Piagets Theory of Child Development - Research Paper Example

Introduction Human development is the process of growing. The concept of human development explains why and how people change throughout their life. Child development is defined as the biological and psychological changes that occur in humans after birth and at the end of the adolescence. According to Piaget, “the child constructs knowledge through which they explore the world” (Piaget, 1984). The concept of child development explains how a child’s mental, physical and spiritual growth takes place throughout the life. The aim of this research paper is to apply the Piaget’s tasks and theory of Cognitive Development on Nathan, a 5 year old child, to assess his growth and development. Based on an interview with Nathan’s mother, I will relate the different Piaget’s tasks and stages of development through which Nathan has gone through to determine his mental, physical and spiritual development. In the end, the paper will also compare the findings of the interview with the literature available on the child development to find any evidence of affirmation and disaffirmation. Literature Review Piaget’s proposed the Cognitive Development Theory of Early Childhood Experience through the basic idea that the child constructs his own knowledge, the child learn many things without the help of others and the child is inherently motivated to learn new things from the environment. In his theory Piaget used four concepts, namely: schemata, adaptation, assimilation, and accommodation to understand the development stages of the child. (Berk, 2010) The first stage Schemata are the mental concepts which the child uses to understand. The second stage, Adaptation is the process in which the child mentally organizes the information received from the environment. Third stage Assimilation is the process of grasping new information as well as adding that information to the already stored knowledge. Fourth stage Accommodation is adjusting all the information through which the child can later build thoughts and build internal structures. This theory includes four stages the child passes through. The stages are: the sensorimotor stage (birth- 2 years), the preoperational stage (2 – 7 years), the concrete operational stage (7 – 12 years) and the formal operational stage (12 – onwards). The stages start at the age of birth until age of fully matured person (Fischer, 1980). Sensorimotor stage starts at the beginning of the childhood till age 2. During this stage, the child tries to develop the sense of the environment. The child uses his sensory motor skills to think what the outside environment is. The child behavior has some common skills like looking, grasping and listening. According to Jean Piaget, in the stage of sensorimotor, object permanence is very important accomplishment. The child understands that the things are present even though they are not present and this understanding of the child is known as object permanence. This stage includes six sub-stages that are characterized by their developmental process. The sub-stages are: (1) Reflexes (birth - 1 month), (2) Primary circular reactions (1-4 months), (3) Secondary circular reactions (4 -8 months), (4) Coordination for secondary circular reactions (8-12 months), (5) Tertiary circular reactions (12 – 18 months) and (6) Mental representation (18 – 24 months) (Martin, 2002). In the first substage of the sensorimotor stage, the child tries to understand the environment through the inborn reflexes. In the second substage, the child makes new schemas and coordinating sensation through which the child find pleasure. In the third substage which starts at the age of 4 – 8 months, the child intentionally repeats the events through which he can understand the outside environment. In the fourth substage which starts at age 8- 12 months, the child shown intentional reactions, starts exploring the environment and starts recognizing some actions with its reactions. In the fifth substage, the child begins a period of trial and error in which the child begins experiments. In the sixth substage which includes the age of 18 – 24 months in which the child starts developing symbols to represent every aspect of life and the child uses mental operations to understand the environment instead of actions (Shultz, 1981). Preoperational Stage: At the age of 2-7 years, the preoperational stage occurs and the most aspect of this stage is language development in which the child tries to speak. Language and belief takes place in this stage. In this stage the child does not understand the concrete logic, cannot operate information and the child cannot view others point of view. As in the mental representation substage of sensorimotor stage, the child can make symbols to understand every aspect of the environment. The child at the preoperational stage gets involved in two most important features that are egocentrism and conservation. Egocentrism is a concept in which the child cannot view things from other point of view. Conservation is a concept in which an understanding builds in which the object can change its appearance but it remain same in quantity. In the stage of preoperational, the child gets confused in both these concepts because in the egocentrism concept, the child presents his old point of view. In the conservation phenomenon, the child gets confused in the quantity of things and thinks that if the objects appearance is changed, its quantity will also be changed. Piaget defined the causes of both the egocentrism and conservation concepts that these