Piaget’s Theory Of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the most dominant researchers in the area of developmental psychology throughout the 20th century. He was a child psychologist who was interested in cognitive development which is concerned with the development of a person's intelligence. He was also the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development (Piaget, 1936). Piaget’s studies included a theory of cognitive development, in depth findings about cognition in children, and a series of resourceful experiments to disclose different intellectual skills (McLeod, 2012).

According to Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes resulting from biological maturation and experience from the environment (McLeod, 2012). He believed that children will create an understanding of the world around them, and will then experience differences between what they already know and what they learn in their environment.

The theory of cognitive development by Piaget mainly focuses on the development of the children rather than all the learners. Piaget identified that children developed through a sequence of four main stages of cognitive development which were clearly observable through changes in how they understand the world around them (Cherry, 2013).