Strengths And Weaknesses Of Piaget Analysis

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Developmental Psychology Essay title: What are the strengths and weaknesses of Piaget’s theory of child development? Jean Piaget was born in 1896 in Switzerland. (2) He first developed the theory of cognitive development in order to investigate how children develop their thinking and ability when facing problems at different age. This theory was also known as the ‘first’ cognitive theory. He was a biologist who was original studying molloscs (1), but later he moved to study the development to children and tried to observe individual child at different ages (such as his daughter as one of the participants) in a natural environment and tested them on exercises he set. His theory of cognitive contribution was very successful and his conclusions…show more content…
He did not claim that particular should be happened at a particular timing. He considered the cognitive development as a developing process to see what the differences between different ages are. (3) The first stage is Sensorimotor stage. Children in this stage are between 0 to 2. We can simply say that children in this stage are exploring through their actions and senses by physical interactions to the world (movements and sensations). The key phenomenon in this stage is object permanence. (3) According to his theory, it said that ‘Infants learn that things continue to exist even though they cannot be seen’ (or cannot be heard/ sensed anymore). This is one of the most important contributions at the sensorimotor stage. Children at this stage also can separate themselves to the objects around them. The second stage is preoperational stage which happens between ages 2 to 7. Children at this stage fail to consider perspectives of others which called egocentrism. (The ‘three mountain task’ support that children are unable to consider other’s perspective)However, they start to understand well and getting better with their language. Piaget found that children at this stage still lack of lots of cognitive abilities. The third stage is called concrete operational stage. Their ages are between 7 to 11. Children began to think logically and having more sense about dealing with concrete events. It said that ‘One of the most important development is this stage is an understanding of reversibility.’ They start to have the sense to understand the concept and develop more. The last stage is formal operational stage which is the final stage. Teenagers contains the ability to have abstract thinking and problem solving skills,etc. They can normally abstract ideas in their head. Piaget suggested that deductive logic becomes important during this stage. (3) Since his theory is
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