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Jean Piagets Theory

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Throughout history, many people have made many contributions to the school of psychology. One individual is that of Jean Piaget and his theories on the cognitive development stages. Jean Piaget was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, where he studied at the university and received a doctorate in biology at the age of 22. Following college he became very interested in psychology and began to research and studies of the subject. With his research Piaget created a broad theoretical system for the development of cognitive abilities. His work, in this way, was much like that of Sigmund Freud, but Piaget emphasized the ways that children think and acquire knowledge. Piaget referred to his theory as genetic epistemology. This is defined as the …show more content…

In addition , children use animistic thinking which is the tendency to endow events and objects with lifelike attributes. The stage of concrete operations is so named because in this period children operate and act on the concrete, real, and perceivable world of objects and events. Egocentric thought is replaced by operational thought, which involves dealing with a wide array of information outside the child. Therefore, children can now see things from someone else 's perspective. Children in this stage begin to use limited logical thought and processes and are able to order and group things in classes on the basis of common characteristics. The child is able to reason and to follow rules and regulations. They are able to regulate themselves , and they begin to develop a moral sense and a code of values. Conservation is the ability to recognize that, although the shape of objects may change, the mass and amount stay the same. For example, if you put the same amount of liquid in two containers the child may think there is more in the taller cylinder. Children also begin to understand reversibility, which is the capacity to understand the relationship between things. They begin to realize that one thing can turn into another and back again. The most important sign that children are still in the preoperational stage is that they have not achieved conservation or reversibility. Dealing with

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