EDUC 50: CHILD AND ADOLESCENT LEARNERS AND

LEARNING PRINCIPLES

MODULE 3: STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

SUSANA C. SAN PEDRO

Instructor
1.

I. INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the module, you will be able to:

1. Describe and compare Piaget’s stages and
Bruner’s theory of cognitive development;
2. Match learning activities to the learner’s
cognitive
stage.
II. CONTENT

A. Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

B. Bruner’s Theory of Cognitive Development
PIAGET'S STAGES OF
COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
“Our cognitive abilities develop through
four specific stages”
-Jean Piaget
 JEAN PIAGET
• born in Neuchâtel,
Switzerland
• originally trained as Biologist
and Psychologist

1896- 1980
What is Cognition?

● derived from the latin word ”cognoscere ” which means “to

know” or “to recognise” or “to conceptualise”

● the mental action or process of learning and understanding

through thought, experience, and the senses.

● concious mental activity like thinking, understanding,

learning and remembering.
What is “Cognitive Development”?
● process wherein people's thinking change across the life span.

● is a gradual and orderly changes by which mental process becomes more complex and sophisticated.

● Piaget studied this by observing children in particular, to examine how their thought processes changed through
age.
What is “schema”?
Piaget used the term ‘schema’ to refer to the cognitive structures
by which individuals intellectually adopt to and organize their
environment. It is an individual’s way to understand or create meaning
about a thing or experience. It is like the mind has a filing cabinet and
each drawer has folders that contain files of things he has had an
experience with. For instance, if a child sees a dog for the first time, he
creates his own schema of what a dog is. It has four legs and a tail. It
barks. It’s furry. The child then puts this description of a dog “on file” in
his mind. When he sees another similar dog, he pulls out the file in his
mind, looks at the animal, and says, ‘four legs, tail, barks and
furry…That’s a dog!”
Piaget made two important observations:

1. Children of the same age tend to make similar mistakes and get the se answers wrong.

2. Errors of children of a particular age differed in systematic ways from those of older or younger children.
Assimilation

This is the process of fitting a new experience into an existing or

previously created cognitive structure or schema. If the child sees
another dog, this time, a little smaller one, he would make sense of what
he is seeing by adding this new information (a different-looking dog) into
his schema of a dog.
Accommodation
This is the process of creating a new schema. This happens when the
existing schema(knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to
deal with a new object or situation.
For instance, the same child now sees another animal that looks a little
bit like a dog, but somehow different.. He might try to fit it into his schema
of a dog and say, Mommy, what a funny-looking dog! Its bark is funny, too!
Then the Mommy explains, That is not a funny-looking dog. It is a goat!”
With Mommy’s further descriptions, the child will now create a new
schema, that of a goat. He now adds a new file in his filing cabinet.
Equilibration
Equilibration is the force which drives the learning
process as we do not like to be frustrated and will seek to
restore balanced by mastering the new
challenge(accommodation).
Piaget believed that people have the natural need to
understand how the world works and to find order,
structure, and predictability in their life.
Equilibration is achieving proper balance between
assimilation and accommodation. When our experiences do
not match our schemata, or cognitive structures, we
experience cognitive dis-equilibration. This means there is
a discrepancy between what is perceived and what is
understood. We then exert effort through assimilation and
accommodation to establish equilibrium once more.
r
Stage 1: Sensorimotor (0 - 2 yrs old)

During this stage, the child begins to develop:

• reflexes
• habits
• hand-eye coordination
• object permanence (knowing something exists,
even though it can't be seen)
• experimentation and creativity.
(Piaget referred to the children in this stage as
“little scientists” trial and error experiments
Six sub-stages:

1 - (birth) behavior is reflexive. No awareness

and concepts of objects.

2 - (0-4 months) Now aware of objects,

sucking becomes habitual and
hand-eye coordination happens

3 - (4-8 months) Control voluntary movements,

manipulates objects within reach, repeats
4 - (8 months - 1 yr.) Behavior patterns that shows clear signs of intelligence begins to emerge, begins to search for
objects that have disappeared and understands that presence of objects may make something happen.

5 & 6 (1-2 yrs.) Make use of trial and error to achieve desired ends
Sensorimotor Stage

● It is characterized by the idea that infants

“think” by manipulating the world around them.
● They use all five senses: seeing,
hearing, touching, tasting and smelling.
● Children figure ways to elicit responses
by “doing” .
● Between 5 and 8 months old, the child
develops object permanence.
● By the end of this stage, children are able
to engage in what Piaget termed deferred imitation
● By 24 months, infants are able imitate behaviours after a delay of up
Stage 2: Pre-operational (2 - 7 years old)

● Development of language occur.

● They start talking to stuffed toys,

some had imaginary friends.

● This is the age adults communicate

with the children.

● Talking, teaching and even singing

help develop language to children.

Two sub-stages:
1. Preconceptual thinking (2-4 yrs.)
They begin to classify things because of its similarities.

Make mistakes because of misconception

Ex. All men are “Daddy”, all women are “ Mommy”, and all toys are “Mine”.

