Analysis of Piagets Theory - Essay Example

PIAGET’S THEORY Introduction Jean Piaget (1896-1987), the renowned Swiss developmental psychologist was the first to formulate and establish atheory of children’s cognitive development. Piaget believed that “the goal of intelligence is to achieve a balanced, harmonious relation, known as cognitive equilibrium between thought processes (cognitive structures) and the environment” (Fisher & Lerner, 2004: 263). The process of achieving this equilibrium is equilibration; and imbalances between children’s thinking and the environment is cognitive disequilibrium. Piaget believed intelligence was active; and that children are not passive recipients of information, rather that they actively construct and reconstruct their knowledge of the world. Cognitive disequilibrium and the child’s action and interaction with the physical environment fuel the development of the cognitive system towards more advanced psychological structures (Fisher & Lerner, 2004). This paper will evaluate Piaget’s theory of the four stages of cognitive evolution in child development. Further, similarities and differences will be identified between Erikson’s theory and Piaget’s theory of child development, with respect to the development of identity. Discussion According to Piaget’s theory, the development of intelligence and cognitive functioning in children progresses through a series of four stages based on age and concurrent biological changes and maturation. This leads to the child demonstrating a higher level of functioning at each successive stage, as compared to the previous stage (Videbeck, 2007). The stages of development are not universal, since cultural differences exist. However, the mechanisms that underlie cognitive development are considered to be universal (Pressley & McCormick, 2007). Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development: 1. The sensorimotor stage: This extends from birth to two years. The child develops a sense of self, differentiated from the environment, and develops the concept of object permanence. That is, a perception of the existence of tangible objects even when they are out of sight, that they do not cease to exist when not in view. The child begins to form mental images. 2. The preoperational stage: From two to six years, the child develops the ability to express self with language, understands the meaning of symbolic gestures, and begins to classify objects. 3. The concrete operations stage: Between six to twelve years the child begins to apply logic to thinking, understands spatiality and reversibility, is increasingly social and able to apply rules; however, thinking is still concrete. 4. The formal operations stage: From twelve to fifteen years and beyond, the child learns to think and reason in abstract terms. Further, there is development of logical thinking and reasoning, and the achievement of cognitive maturity in the child (Videbeck, 2007). The above outline reflects the four stages of development according to Piaget’s theory, and individuals reach cognitive maturity by middle to late adolescence (Videbeck, 2007). From the initial stage of life, the child’s understanding of its own self and perception of its environment as objects, space, causality and time is through sensorimotor intelligence. The first few years of life involves a process of evolution from a state in which “objects are centred about a self which believes it directs them” although the child is completely unaware of its self as subject, to a state in which the child believes the self to be in an environment that is stable and independent of its own activities (Piaget, 1999: 350). Sensorimotor development plays a central, organizing role in self-knowledge (Lewis & Ramsay, 2004). Piaget explains this evolution in the child’s perceptions of the self, as the development of intelligence. Although aspects of development of “self” occur from the first year of life, a metarepresentation or intelligent conceptualization of self does not emerge until the middle of the second year of life. Self metarepresentation is also explained as the idea of “me”, which emerges from self recognition including the child’s visual recognition of self in a mirror, which typically begins around eighteen months of age. Self recognition is a prerequisite for children’s expression of various self–conscious emotions such as embarrassment, empathy, and altruism or concern for others (Lewis & Ramsay, 2004). Two functions of intelligence are organization and adaptation. Organization refers to the systematic structuring of psychological and cognitive formations into coherent systems. Organization promotes adaptation to the environment which is made up of two complementary processes: assimilation and accommodation. In assimilation current psychological structures are used to interpret the external world. For example, toddlers who call the “cow” which is an unknown animal by the term “dog” which is familiar to them, are using their concept of dog to understand the world. During assimilation cognitive structures do not change. On the other hand, the experiences that the child has, are changed to fit existing psychological structures (Fisher & Lerner, 2004). “In its beginnings, assimilation is essentially the utilization of the external environment by the subject to nourish his hereditary or acquired schemata” (Piaget, 1999: 351). In accommodation, new psychological structures are created, or old ones are adjusted when current psychological structures do not fit particular aspects of the environment. The child’s modification of actions and creating new ones in imitation of parent’s gestures is an example of accommodation (Fisher & Lerner, 2004). Schemata such as those of sucking, sight, grasping, etc need to be continuously accommodated to things, and the requirement of accommodation frequently prevent the occurrence of the assimilatory effort. This accommodation remains integrated with the assimilatory processes, adjusting behavior patterns to the details of the things assimilated. The evolutionary changes based on assimilation and accommodation proceed from a state of confusion and lack of differentiation to a state of differentiation with complementary coordination. Thus intelligence begins neither with the knowledge of things or of the self, but with knowledge of their interaction. The coordination of sensorimotor assimilation