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MCAT
Course: MCAT > Unit 10
Lesson 10: Cognition- Cognition questions
- Piaget's stages of cognitive development
- Schemas, assimilation, and accommodation
- Problem solving
- Decision making
- Semantic networks and spreading activation
- Intelligence
- Theories of intelligence
- Aging and cognitive abilities
- Cognitive dissonance
- Information processing model: Sensory, working, and long term memory
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Piaget's stages of cognitive development
Learn about the stages and developmental milestones in Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Created by Carole Yue.
Want to join the conversation?
- If you can put English subtitles in the video, I can create them in Ukrainian or Russian. The same applies to the translation of texts for psychology course or all courses related to these.(23 votes)
- Just try your contribution here: https://www.khanacademy.org/contribute - everyone would appreciate it when you help translating :)(11 votes)
- Isn't the part on object permanence wrong? The speaker says that children DON'T have object permanence from 0-2 years, but in reality this is the age range at which children DO develop object permanence.(7 votes)
- The speaker may have meant to imply that although infants do not have object permanence, this concept develops into toddlerhood (age 2). You are right, from age 0-2 is when object permanence develops.(13 votes)
- Should remind people that this is Piaget's view and no longer thought of as accurate.
Object Permanence develops earlier.
Theory of Mind develops 3-5... etc(7 votes)- Also, the stages are not universal between different cultures - in some cultures the concrete and formal operation stages will not "develop" this way. For the water bottle test, you get wrong answers much later on too.(3 votes)
- Why are the stages so important(5 votes)
- The stages can provide an idea on how the child is growing. If the child is stuck at one stage, it might indicate abnormalities (i.e. a disease).(6 votes)
- Can I do this part without learning about different parts of the brain at a cellular level and all the chemical jargon but having a basic understanding?(4 votes)
- Definitely. A lot of people want to separate the "thinking" (mental, psychological side - whatever you prefer to call it) from the "biological" (chemicals, hormones etc.), but really they are both just two sides of the exact same coin. But you can get a great understanding without actually knowing the names of different hormones, different parts of the brain and so on. However, the more you delve into the subject you'll probably absorb some of that stuff anyway. For example you wouldn't expect a 5 year old child to have tons of empathy developed or a 3 year old to be able to make accurate drawings. The brain simply hasn't evolved that far yet (which would be the biological aspect of it). The areas are by nature intertwined, but I would say you could definitely get a good grasp on the subjects discussed here without having to memorize facts about the brain or something like that. For those interested they can check out books like "The Male Brain" and "The Female Brain" (Louann Brizendine) which shows the relation between behaviours (from birth throghout childhood into adulthood) and the brains development and the different hormones that trigger behaviour in a very clear way.(2 votes)
- Since Carole says "It's not really hard and fast rules" () about at which age a stage starts, would it be possible that a child develops these stages in a different order or parallel to eachother? For instance, could the development of the 'Formal operational' stage start before a child has a (fully) gone through 'the Concrete operational' stage? 2:06(3 votes)
- I think that could happen, kind of like how in Freud's Psychosexual Stages of Development a child may not "complete" one of the Stages, which would then lead to problems later in life. For example, not completing the Anal stage could lead to control issues. However, a child wouldn't be able to skip one of Piaget's stages, since learning and development are on a steady course, so to speak.(2 votes)
- the age estimates are REALLY off for a lot of kids(3 votes)
- Does anyone know at what age the earliest or latest possible stages happen? Just curious....(2 votes)
- Piaget has generalised based on his findings in terms of the age brackets, but like said on the video, these age brackets aren't actually as discrete as they are proposed to be in Piaget's theory. But still, there isn't a definitive answer for "what's the youngest age that you have to be to enter formal operations?", that's kind of like asking "what's the youngest age that you have to be to learn how to ride a bike?".(3 votes)
- Does this have anything to do with psychology? I want to be a child psychologist so I'm going to have to start learning. Thanks!(2 votes)
- Yes. Psychology is the study of behavior, and how a person develops has tons to do with how they behave.(2 votes)
- Is there a different stage for teenagers, because usually the teenagers or adults have separate stages?(2 votes)
- Hi Houda,
Often times the stage where your a Teenager is called: Adolescence
13-19 years
And for adults it's called:
Early adulthood
20–39 years
This is based on the information I cited here and is based on Erikson stages of Psychosocial development
