrete operational stage for children 7-11 years of age (a follow-up of the previous stage). Kids of this stage can understand basic mathematical equations, logical thinking, and concrete comparisons. They can also understand conservation, which means that they know something can change form but still be the same item they started with. Take for example, two glasses of juice. They have the exact same amount of juice. If you pour one glass of juice into a taller, skinnier glass (making it look like there's more juice), most children of this group understand that the amount of juice is the same; it just looks different. (Here's a video demonstrating what I just described).
The last stage involves ages 12 on up and is the formal operational stage. This stage is more abstract thinking. This stage can be seen as more of "If this happens, then that happens" scenarios. For example, in the video the little boy (who looks as if he is still in the concrete operational stage) uses logical thinking to figure out what happens. The older girl (who is in the formal operational stage) knows how to use abstract thinking and reasoning to figure out what happens to the glass.
These four stages are just one scientist/psychologist/biologist's way of looking at a child's brain as the child matures and grows. There are many other theories out there (which in my next couple blogs, I will cover). If you're interested, the last video puts together all 4 stages and is quite interesting to watch.
Thanks for reading!
References
Baby has NO concept of object Permanence (REALLY FUNNY). (2012). Youtube.com.
Piaget - Egocentrism and Perspective Taking (Preoperational and Concrete Operational Stages). (2013). Youtube.com.
Piaget - Stage 3 - Concrete - Reversibility. (2008). Youtube.com
Piaget - Stage 4 - Formal - Deductive Reasoning. (2008). Youtube.com.
Piaget's Stages of Development. (2011). Youtube.com.
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