Piaget’s
Stages of Human Development
Jean Piaget was a
well-known name in the field of developmental psychology due to his enormous
contribution to both psychology and education. Piaget's theory of cognitive
development focuses on how a child perceives the environment and how he/she
processes the information. Being a developmental psychologist, he essentially
studied how the intellectual development in children takes place and how they
transform from children to adults. Based on his observations and various
experiments, he found out that children are as intelligent as their older
counterparts, the only difference being their thinking process, which is quite
different. Piaget's theory consists of four stages of cognitive development,
where each stage is characterized by different behavior.
Early Object
Manipulation and Tool Use in Typically Development Children During the
Sensorimotor Period of Development (Birth to 2 Years)
From his
observation of children, Piaget understood that children were creating ideas.
They were not limited to receiving knowledge from parents or teachers; they
actively constructed their own knowledge. Piaget's work provides the foundation
on which constructionist theories are based. Constructionists believe that
knowledge is constructed and learning occurs when children create products or
artifacts. They assert that learners are more likely to be engaged in learning
when these artifacts are personally relevant and meaningful.
In
studying the cognitive development of children and adolescents, Piaget
identified four major stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete
operational and formal operational. Piaget believed all children pass through
these phases to advance to the next level of cognitive development. In each
stage, children demonstrate new intellectual abilities and increasingly complex
understanding of the world. Stages cannot be "skipped"; intellectual
development always follows this sequence. The ages at which children progress
through the stages are averages--they vary with the environment and background
of individual children. At any given time a child may exhibit behaviors
characteristic of more than one stage.
Characteristics
of the Preoperational Child That Influence Assistive Technology Use
Jean Piaget called early
childhood the preoperational
stage of cognitive
development because children this age are not yet ready to engage in logical
mental operations, as they will be in the stage of concrete operations in
middle childhood. However, the preoperational stage, which lasts from
approximately ages 2 to 7, is characterized by a great expansion in the use of
symbolic thought, or representational ability, which first emerged during the
sensorimotor stage. Preoperational children commonly think as if they were
watching a slide show with a series of static frames: they focus on successive states,
said Piaget, and do not recognize transformations from one state to another. In
the conservation experiment, they focus on the water as it stands in each glass
rather than on the water being poured from one glass to another, and so they
fail to realize that the amount of water is the same. During this time
stable concepts form, mental reasoning emerges, egocentrism begins, and magical
beliefs are constructed.
Thought
is flawed and not organized.
This
stage involves a transition from primitive to more sophisticated use of
symbols. Children still do
not yet think in an operational way.
Early
Development of Language
There is perhaps nothing more remarkable than the
emergence of language in children. Have you ever marveled at how a child can go
from saying just a few words to suddenly producing full sentences in just a
short matter of time? Researchers have found that language development begins
before a child is even born, as a fetus is able to identify the speech and sound
patterns of the mother's voice. By the age of four months, infants are able to
discriminate sounds and even read lips.
Researchers have actually found that infants are
able to distinguish between speech sounds from all languages, not just the
native language spoken in their homes. However, this ability disappears around
the age of 10 months and children begin to only recognize the speech sounds of
their native language. By the time a child reaches age three, he or she will
have a vocabulary of approximately 3,000 words.
Early
Communicative Intents With Discourse Functions
Communicative grammar is based on the communicative approach to the
teaching of second/foreign languages. Language structures must not be taught in
isolation but integrated to the four skills of language: listening, speaking,
reading and writing. In this way a structure is practiced orally and written
form. Grammatical patterns must not only be learned at the utterance level but
at the discourse level; the main objective focuses on the development of
communicative grammatical competence, which is understood as the ability to use
and understand a structure in a variety of situations spontaneously. The
approach calls for a certain balance between pre-communicative and
communicative activities: the first prepare the learner to handle the language
rules for actual communication and the latter enable him to use the structures
in real communication. The students must not only do drills and
precommunicative exercises in class, but they must interact and communicate
with other speakers when they use the patterns they are studying. Classes are
planned in a way that the students use the structures naturally and not
artificially, and they require time and practice to internalize those patterns
by using a process in which grammatical structures are recycled with more complex
variations.
Reaction
Times Related to Stages of Human Processing
Mental chronometry is the use of response time in perceptual-motor tasks to
infer the content, duration, and temporal sequencing of cognitive operations.
Mental chronometry is one of the core paradigms of experimental and cognitive psychology,
and has found application in various disciplines including cognitive psychophysiology, cognitive neuroscience,
and behavioral neuroscience to
elucidate mechanisms underlying cognitive processing. Mental chronometry is
studied using the measurements of reaction time (RT). Reaction time is the
elapsed time between the presentation of a sensory stimulus and the subsequent
behavioral response. In psychometric psychology it is considered to be an index
of speed of processing. That is, it indicates how fast the thinker can execute
the mental operations needed by the task at hand. In turn, speed of processing
is considered an index of processing efficiency. The behavioral response is
typically a button press but can also be an eye movement, a vocal response, or
some other observable behavior.
Effector
Characteristics
Neural, muscular, skeletal body elements that provide movement or motor
output, under control of central processing, in response to sensory input.
Often AT controlled by hand movements but many other control sites are
possible. Postural control and reflexes contribute
to the generation of motor output. Motor outputs for stabilization,
control, large muscles of trunk and pelvis. Control effectors for manipulation.
Hand or fingers, shoulders, arm, head, eyes, eyelids, eyebrows, mouth, tongue,
leg, foot. Respiration (flow of air, sip, puff) and phonation (sound
production, whistling, speech). Oculomotor control (via PCA, or AT device) and
approach, grasp, manipulation, release.
Primitive reflexes (usually gone by ~6 mos.), tonic labyrinthine reflex
(TLR): stiffening of back and leg muscles when head tilts back. Asymmetrical
tonic neck reflex (ATNR): extension/ bending of arm, leg when head turns to
side. May be pronounced with neurological damage. Righting and equilibrium
reactions. Implications for upright posture, stable seating. Muscle tone
(flaccidity, spasticity, rigidity). Fluctuation throughout the day.
Motions and
Functions Available at Different Levels of Spinal Cord Injury
People who survive a spinal cord injury often have medical
complications resulting in bladder, bowel, and sexual dysfunction. They may
also develop chronic pain, autonomic dysfunction, and spasticity (increased
tone in and contractions of muscles of the arms and legs) but this is highly
variable and poorly understood. Higher levels of injury may have an increased
susceptibility to respiratory and heart problems. Once someone has survived the
injury and begins to cope psychologically and emotionally, the next concern is
how to live with disabilities. Doctors are now able to predict with reasonable
accuracy the likely long-term outcome of spinal cord injuries. This helps
people experiencing SCI set achievable goals for themselves, and gives families
and loved ones a realistic set of expectations for the future.