and accommodation results in the subject going outside of himself to crystallize his universe to an objective entity, in which he is able to include himself while continuing to assimilate it to himself (Piaget, 1999). The conceptions of the world that a child naturally forms at the different stages of its development depend on two main factors: the scheme of reality that prompt a child’s thought, and the significance of explanations put forward by the child, which is the nature of the causality that he accepts. A child’s notion of reality is based on the extent to which he distinguishes the external world from an internal or subjective world, and his demarcation of the boundary between his self and objective reality. The child’s notion of causality is based on how he perceives and explains the environment, and his own self (Piaget, 1975). Piaget states that when children are at an average age of six, they believe that thinking is with the mouth, and identify it with the voice. They do not consider the head or body as part of the process of thinking, they are objective and they confuse the thoughts with the things themselves since the word is part of the thing. Following this stage, adult influences play an important part. The child has now learnt that we think with the head, and sometimes also refers to the “brain”. This occurs around the age of eight. In the child’s convictions there is a certain degree of spontaneity, which is indicated by three circumstances: the age factor, more importantly however, is the continuity that exists between the first and second stages, for instance, thought is often perceived as a voice inside the head or in the neck, according to the child’s previous convictions. Finally, it is the way in which the child crystallizes thought in material form, that thought is made of air, or of blood, or that it is a ball or another object (Piaget, 1975). Thus, the self is considered to be part of reality, and thought is likened to physical matter. “There is integral egocentricity through lack of consciousness of self” and the subject’s own point of view is considered to be the only one possible (Piaget, 1975:167). The two forms of egocentricity are logical and ontological. The child makes his own reality and he states without proof or limit to his conception. These are rooted in egocentric illusions in which there is no demarcation between one’s own thought and that of others, and lack of boundary between the self and the external world. Logical egocentricity is central to the child’s judgment and reasoning, and ontological egocentricity is the root of his conceptions of reality and causality. Videbeck (2007) states that some critics of Piaget believe that unlike the suggestion advanced by his theory, cognitive development in children is less rigid and differs to some extent for different individuals. Understanding the stages of cognitive development is significant for those working with children, especially in the fields of nursing and teaching. Piaget’s Concept of Identity in Relation to Cognitive Development The positive relationship between the development of cognition and identity is confirmed by a study conducted on 13- to 21-year-old Dutch students, in which younger adolescents in the sample had not yet developed the reflective ability to deal with interview and questionnaire probes, which were based on reflective ability on situation and thought (Columbus, 2005). The conservation of the truth of logical inferences is an intrinsic feature of rational thought. Piaget does not consider identity to be necessary or sufficient for conservation because out of all logical principles, the principle of identity is the one “which remains the least identical with itself in the course of development” (Smith, 1993: 90). For quantitative identity or conservation, qualitative identity is necessary but not sufficient. According to Piaget, the principle of identity is based on the tendency of an individual or organization to conserve itself. Conservation is one of the essential features of cognitive development, according to Piaget (Smith, 1993). Another essential feature of cognitive development is organization which promotes adaptation to the environment through the processes of assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation occurs by incorporating life events and new experiences into the identity. In contrast to assimilation, accommodation is the process of changing the identity to conform to new experiences (Weiner et al, 2003). In the life stage of adolescence, there occur great transitions in an individual’s physiological self, his life, ways of thinking, and social relations with family, peers and adults. Adolescents, unlike younger children, can think in complex ways, beyond the real and concrete, and attempt to visualize possible futures for themselves and for society (Gibbons & Stiles, 2004). In the Piagetian approach, there is an over-emphasis on abstract and generalized processes of cognition, resulting in a comparative neglect of the relationship between cognition and the self in “concrete, personal and real-life situations of human beings” (Paranjpe, 1998: 192). It is felt that Piaget’s theory of “decentered” logical structures must be supported by a theory of “recentered” concepts relating to concrete functioning persons. By using abstract and general cognitive concepts, Piaget does not take the “whole person” into consideration which includes an individual’s spontaneity, creativity, and the powerful influence of emotions. Other essential elements found lacking in Piaget’s work is the lived experience of individuals, their deeply personal concerns, anxieties and fears. The neglect of aspects of human life such as feeling, action, spontaneity, creativity, etc by Piaget in formulating his theory of child development, is different from Erikson’s approach. The latter incorporates some of Piagetian theory of cognitive development in his theory, “and supplements them amply with a rich account of affective development as well as a theory of social and identity development” (Paranjpe, 1998). The Similarities and Differences Between Erikson’s Theory and Piaget’s Theory A contemporary of Jean Piaget was Erik Erikson (1902-1994), a German-born psychoanalyst who based a part of his theory of child development on Freud’s work on personality development across the lifespan. Erikson (1963) focused his