What is Cognition?

What is Cognition?

Lerner, R. (2002). (Adolescence: Development, Diversity, Context, and Application. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.

Jean Piaget developed an approach to cognitive development that explains the qualitative changes that characterize the process of cognition throughout a person’s lifetime. His theory contains four stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. The first three stages are associated with infancy and childhood up to the age of twelve. The last stage, formal operational, addresses adolescent and adult cognition. Within each stage, assimilation and accommodation of information must be met and the egocentrism of the stage must be overcome to lead the individual to the next stage.
The sensorimotor stage is the first stage and encompasses the ages of newborn to one year old. A major cognitive limitation of this stage is the infant’s lack of ability to differentiate between themselves and the external stimulus of the world. At first an infant will assume that what cannot be seen does not exist. Eventually, through experience, the child will learn that objects do exist outside of the child’s awareness. This is called object permanence and it is the major cognitive achievement at this level and will lead the child to stage two.
Stage two, the preoperational stage, involves ages two to six. Limitations include the child’s lack of ability to differentiate between a symbol and an object. Growth during this stage will include systems of recognition and symbolic functioning, such as language development and symbolic play.
The third stage, concrete operational, spans ages seven to twelve. Limitations include a child’s lack of ability to differentiate between his thoughts about reality and his actual experiences of reality. Growth will occur through the ability to show independent thought and those thought processes can now handle the idea of reversibility.
The forth stage, the formal operational stage, is limited at this time by an imaginary audience and the personal fable. Children in adolescence and into adulthood in some cases will suffer from a severe egocentrism that involves the belief that everyone is thinking of that individual and that they are special and unique. The major cognitive achievement at this time includes the person’s ability to think hypothetically, counterfactually, and propositionally. Piaget theorized that the goal of cognitive development is to create a balance between assimilation and accommodation through the process of equilibration. Through the continual trials of this inner work, a person eventually will be led to the forth and final stage, the goal, of adulthood.