As I was reading “The Village Watchman,” I began thinking about Piagets’ developmental theory and how it could be applied to Alan and his niece Terry. While reading I remember that Piaget states humans cognitive adaptation can move at different paces, because all humans develop differently from one another. In the story Alan has an intellectual disability due to complications during birth. This makes Alan move through the stages of development at a much slower pace. Alan’s niece Terry is the one telling the story she is reflecting on how she remembered Alan in a very descriptive colorful way. The characters interactions and experiences with the world may differ from one another, but much of the teaching in the story in done by Alan even though …show more content…
In the beginning of the short story we learn Alan’s parents didn’t find out about his intellectual disability until he was 16 months old. We can assume the doctor wasn’t able to diagnose Alan for over a year, because he still went through the Sensorimotor Stage, just at a little slower pace than other children. In the sensorimotor stage we know that children learn object permanence and the use of their 5 senses. We know from the way Terry describes him, he is passed the first stage of development. This puts Alan into the Pre-Operational stage. In the Pre-Operational stage we know that children are very ego-centric meaning everything is their way. When they talk they only describe what they know, because they fail to understand other minds. Alan does just that throughout the story. For example Terry stated, “He was unpredictable. He created his own rules and they changed from moment to moment. Alan was twelve years old, hyperactive, mischievous, easily frustrated, and unable to learn in traditional ways.” (The Village Watchman, Pg. 29.) We as students and educators watch children go through this stage they are much like Alan. Children have a hard time sitting for long periods, they act out and if they can’t learn something easily they get frustrated just like Alan in the story. Most children eventually move passed this unlike Alan, because they learn from educators and get through the obstacles. Alan is not able to be educated through school and textbooks like most children in the story instead, he is learning through his experiences and interactions with the world helping him to develop cognitively. Terry tells us that he would vocalize whatever was on his mind with punctuated colorful speech. (The Village Watchman, Pg.30.) This tells us that Alan has yet to think through his actions. He does not know that he is being rude in
Piaget (1936) was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development. Piaget placed great importance on the education of children. According to Piaget, children are born with a basic mental structure on which all learning and knowledge is based. They challenge the behaviourist theory as most of their research was done on animals and is missing knowledge. The implications of this theory are that not only should we be interest in the answer the learner gives but also the method of how they got there. I find that due to the gaps in the learner’s education, they may be missing important parts that they have had to find out for themselves these methods are not always the easiest ways of calculating. I try and make it as stress free as possible so will demonstrate other methods that may be easier for them. Piagets theory accepts that children go through the same development stages but that they may go through at different times, I ensure I make effort to cater for these different paces and ensure tasks are differentiated to accommodate this. I am aware however that this theory relates to children’s development, and I work with adults, I can still apply parts of this
developmental theory and how it could be applied to Alan and his niece Terry. In the reading Piaget states human 's cognitive adaptation can move at different paces, because all
A well-known psychologist, Jean Piaget is most famous for his work in child development. In his theory of cognitive development, Piaget presents four stages of mental development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Piaget explains the adaptation processes that allow transition from one stage to the next. He also emphasizes the role of schemas as a basic unit of knowledge.
My interviewee, Alphonso Johnson, is a 19-year-old, African-American, recent high school graduate, and has experienced all stages of Piaget’s Stages of Development. I asked him to detail what he could about each stage from his memory and this is what he told me. For his sensorimotor stage, he remembers fairly little since he was at such a young age and so much time as passed; although he does remember times of misconstruing object permanence, he remembered a time where his mother would play peak-a-boo with him and when she put her hands in front of her face, it was like he disappeared from existence. For the preoperational stage, he remembers this stage vividly as this was the time where he had an invisible
Jean Piaget was one of the most prominent researchers of the 20th century in the field of psychology and human development. He concentrated his attention on the biological influences on the psychological portrait of the person and developmental stages. Piaget pointed out that the development of a person passes through certain stages; each stage can be characterized by specific features. He argued that learning about the world was possible through personal experience. However, his inspiration of developing the idea of cognitive growth and changes of people came while researching child behavior. Moreover, it is important to note that his research was based on the observation of behavior of his own three children (Berlin, Zeanah & Lieberman, 2008).
