In all fields of life organic , mental and social there exist totalities quantitatively distinct from their parts , and imposing them on an organization . For Jean-Pierre G , this was a centerpiece for his entire life's work . This principle forms the basis of his structuralist philosophy .
He continued working on a general theory of structures and tying his psychological work to biology for most of his career . He noticed , for example , that even infants have certain skills in regard to objects in their environment .
These skills were certainly simple ones , sensory motor skills , but they directed the way in which the infant explored his or her environment , and so how they gained more knowledge of the world and more sophisticated exploratory skills . These skills he called schemas .
A schema a system of organized general knowledge stored in long-term memory that guides the encoding and retrieval of information . When a child learns to transfer a schema to a new object , pierre J called that assimilation , specifically assimilating a new object into an old schema . Assimilation the process of adding new material or information to an existing schema .
When an existing schema does not work with a new object , accommodation occurs . Accommodation the process of altering or revising an existing schema in light of new information . Assimilation and accommodation are the two sides of adaptation , pierre J's term for what most of us would call learning .
Assimilation and accommodation work like a pendulum , swinging and advancing our understanding of the world and our competency in it . According to Pierre J , accommodation and assimilation help balance the structure of the mind with the environment .
When accommodation and assimilation reach a congruency , it would indicate that one has a good , or at least good enough , model of the universe . This ideal state Piaget calls equilibrium .
Piaget noted that there were periods where assimilation dominated , periods where accommodation dominated and periods of relative equilibrium , and that these periods were similar among all the children in their nature and their timing , and so he developed the idea of stages of cognitive development Sensory Motor , pre-operational , concrete Operations and Formal Operations .
The sensor motor stage birthed to two years . In this stage , the infant uses senses and motor abilities to understand the world , beginning with reflexes and ending with complex combinations of sensory motor skills . Characteristics of this stage are-the child knows through active interaction with the environment and becomes aware of cause and effect relationships .
The child learns that objects exist even when not in view . This is referred to as object permanence the appreciation that an object no longer in view can still exist and reappear later . In this stage , the child also is capable of crudely imitating the actions of others . Pre-operational stage-ages two to six years .
The pre-operational stage lasts from about two to seven years . Characteristics of this stage begin by the child being very egocentric Stage and mental representations develop . Objects are classified by just one characteristic at a time .
Perhaps the most famous example of the pre-operational child's centrism is what Piaget refers to as their inability to conserve liquid volume . If a child in this stage is shown some liquid in a short large glass and then the exact same amount is poured into a tall skinny glass , she will tend to focus on only one of the dimensions of the glass .
Since the liquid in the tall skinny glass goes up much higher , he is likely to assume there is more liquid in that one than in the short large glass , even though there is the same amount in each glass . Once a child has the capability of mental representation of objects , they are able to use their imagination to pretend there .
It is just a short step to the use of symbols . A symbol is a thing that represents something else .
The use of language is , of course , the prime example , but another good example of symbol use is creative play , wherein checkers are cookies , papers are dishes , a box is a table , and so on , mentally manipulating the objects in the absence of the actual object involved , in a way manipulating symbols . We are essentially thinking in a way that infants could not .
It is the development of the child's ability to de-center that marks him or her as having moved to the next stage , the concrete operation stage . This stage occurs in ages 7 to 12 .
Some characteristics of this stage are development of conservation of volume and length , organizing objects into ordered categories , understanding rational terms bigger than above and the beginning of using simple logic . The word operations refers to logical operations or principles we use when solving problems .
In this stage the child not only uses symbols representationally but can manipulate how those symbols are logically . Everyone in the concrete operation stage are able to take into account another person's point of view and consider more than one perspective . However , the child has a hard time applying his newfound logic abilities to non-concrete or abstract events .
The next stage is the formal operation stage . In this stage , thinking becomes abstract and symbolic Thinking skills and a sense of hypothetical concept is developed . In this stage we become increasingly competent at adult-style thinking . This involves using logical operations and using them in abstract rather than the concrete . We often call this hypothetical thinking .
Some keywords for review are schema , assimilation , accommodation , adaptation , equilibrium . Piaget stages include sensory motor , pre-operational concrete operations and formal operations .