The Stages Of Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development

Although Piaget and his famed clinical method started within the realm of cognitive psychology, in the 1920’s, Piaget became a prime influence toward the beginning of organizational psychology. In the United States during the industrial revolution, there was a series of experiments with about 20,000 workers at Western Electric Company in Hawthorne, Illinois. A company who was already known for caring about the welfare of their employees wanted to run a trial of two sets of offices: one room as the control group, and the other to run experiments. The goal of the experiments was to see how the illumination of the light fixtures would increase or reduce work productivity. What made the research so interesting was that no matter how the lights

Each of the stages performs on different principles, but “integrates and transforms the previous one as it comes into being” as the individual progresses to “adult intellectual functioning” (Feldman, 2004, p. 178). These stages are what were came to be known as Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development.
The first stage was noted as the sensorimotor stage. As Feldman states, “What makes sensorimotor construction so remarkable is that it is not built from a previous system but rather from a set of natural reflexes with which the newborn comes into the world” (p. 197). Every stage has a predecessor except this juncture. The sensorimotor stage builds itself from the innate, refined motor and reflex abilities the infant is born with. (Feldman, 2004, p.

With time progressing, the infant refines their movement with external stimuli. Also, if anyone has been with an infant, they quickly learn how the baby will gain the knowledge how if they repeat a particular action is rewarded, the more likely the action will be repeated. During this stage, the infant maintains the concept where the object of their attention no longer exists once it leaves the baby’s line of sight or sound. After the infant matures at this stage, they realize the object of attention still exists once it goes beyond the infant’s line-of-sight. They will begin to understand how the object which kept their attention is not only still there, but the infant will be able to be away from the object for a longer period. (DeWolfe, 2015)
The second stage was titled the preoperational stage. From the age of 2 through the age of 7, the mind of the child increases substantially toward developing the mental construction of familiar and regular objects which the child interacts with frequently. The concepts of such objects are only at surface level, meaning how the child has yet to comprehend the complexity of these objects. Furthermore, the child may automatically assume how their environment (namely, those around the child) shares their likes and dislikes. (DeWolfe,