2. Period of intuitive thought (4-7 yrs.)

They solve problems intuitively instead of relying with logical rule

They fail to develop conservation

PRE-OPERATIONAL STAGE

● Children use symbols to represent word, images, and ideas which is

my children in this stage engage in pretend play.
● Children are egocentric, meaning, they focus on themselves and how
action will impact them rather than others
● They are not able to take on others perspective, they think everyone
feels, sees, and thinks just like they do
● The foundations of language development may have been laid during
the previous stage, but it is the emergence of language that is one of
the major hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development as
well as the make-believe play begin during this stage
Stage 3: Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 yrs.)

● Children's thinking becomes more logical

and systematic.
● Increased skill in reading is a key
developmental task in this period.
● They learn symbol, time, size, shapes
and distance.
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE

● Characterized by the idea that children’s reasoning becomes focused

and logical
● They begin to understand the concept of conservation or the ability to
recognize that key properties of a substance do not change even as
their physical appearance may be altered
● Children still thinks in very linear ways and can only conceptualize
ideas that can be observed directly they have not yet mastered
abstract thinking
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE

● By the end of this stage, children will develop true mental operations
and master the concepts of reversibility, transitivity and assimilation.
Reversibility is the idea that something can be changed back to its
original state after it has been altered
Transitivity is about concept of relationships.
Assimilation refers to the absorption of new ideas, information or
experiences into a person’s existing cognitive structure or what they
already know or understand of the world
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE

● Children are able to incorporate

“inductive reasoning” or drawing

inferences from observations
in order to make generalizations

● Children struggle with “deductive

reasoning” which involves

using a generalized principle in order
to try predict the outcome of an event.
Stage 4: Formal Operational (11 -16 years old)

● They think at the level of adults when they are functioning at their best.

● Attains logical, rational and abstract strategies.

● Characterized by hypothesis testing.

● “Perspective Thought” or relativism

is formed.
Formal Operational Stage

● Characterized by the idea that children develop the ability to think in abstract ways and have the
ability to combine various ideas to create new ones

● Enables children to engage in problem-solving method of developing a hypothesis and reasoning

their way to plausible solutions
Formal Operational Stage
● By the end of this stage, children have developed logical and systematic thinking, are capable of
deductive reasoning, and can create hypothetical ideas to explain various concepts
Bruner's Theory of Cognitive
Development
 Jerome Bruner
• Born October 1, 1915 -
June 5, 2016
• American psychologist
and educator

1915-2016
Bruner’s Theory of Cognitive Development
● Like Piaget , Bruner believes that children have an innate capacity
that helps them make sense of work and that cognitive abilities
developed through active interaction.
● Unlike Piaget however, Bruner argued that social factors particularly
language, were important for cognitive growth. These underpin the
concept of 'scaffolding‘.
● Bruner was also concerned with how knowledge is represented and
organised through different modes of representation.
● Bruner (1966) was concerned with knowledge is represented and organized through different modes of
thinking (or representation)

● He proposed three modes of representations:

1. Enactive representation (Action-based)

2. Iconic representation (Image-based)
3. Symbolic representation (Language-based)
Bruner's 3 Modes of Representation

● are the way in which information or knowledge are stored and encoded in memory.

● Rather than neat age-related stages (like Piaget) the modes of representation are integrated and only loosely
sequential as they “translate” into each other
Mode 1: Enactive (0-1 year)

● first kind of memory

● thinking is based on physical action thus learning by doing
rather than thinking.
Example: Movement as a muscle memory like how a
baby remembers the action of shaking a rattle.
● Representation of objects and events through action and
movement, which is characteristic of infants and small
children. That is, the child understands things in terms
of how they can be manipulated, used, or acted upon.
Mode 2: Iconic (1-6 yrs)

● Information is stored as sensory images (icons), usually

visual ones, like pictures in mind.
● having diagrams or illustrations to support verbal
information is helpful in learning.
● Appears from one to six years old. This stage involves an
internal representation of external objects visually in the
form of a mental image or icon. For example, a child
drawing an image of a tree or thinking of an image of a tree
would be representative of this stage.
Mode 3: Symbolic (7 yrs. onwards)

● Information is stored in the form of code or symbol such as

language.
● Knowledge is stored as words, mathematical symbols, or
other symbol systems like music.
● From seven years and up, when information is stored in the
form of a code or symbol such as language. Each symbol
has a fixed relation to something it represents.
Spiral Curriculum

● The spiral curriculum is when ideas are presented in

repeated learning opportunities over the course of time.
These learning opportunities start simple then increase in
difficulty and are examined in relation to one another.
Bruner believed that learning information in a spiraling way
helps children organize knowledge into a structure that’s
accessible and usable in different stages of life in addition to
the presented learning situation.
Discovery Learning

● It is an inquiry-based, constructivist learning theory that

takes place in problem solving situations where the learner
draws on his or her own past experience and existing
knowledge to discover facts and relationships and new
truths to be learned. Students interact with the world by
exploring and manipulating objects, wrestling with
questions and controversies, or performing experiments.
References

● Corpuz, B. B. et al (2015). Child and adolescent

development; Looking at learners at different life
stages. Quezon City: Lorimar Publishing, Inc.

● pdfs.semanticscholar.org
● slideplayer.com
● verywellmind.com