work on social and psychological development in the life stages, and advanced his theory consisting of eight psychosocial stages of child development in 1950. Based on the epigenetic principle, Erikson believed that psychosocial growth occurs in sequential phases, and each stage was dependent on completion of the previous stage and life task. According to Erikson, the dilemmas which presented themselves at each stage were life tasks to provide opportunities to achieve life’s virtues consisting of hope, purpose, fidelity, love, caring and wisdom (Videbeck, 2007: 48). The developmental theory of cognition proposed by Piaget in 1950, involved an integrated concept of nature and nurture, but focused mainly on the emergence of formal logical structures; and not on the adolescent period as such. Piaget’s theory used the onset of formal operations as an explanation of everything adolescent, and did not relate to biological, emotional, personality, social and societal concerns during the period of adolescence (Lerner & Steinberg, 2004). Erikson referred to a sense of inner continuity and sameness in relation to the concept of identity, whereas Piaget asserted that “object permanence” was essential for the development of identity (Honess & Yardley, 1987). According to Erikson, an individual’s identity development occurred at each stage of the life span, and was concurrent with ego development which occurred throughout the life span. This formed a crucial part of the child’s evolution into adolescence. Further, Erikson focused on identity development during adolescence as the crisis between identity and role confusion (Fogiel, 2000). On the other hand, Piaget did not focus on the study of identity and self, but considered it as developing concurrently with an individual’s cognitive evolution. However, an adolescent’s changing concept towards self and his environment during Piaget’s fourth cognitive stage of formal operations is similar to Erikson’s identity crisis during adolescence. During Piaget’s formal operational thought, the adolescent developed the capacity for abstract problem formulation, hypothesis development and solution testing. Similarly, during Erikson’s identity versus role confusion, the adolescent tried to find his place in the world through self-certainty versus apathy, role experimentation versus negative identity, and anticipation of achievement versus work paralysis (Hutchison, 2003). Further, both Piaget and Erikson believed that the adolescent had an enquiring mind, searching for “some inspiring unification of tradition or anticipated techniques, ideas and ideals” (Gibbons & Stiles, 2004: 2). A parallel is drawn in the similarity between the concept of identity crisis advanced by Erikson, and cognitive disequilibrium proposed by Piaget. As reviewed earlier, according to Piaget, knowledge develops through the process of assimilation and accommodation. “When an existing knowledge system can no longer assimilate the new experiences encountered, disequilbrium occurs and sustains until a new balance is achieved through advanced understanding” (Columbus, 2005: 57). Erikson’s theory on psychosocial development through the life span, focuses on social interactions of the child with his environment which help in his conceptualization of his own identity and development of ego at each of the eight stages. According to Erikson, identity crisis and core pathologies in individuals result from restriction of social behavior in general and new behavior in particular (Newman & Newman, 2005). Further, Erikson defined the life stage of adolescence as a crisis of identity versus identity diffusion or role confusion (Fogiel, 2000). During the identity crisis, the adolescent’s struggle is to make sense of what has occurred before in relation to what he perceives the world to be, in an effort to find a consistent sameness in himself and a continued sharing of some kind of common characteristics with others. Thus Erikson’s theory of identity crisis is similar to Piaget’s theory of disequilibrium resulting from the absence of an advanced understanding required to assimilate new experiences encountered. Conclusion This paper has discussed Piaget’s theory of the four stages of cognitive evolution in child development. Further, similarities and differences have been identified, between Erikson’s theory and Piaget’s theory of child development, with respect to the development of identity. It is seen that Piaget’s theory of cognitive development in four stages stresses on both nature and nurture; and Piagetian theory can be considered as an interactionist theory where biology interacts with environmental inputs (Pressley & McCormick, 2007). Erikson’s theory of an individual’s development through the eight stages of the human life span is based on the principle of each stage having a dilemma of specific life tasks that needed to be resolved, so that the individual could successfully cope with the next stage of his development. Both the theories are seen to have similarities as well as differences. The main similarity has been found in the psychologists’ approach to identity development during adolescence, where Erikson’s identity crisis is parallel to Piaget’s stage of formal operations, and the occurrence of disequilibrium if the child is not suffiently prepared from its experience in the previous stage, to meet the challenges of the next stage. The main difference is that Erikson’s theory of child development is found to encompass more completely the various aspects of an individual’s personality such as the important impact of social interactions, whereas Piaget’s theory is found to be more abstract, and excludes certain important elements of human living in its formulation of child development. References Columbus, A. 2005. Advances in psychology research. New York: Nova Publishers. Erikson, E.H. 1963. Childhood and society. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Fisher, C.B. & Lerner, R.M. 2004. Encyclopedia of applied developmental science. California: Sage Publications. Fogiel, M. 2000. Psychology II: Super review. The United States of America: Research and Education Association. Gibbons, J.L. & Stiles, D.A. 2004. The thoughts of youth: an international perspective on adolescents’ ideal persons. The United States of America: IAP Publishers. Honess, T. & Yardley, K. 1987. 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