Introduction
Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development are fundamental to comprehend whether people are improving or negating their understanding of various things. Piaget proposed four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operation, and formal operation. The given stages illustrate the processes of comprehending the various levels of cognitive functioning as development flows from infancy until adulthood. In the following paper, I will look into the process of cognitive development through my own personal experiences. Also, I will examine how the stages of that development prove useful in understanding the evolution, the challenges, and the growth. Via contemplating the phases, I wish to get to grips with how exactly one’s intellectual growth is associated with Piaget’s ideas.
Personal Narrative, Challenges, and Growth
Sensorimotor Stage
The child has reached the age of the sensorimotor developmental stage, which is the stage when the child explores the world through sensations and actions (Babakr et al., 2019). I distinctly recall those days when I was young and doing things that involved touching, grasping, and putting objects in my mouth for a better understanding of their properties. I had to deal with object permanence in particular, which is the thought that objects remain in existence even if they can not be seen. I remember even times when I used to become frustrated because of losing a toy from my point of view, and I remember how I used to feel happy when it reappeared. These encounters helped me master the idea of object permanence and, consequently, my cognitive progress.
Preoperational Stage
In the preoperational stage, children start working on their language and symbolic thinking, but their logical thinking is not that strong (Babakr et al., 2019). I remember myself as a kid doing such things as adopting the roles of characters from my favorite stories and playing playful imaginary games. The idea of conservation, which states that quantity remains constant even though the shape or arrangement changes, was not new to me. It was, however, a challenge to completely understand the concept. Let me illustrate this concretely by saying that I poured water from a wide container into a narrow one, and I was certain that the amount had changed. The dispelling of this myth was done through the aid of education and hands-on experiences. This ultimately led to a better understanding of conservation principles.
Concrete Operational Stage
In the concrete operational stage, children develop a logical and concrete approach to real objects and become unfamiliar with abstract stuff (Oogarah-Pratap et al., 2020). When I was a child, I was already tuned into understanding cause-and-effect relationships, and I could easily cope with the issues that became increasingly complicated. Nevertheless, I had my share of problems drawing connections between implicit and explicit in-text information on one side and examples outside the world of science on the other. On the contrary, the unforeseen moment was when I realized the cause of my difficulties in translating logic to abstract symbols, and hence, the algebraic equations were making me feel restless. On the road to this illumination, I gradually gained experience and examples, which made abstract thinking an easy and solid step for me as a problem solver.
Formal Operational Stage
Forming the operational stage comes as its beginnings, which is thus characterized by abstract thinking and theoretical reasoning (Oogarah-Pratap et al., 2020). When I was growing up, I had to face things that were difficult and life-changing. Thus, I came across various complex ideas and different viewpoints. A little self-examination and social issues analysis with deeper layers started giving me a usual view of their existential meaning. Nonetheless, I had difficulty on my part in unifying conflicting opinions and synthesizing information from various sources. Through the course of the process, I improved my critical thinking, and I felt able to adopt a critical approach to evaluation and make good decisions. I suppose it was through those experiences that I learned how to view the social world with a more multifaceted approach.
Analysis
Piaget epitomizes significant contributions to the psychology of learning through a well-elaborated theory of cognitive development stages. The very genesis of thinking lies in each level of development, which in turn gets followed by the subsequent ones that get more and more complex. The sensorimotor stage forms a foundation for mastering concepts like object permanence, as well as basic rules of cause-and-effect. In this stage, the child understands symbols but still has the inability to think in more than one way. This is because he/she is now thinking egocentrically and doesn’t have conservation awareness. The concrete operations stage ushers in a dramatic change in how toxicological argumentation and problem-solving are handled, whereas the formal operations stage denotes the presence of abstract reasoning and hypothetical thinking (Babakr et al., 2019).
I noticed how cognitive development influenced my problem-solving, which involved decision-making and building knowledge of the surrounding world. While I endured and advanced from the stage by Piaget, I met challenges that developed the formation and perception of my cognitive skills. Managing the obstacles took a good deal of learning to wait, to strive, and, most importantly, getting support from the tutors and mentors who helped me. A huge discovery for me was unraveling the complex cognitive processes underlying each stage of cognitive development. The experience deepened my appreciation of the extent of human development.
Conclusion
In conclusion, analyzing theories of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development has been enlightening as I have been able to understand better the stages I have gone through so far in my personal development journey. From the very first stages, in which sensory exploration played a key role, through to more abstract concepts, which cause problems to be tackled, my cognitive abilities have gradually been formed stage by stage. Overcoming challenges and identifying simple shortcomings, I have gained critical thinking abilities and a level of understanding of the complexity of human thought. Piaget’s stages can be regarded as a roadmap that shows a child’s progress and development through cognition stages at every lifespan. These cognitive processes are closely related at different ages of a person’s life.
References
Babakr, Z. H., Mohamedamin, P., & Kakamad, K. (2019). Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory: Critical Review. Education Quarterly Reviews, 2(3), 517-524.
Di Paolo, E. A. (2020). Process and individuation: the development of sensorimotor agency. Human Development, 63(3-4), 202-226.
Oogarah-Pratap, B., Bholoa, A., & Ramma, Y. (2020). Stage theory of cognitive development—Jean Piaget. Science Education in Theory and Practice: An Introductory Guide to Learning Theory, 133-148.
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