Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory: Study for CA MFT Licensing Exam

- 1st person to advance a theory of children's cognitive development
- 1896-1987

- Goal of intelligence
- A balanced harmonious relation between thought processes and the environment
- Piaget

- Imbalances between children's thinking and the environment
- Piaget

Active

- Organization and adaptation
- Piaget

- Refers to the fact that our psychological/cognitive structures are organized into coherent systems

- Assimilation and accommodation
- Piaget

- Current psychological structures are used to interpret the external world
- i.e. toddler seeing a cow for the first time and calling it "dog"
- Piaget

- New psychological structures are created or old ones are adjusted upon noticing aspects of the environment that current psychological structures do not capture
- i.e. Child imitating a parent's gestures
- Piaget

0-2 years = Sensorimotor Stage
2-7 = Preoperational Stage
7-11 = Concrete Operational Stage
11+ = Formal Operational Stage

- Ages 0-2
- Capable of overt actions
- Not capable of mental thought
- Psychological structures of this stage = sensorimotor action schemes
- Intelligence is built upon basic reflexes
- Piaget

- Understanding that objects continue to exist when the child is not seeing or acting upon them
- Culmination / milestone of Sensorimotor Stage (around age 2)

- Ages 2-7
- Mental representation (the symbolic function) emerges
- i.e. Acquiring words and developing language; symbolic play
- Capable of thought but limited

- Inability to take another person's perspective
- Children presume that others have the same viewpoint as themselves

- Child speaks aloud with others present, but is actually speaking a soliloquy
- Example of egocentric speech
- Piaget