both are abilities or tendencies which cannot develop in the children at the age of preoperational stage. These concepts can easily be developed in the age of 10-12 years which is included in the concrete operational stage of cognitive development. (Simatwa, 2010) Piagetian tasks that are covered in the above stages are: perspective taking, conservation of volume, mass, number and prediction. The perspective taking tasks helps in measuring the child’s mental growth in making a decision. Conservation of mass, volume and number helps in assessing whether the child is able to understand the volume, mass and the numbers. The conservation of mass shows the development in the physical strength of the child. Prediction helps in measuring the mental abilities of the child. (Dianne, 1981) Methodology Qualitative research is a common method of undertaking a research by incurring less cost and achieving the goals of descriptive research. The most widely used qualitative research method is conducting literature review which analyzes the research on the topic by earlier researchers. It can be used to do time series analysis and correlation analysis to find a relationship between two variables. Another method used in qualitative research is conducting one-to-one interviews with the respondents to assess implementation of the theories and find similarities and dissimilarities in the literature review. This research paper has also used interview as a technique to study the similarities and dissimilarities of child development research and Nathan’s development. Findings and Analysis There are two stages of cognitive development that relate to the development of Nathan are sensorimotor stage and preoperational stage. These start birth till 7 years in which the child becomes matured. In the interview of Nathan and his mother, I discussed some tasks that were activeness, growing power, imitation, speaking ability and cooperative player in sports. These all tasks are included in the two stages that are sensorimotor stage and preoperational stage of cognitive development. Accordingly, the activeness task and growing power task both are included in the first stage of cognitive development. Imitation task is included in the mental representation substage which is the sixth substage of sensorimotor stage. The preoperational stage of cognitive development that is the second stage includes the speaking ability and cooperative player. The interview revealed that Nathan has physically developed in the form of growth in height, and developed the ability to comprehend the mass. This shows that Nathan has the conservation of mass. In terms of conservation with numbers, Nathan can understand them but not to a very quick manner. Particularly, with his language skills, Nathan’s pronunciation is still in the process. For instance, he cannot pronounce the numbers correctly. On the other hand, Nathan’s social skills are good as he has been easy going with the other kids and not found in any isolated places alone. He likes to play a lot on his bike and wants to go around the place to enjoy. However, when he does not get the chance to play around on his bike, he throws a fist and wine a lot. This attitude shows that Nathan has developed egocentrism where he has developed a point of view that he has to play on the bike and forces his mom to play it around and whenever his parents are getting ready, he thinks that they are taking him outside to play. Conclusion Nathan has entered the third substage of sensorimotor stage and egocentrism of preoperational stage. Accordingly, Nathan has outgrown from the first two sub-stages of sensorimotor stage by becoming familiar with his surroundings, particularly, the bike. Nathan has now started to repeat the same behavior of wining and throwing fists to make his parents go outside to play with him on his bike. Therefore, he is becoming familiar with the environment and repeating the old behavior. He has also reached the egocentrism stage where he follows his own set pattern and cannot understand others point of view that will come later. These observations are in affirmation with the theory of Jean Piaget and affirm his stages of child’s development. References Fischer, W.Kurt, “A Theory of Cognitive Development, “The Control and Construction of Hierarchies of Skills.” Psychological Review, Nov. 1980. Retrieved on April 12, 2013 from http://www.gse.harvard.edu/~ddl/articlesCopy/FischerTheoryCognDev1980.pdf Martin L. Carl, Ruble N. Diane & Szkrybalo, “ Cognitive Theories of Early Gender Development”. Psychological Bulletin. 2002, Vol. 128(6), pp. 903-933. Retrieved on April 12, 2013 from http://mountappsych.pbworks.com/f/martin_ruble_szkrybalo.pdf Feldman L.D. Thomas, “ Piagetian Tasks”. Social Science. Retrieved on April 12,2013 from http://www.blinn.edu/socialscience/LDThomas/Feldman/Handouts/0902hand.htm Shultz. R. Thomas, “Simulating Stages of Human Cognitive Development with Connectionist Models.” Department of Psychology, Dec. 1981. Retrieved on April 12, 2013 from http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/perpg/fac/shultz/personal/Recent_Publications_files/stages91.pdf Simatwa W, R. Enose, “Piaget’s theory of intellectual development and its implication for instructional management at pre-secondary school level.” Eduacational Research and Reviews, July. 2010, Vol. 5(7), pp.366- 371. Retrieved on April 12, 2013 from http://www.academicjournals.org/err/PDF/Pdf%202010/July/Simatwa.pdf Berk, L.E. (2010), “Development Through the Lifespan. (Fifth Edition)”. 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