Piaget's theory of cognitive development

So what's really important, again, in this stage is that we give the toddler options to make choices on their own, uh, assuming it's safe to do so, to really help promote, um, that development.

In terms of their cognitive development, Piaget, uh, focuses on the pre-operational/pre-conceptual area of cognitive development.

So this would be things like a child might use symbols to represent objects.

So an example of that might be like they-- I don't know.

Here's Dr. Curtis Peterson.

All right, the first theory that has really, um, been utilized in a lot of cross-cultural theories, uh, is the theory of Jean Pi- Piaget.

Okay? And really, uh, I think the reason why this has got so much cultural, cross-cultural at- um, attention is it is one of the more testable developmental theories, is he sets up different, um, milestones that go from one level to the next.

And I should state up front that, uh, his is a stage theory, meaning that we develop in certain stages during certain age groups.

And those are quite common among Western, uh, developmental theories, uh, the belief that each stage sets you up for either success or, if you wanna put it in the extremes, failure, uh, and makes it harder to accomplish these different tasks as you move through, in Piaget's example, his co- uh, cognitive theory, okay? The first thing that...

The second thing, I should say, that should also be stated about Piaget's theory is his is a cognitive theory, meaning that he was interesting, interested in knowing how our cognitions change over time, the way we think, the way we're able to analyze, the way we're able to, um, uh, really, well, think about the world either in concrete, abstract.

Um, are we able to do certain cognitive tasks like, um, understanding that you could take something apart and put it back together? And the other thing that I want to state about Piaget's theory is he is purely thinking about cognition.

And he does talk about the interaction with the world, but the world only provides the information for those cognitive, uh, developmental tasks to be accomplished.

Okay, so and if you think about it, a baby's gonna gain head control first before they start rolling, before they start sitting, crawling before they're walking, those kind of things.

And then when we talk about cognitive development, we're gonna be referencing Piaget's model of cognitive development.

And then, um, we're also going to be, for psych social, we're gonna be referencing Erikson's model.

Going back to cognitive development, just in general, you're gonna see intellectual development or cognitive development move from a, a general pattern to a more specific pattern.

However, you should on your own in the book, as well as other resources, depending on what you're studying.

Our school provides supplemental resources that are unique to them, so I don't wanna speak to those.

But there may be other resources that you're using specifically to look at growth and development milestones as it relates to fine motor and, uh, gross motor skills, as well as Er- you can find any resource on Erikson's theory and Piaget's theories on cognitive and social, psychosocial development.

Okay.

Fourth, Samuel and Bryant, nineteen eighty-three.

This is a critique of Piaget's conservation tasks.

Piaget claimed children under seven cannot conserve.

They can't understand that quantity stays the same despite changes in appearance.

Samuel and Bryant challenged this by testing two hundred and fifty-two children aged five to eight and a half using a modified procedure where the transformation question was only asked only once rather than twice as Piaget did.

The result? Children made significantly fewer errors in the one-question condition.

This suggests Piaget underestimated children's cognitive abilities.

The wording of the question, not the child's cognitive stage, was causing errors.

One of the most important is the manipulation of things in the real world.

I mean, Piaget, who was very, very influential in my thinking, was a constructivist.

And he basically said, you construct your mind by the objects that you manipulate.

And the way I sum that up in my writing is I say, we love the objects we think with, we think with the objects we love.

That's what I've contributed to that Piagetian conversation, is that I love this pencil.

I think this is the pencil I write with.

It's the exactly perfect pencil.

So it's very important that we are, um, looking at it through those lens.

So I've got Piaget, Erikson, attachment theory, and neurodevelopment, um, to talk to you about now because these are all very important parts of child development theory that apply to child centered play therapy.

So we can't talk about child development theory without touching on Piaget and cognitive development.

So when we are looking at the concept of child development theory, um, our insight into this space is that children don't think like adults.

They think in qualitatively different ways, um, depending on their stages.

Oftentimes, parents will understand that children are children, but at the same time they will then expect them to behave in ways that adults do when that's not necessarily possible for them to-- Well, it's not possible for them to do so.

We know traditionally, um, that children were viewed as mini adults, but we now understand in modern theory that that's not just, that's just not the case.

So we have different stages, or Piaget, sorry, has different stages that he goes through in how children think.

NDBIs take the hard, empirical science of behavioral learning, the understanding of antecedents, behaviors, and consequences that underpinned ABA, and they marry it with the warmth, child-led focus, and developmental milestones of developmental psychology.

Drawing on theorists like Vygotsky and Piaget, there are several specific models that fall under this NDBI umbrella.

You have the Early Start Denver model, or ESDM, which focuses on very young toddlers and embeds learning into natural daily routines like feeding and bathing, with a massive emphasis on social orienting.

You have PRT, pivotal response treatment, which focuses on targeting pivotal areas of a child's development, like motivation and self-management, assuming that improvements there will cascade into other specific skills.

Also at conventional, there's an appearance, the appearance and the consolidation of operational thinking.

So if you're familiar with Piaget, which if you're into psychology at all, you probably will know about Piaget's stages.

This is where operational thinking appears.

First it's concrete operational, then it becomes formal operational.

If you're really wanting to know the details of that.

What does operational thinking mean? One of the problems with this theory is that it's really not explained very well, I find.

Now this isn't a lesson on Piaget, I might have to do a whole series on cognitive development, but Like a lot of people do, it's all very abstract.

Like if you've ever tried reading Piaget's original work, it's a nightmare because it's all so like theoretically, it's all very theoretical and abstract.