Jean Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development Essay

Development The development of human beings’ emotional, physical, biological changes, social capabilities and advancement of knowledge over the course of the life span, from childhood through elderliness is the subject matter of discipline known as developmental psychology. Defining development from the Cambridge dictionary, defines development as the process in which someone or something grows or changes and becomes more advanced. In development change is a constant feature applicable to what ever is been referred to. Erikson’s stages of psychological development, a theory enunciated by a German psychologist Erik Erikson (1902-1994), is a compendious theory usually used to identify the eight different stages of development,

The Cambridge University defines intelligence as the ability to learn, understand and make judgments or have opinions that are based on reasons. Making intelligence an important quality to develop, because a person’s ability to learn, understand and be able to make judgments affects that person’s way of thinking and making decisions. Researchers have found out that up to 80% of adult human intelligence is thought to be obtainable from genetics. This brings us to Jean Piaget’s (1896-1980) theory of cognitive development. It is an extensive theory about the growth and development of human intelligence. He believed that ones childhood plays an important and progressive role in a person’s development. He also suggested that children go through four stages of cognitive development, first the sensori-motor stage; this is characterized by the children differencing themselves from objects, mostly seen from birth to two years of age. Secondly is the pre-operational stage; this is characterized by the ability to use language and to represent objects by either pictures or words, these are features of children of ages two to seven. Thirdly is the concrete operational stage; characterized by logically being able to think about objects and events, mostly seen at the ages of seven to eleven and lastly the formal operational stage, seen at eleven years and above and characterized by the