These observations reinforced his budding hypothesis that children’s minds were not merely smaller versions of adult minds.
Until this point in history, children were largely treated simply as smaller versions of adults.
Piaget proposed that intelligence grows and develops through a series of stages.
Illustration by Joshua Seong, Verywell
Older children do not just think more quickly than younger children.
Instead, there are both qualitative and quantitative differences between the thinking of young children versus older children.
Based on his observations, he concluded that children were not less intelligent than adultsthey simply think differently.
Albert Einstein called Piaget’s discovery “so simple only a genius could have thought of it.”
Piaget’s stage theory describes thecognitive development of children.
As kids interact with their environment, they continually make new discoveries about how the world works.
Piaget also broke this stage down into substages.
Early representational thought emerges during the final part of the sensorimotor stage.
They also often struggle with understanding the idea of constancy.
Kids at this point in development tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts.
Piaget suggested several factors that influence how children learn and grow.
Suppose then that the child encounters an enormous dog.
The child will take in this new information, modifying the previously existing schema to include these new observations.
Assimilation
The process of taking in new information into our already existing schemas is known as assimilation.
Equilibration helps explain how children can move from one stage of thought to the next.
Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality."
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development helped add to our understanding of children’s intellectual growth.
It also stressed that children were not merely passive recipients of knowledge.
Instead, kids are constantly investigating and experimenting as they build their understanding of how the world works.
Int J Clin Pediatr Dent.2017;10(4):346-350. doi:10.5005/jp-journals-10005-1463
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