Reading 2 “Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory’
Jean Piaget, the famous Swiss developmental psychologist, changed the way we think about the development of children’s minds. Piaget’s theory states that children go through four stages as they actively construct their understanding of the world. Two processes underlie this cognitive construction of the world: organization and adaptation. To make sense of our world, we organize our experiences. For example, we separate important ideas from less important ideas and we connect one idea to another. In addition to organizing our observations and experiences, we adapt, adjusting to new environmental demands.
As the infant or child seeks to construct an understanding of the world, said Piaget, the developing brain creates schemes. These are actions or mental representations that organize knowledge.
Assimilation and Accommodation. To explain how children use and adapt their schemes, Piaget offered two concepts: assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation occurs when children use their existing schemes to deal with new information or experiences. Accommodation occurs when children adjust their schemes to lake new information and experiences into account. Think about a toddler who has learned the word carlo identify the family’s car. The toddler may call all moving vehicles on roads “cars,” including motorcycles and trucks; the child has assimilated these objects to his or her existing scheme. But the child soon learns that motorcycles and trucks are not cars and fine-tunes the category to exclude motorcycles and trucks, accommodating the scheme.
Assimilation and accommodation operate even in the very young infant’s life. Newborns reflexively suck everything that touches their lips; they assimilate all sorts of objects into their sucking scheme. By sucking different objects, they learn about their taste, texture, shape, and so on. After several months of experience though, they construct their understanding of the world differently. Some objects, such as fingers and the mother’s breast, can be sucked, but others, such as fuzzy blankets, should not be sucked. In other words, they accommodate their sucking scheme.
Piaget also held that we go through four stages in understanding the world. Each of the stages is age-related and consists of distinct ways of thinking. Remember, it is the different way of understanding the world that makes one stage more advanced than another; knowing more information does not make the child’s thinking more advanced, in the Piagetian view. This is what Piaget meant when he said the child’s cognition is qualitatively different in one stage compared to another. [A] What are Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development?
[B]The sensorimotor stage, which lasts from birth to about 2 years of age, is the first Piagetian stage. In this stage, infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences (such as seeing and hearing) with physical, motoric actions-hence the term sensorimotor. [C] At the end of the stage, 2-year-olds have sophisticated sensorimotor patterns and are beginning to operate with primitive symbols. [D]
The preoperational stage, which lasts from approximately 2 to 7 years of age, is Piaget’s second stage. In this stage, children begin to go beyond simply connecting sensory information with physical action. However, according to Piaget, preschool children still lack the ability to perform what he calls operations, which are internalized mental actions that allow children to do mentally what they previously did physically. For example, if you imagine putting two sticks together to see whether they would be as long as another stick without actually moving the sticks, you are performing a concrete action.
The concrete operational stage, which lasts from approximately 7 to 11 years of age, is the third Piagetian stage. In this stage, children can perform operations, and logical reasoning replaces intuitive thought as long as reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples. For instance, concrete operational thinkers cannot imagine the steps necessary to complete an algebraic equation, which is too abstract for thinking at this stage of development.
The formal operational stage, which appears between the ages of 11 and 15, is the fourth and final Piagetian stage. In this stage, individuals move beyond concrete experiences and think in abstract and more logical terms. As part of thinking more abstractly, adolescents develop images of ideal circumstances. They might think about what an ideal parent is like and compare their parents to this ideal standard. They begin to entertain possibilities for the future and are fascinated with what they can be. In solving problems, formal operational thinkers are more systematic, developing hypotheses about why some¬thing is happening the way it is, then testing these hypotheses in a deductive manner.
14. Which of the sentences below best expresses the information in the highlighted statement in the passage? The other choices change the meaning or leave out important information.
A. Our new experiences require that we adjust in order to understand information that we have never seen.
B. Understanding new ideas is easier if we include observations and personal experiences.
C. We engage in both organization of what we see and experience and adaptation of novel ideas.
D. Thinking must include direct observation and experiences in order to organize the information .
15. Why does the author mention a “car” in paragraph 3?
A. To explain the concepts of assimilation and accommodation
B. To demonstrate how a toddler responds to a new experience
C. To prove that a young child cannot engage in problem solving
D. To provide an example of the first stage of cognitive development
16. The word adjust in the passage is closest in meaning to
A. change
B. improve
C. hide
D. find
17. The word others in the passage refers to
A. months
B. objects
C. fingers
D. blankets
18. The word distinct in the passage is closest in meaning to
A. new
B. simple
C. different
D. exact
19. The word sophisticated in the passage is closest in meaning to
A. limited
B. complex
C. useful
D. necessary
20. Based on the information in paragraph 7, which of the following best explains the term “operations”?
A. Symbolic thought
B. Mental actions
C. Physical activity
D. Abstract reasoning
21. According to paragraph 8, why would a 10-year-old be unable to solve algebra problems?
A. Algebra requires concrete operational thinking.
B. A 10-year-old has not reached the formal operational stage.
C. A child of 10 does not have logical reasoning abilities.
D. An algebra problem has too many steps in order to solve it.
22. In paragraph 9, the author mentions parents because
A. teenagers are already thinking about their roles in the future
B. parents are very important teachers during the final stage of development
C. the comparison of real and ideal parents is an example of abstract thinking
D. adolescents tend to be critical of their parents as part of their development
23. What can be inferred from the passage about people who are older than 15 years of age?
A. They must have completed all of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development.
B. They are probably in the formal operational state of development.
C. They have mastered deductive reasoning and are beginning to learn intuitively.
D. They may still not be able to solve problems systematically.
24. All of the following refer to Piaget’s theory EXCEPT
A. Even very young infants may engage in constructing the way that they understand the world.
B. Both assimilation and accommodation are processes that we can use to help us adapt to new information.
C. When children learn more information, then their thinking is at a higher stage of development.
D. Operations require a more advanced stage of development than symbolic representation.
25. Look at the four squares [■] that show where the following sentence could be inserted in the passage.
At the beginning of this stage, newborns have little more than reflexive patterns with which to work.
Where could the sentence best be added?
Click on a square [■] to insert the sentence in the passage.
26. Directions: An introduction for a short summary of the passage appears below. Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that mention the most important points in the passage. Some sentences do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that are not included in the passage or are minor points from the passage. This question is worth 2 points.
Jean Piaget proposed a theory of cognitive development in children.
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Answer Choices
A. Assimilation and accommodation are two processes that allow children to organize schemes.
B. Four age-related stages build upon each other to encourage different ways of thinking and developing.
C. Logical reasoning is applied to specific or concrete examples, replacing intuition as a mental process.
D. A toddler learns that there are different categories for vehicles, including cars, motorcycles, and trucks.
E. Children are active participants in cognitively constructing their understanding of the world around them.
F. Imagination plays a central role in children during the early stages of their development.