Piaget'S Theory Explained

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Piaget's Contructivist Theory is structured around the format of stages. Stage theories view human development as occurring in a specific order, with a person accomplishing specific milestones before moving on to the next designated stage. Using this model, Piaget developed four basic stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. For the purpose of this post, exploration regarding this first stage is warranted. The sensorimotor stage occurs from birth through 18-24 months of age and is characterized by the lack of representational thought. This lack of representation extended through the absence of symbolic memories. In addition, infants were also thought to be completely spontaneous, devoid of any intentional, planned behavior. Piaget viewed infant development as occurring through reflexive responses to sensory stimuli. Cognition was in turn gained primarily through motor interactions. All of these experiences, interactions, and opportunities allowed the infant a variety of situations with which to be exposed to, thus providing them with the foundation of symbolism, object permanence, memory and recall by the conclusion of this stage (Broderick & Blewitt). Modern research findings have supported many of Piaget's original thoughts on development (Kuhn, 2008; Monastersky, 2000). However, the stage model for development, discussion on timeframes regarding milestones, and true infantile cognitive abilities have been reviewed and at times heavily modified. The idea of required comprehensive stage based learning is antiquated, with the new perspective of domain specific learning which states that an infant's development is not all inclusive, but that certain domains develop at their own base. Therefore, an infant can in fact be at two different stages when discussing two separate domains, such as motor skills and language

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