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erikson%27s_stages_of_psychosocial_development(2 votes)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] A long time
ago, people used to think that children were just
miniature versions of adults, and that they thought in
pretty much the same way. But then this guy Piaget
came along and he figured out that children actually
reason quite differently. In fact, he believed that
children are actively constructing their understanding of
the world as they grow, so that as their bodies grow,
their minds grow as well. He thought that this happened
generally in different stages. So, I want to tell you
about Piaget's four stages of cognitive development. First, we start out
with zero to two years. At this point, children are said to be in the sensorimotor stage. This word kind of makes sense. Sensori just comes from the senses. So he said children gather
information about their world with their eyes, so through
sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch. So that's why whenever you
see a baby zero to two years, they're always touching stuff
and putting it in their mouth. Then the motor part is
that they are very active. As they discover how to use their senses, they also discover how to
move their bodies around. This helps them explore
the world and learn what they're capable of. The main task or awareness
that develops during this time is object permanence. This just means that
infants don't recognize that objects still exist even
though they can't see them. For example, if you give an
infant a toy or something, say you have a nice ball for them, and you take it away,
they won't look for it because they don't understand
that it still exists. The next stage occurs from about age two to right around six or seven years. The reason I'm being a little
wishy-washy on the years is because these are really
just general guidelines. It's not really hard and fast rules of when these stages happen. The next stage is the
preoperational stage. The operational part just
means mental operation, so imagining things or
mentally reversing actions, things like that. The thing to notice
about this phase is that this is really when
children start to develop and engage in pretend play, and they'll begin to
be able to use symbols to represent things. What you might notice is
that around age two is also when children learn to talk. As they learn that
words symbolize objects, that starts to help them into
the preoperational stage, and understand the idea of symbols. Children of this age are very egocentric. That's not a bad thing. They're not just arrogant
and bragging all the time. They just don't understand
that other people have a different point of view than they do. If you're ever watching TV with a child, like a five-year-old, they might sit down right in front of you and not understand that you can't see through
them, because they can see. Also, sometimes kids will try
to hide from you at this stage by covering their eyes. The whole, I can't see
you, you can't see me idea. Then once they get to about age seven to about age 11 years old, then they are in the
concrete operational stage. Again, remember operational
means mental operations, and now they can do concrete operations. So this is where children
learn the idea of conservation. If you know a little kid
and want to see what stage of development they're in, then
you can do this little test. It's pretty fun. It's easy. You take two identical glasses
and pour the same amount of water in them, and
show them to the child and say, "Which one has more?" And kids will tell you they
all have the same amount. Then, right in front of the
child, so that she sees you, you take one of those glasses and pour it into a short, fat glass. Then you take the other one and pour it into a tall, skinny glass. Then right away, ask the child again, "Which one has more?" Up until concrete operational,
the child's going to say the tall, skinny glass has more
because the water's higher. But once they reach the
concrete operational stage, and understand that the
amount of water doesn't change just because the glasses
are different sizes, then they'll tell you
that they both still have the same amount of water, even
though they look different. So that's a fun little test. At this stage, children can also begin to reason about mathematics. They'll be able to
understand that 8 + 4 = 12, and then that must mean that 12 - 4 = 8. Moving on up, children
from about age 12 and up are in what Piaget called
the formal operational stage. That's when children are able to reason about abstract concepts and
think about consequences of potential actions. They're able to reason
out what might occur. Also, Piaget thought that this is where really sophisticated moral reasoning began to take place. At this point, children are
reasoning more like adults, and they continue to
develop that over time. Later developmentalists have
come along and figured out that these stages aren't
quite so discreet as Piaget may have originally thought. Children don't always
develop these abilities within the certain age brackets, but they do tend to progress
in a predictable fashion. Thanks to Piaget, now we
know that children are more than just miniature adults. So, go find a child and
see what stage they're in. Test Piaget's theory yourself.