Piaget strove to identify how children adapt to their environment. He noticed skills in a child that reinforced
“The influence of Piaget’s ideas in developmental psychology has been enormous. He changed how people viewed the child’s world and their methods of studying children. He was an inspiration to many who came after and took up his ideas. Piaget's ideas have generated a huge amount of research which has increased our understanding of cognitive development.” (McLeod 2009). Piaget purposed that we move through stages of cognitive development. He noticed that children showed different characteristics throughout their childhood development. The four stages of development are The Sensorimotor stage, The Preoperational Stage, The Concrete operational stage and The Formal operational stage.
Van Kham Tran. (2012, Jan, 10th). Piaget’s Developmental Theory: An overview, Part 1 [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_EkfWS2Wks
Both Piaget and Vygotsky agreed that children's cognitive development took place in stages. (Jarvis, Chandler 2001 P.149). However they were distinguished by different styles of thinking. Piaget was the first t reveal that children reason and think differently at different periods in their lives. He believed that all children progress through four different and very distinct stages of cognitive development. This theory is known as Piaget’s Stage Theory because it deals with four stages of development, which are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. (Ginsburg, Opper 1979 P. 26).
Piaget (1896–1980) came up with a theory called cognitive development, which occurs in four stages in every child's emotional development. The first two stages are from birth until the child reaches his or her seventh year of life where they will become aware of its environment by visual, touch and sound. During the third and fourth stage, which is the concrete and formal operations, the child will typically ask questions to better understand the complexions of things surrounding the child and to satisfy their curiosity and exploring mind. Children at these stages usually step out of their comfort zones and experiment new things. They develop different perspectives (Patient Teaching, Loose Leaf Library Springhouse Corporation, 1990). Here is where they are likely to display disobedience towards their parents or caregivers, usually people that are closest to them.
Piaget’s mother, Rebecca Jackson, was very intelligent and kind, but had a rather neurotic temper that made his family life very rough. Her mental health attributed to his early interest and studies of psychology. Piaget became an active scholar at the age of ten when he published his first paper. He received his PhD. in science from the University of Neuchatel by the age of twenty two. He started out studying mollusk and then began to study his own children as they grew up. He planned to study children for only five years, but it ended up taking thirty years to complete his studies. After studying children for many years, he identified that all children went through four stages
Modern society is in debt to people of past decades and generations who have contributed to various thresholds of knowledge. Without these people to influence society, the world would be shadowed by a dark cloud of ignorance. One of those gallant contributors was a Swiss biologist, Jean Piaget. This one man has made gigantic additions to the world’s knowledge of psychology and child development that have from his past decade to modern day. His mind was built into a well-oiled machine that was always searching for a new idea or theory. He was an ever changing innovator that created theories and research that would contribute to the world for the better of humanity. Piaget has demonstrated his influence on society through his early childhood
There are four stages of development that outlines Piaget’s cognitive theory: The sensorimotor stage, the pre-operational stage, the concrete operations stage, and lastly the formal operations stage. The sensorimotor stage begins from birth to about age two. This stage explains how the infant uses their senses and mobility skills to physically understand the world around them. By the child’s first year of life, they’ve developed imitation skills, coordination skills, and broaden their curiosity to objects, their bodies and their environment. Object permanence is the milestone of this stage. It’s the awareness and understanding that the object they viewed will continue to exist even if they aren’t able to see, hear or touch it.
In the first stage, children will undergo the process of assimilation where they will be using their existing schema to handle a new situation or something new when felt. In the second stage, they will go through the accommodation process in which if their existing schema does not work, it will be ‘upgraded’ or changed with newly acquired knowledge. During the third stage of adaptation process, they will go through the stage of equilibration when external pressure from knowledge acquire is being used to modify prior knowledge. This only happens when children are able to allow their existing schemas to handle new information through the first process, assimilation. The last of Piaget’s theory is the stages of development. We will look at the first two stages which are the sensorimotor and preoperational stages. During the stage of sensorimotor which happens during the first two years from birth, they will undergo a key feature of knowing and having object permanence that also means that if a particular object was hidden or covered by a cloth, he or she will be able to actively search for it. The preoperational stage takes place from two years of age till they are of seven years old. During this stage, children will be building up their incidents or encounters through adaptation and slowly move on to the next stage of the development as they are not able to
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development focuses on the concept of schemas and cognitive thought that helps an individual organize knowledge and understand the world in comparison to Erikson’s theory which focuses on conflicts that arise between and within the ego. Accommodation and assimilation occur throughout Piaget’s theory as a result of children