"Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory" The famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) proposed an important theory o

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问题             "Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory"
    The famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) proposed an important theory of cognitive development. Piaget’s theory states that children actively construct their understanding of the world and go through four stages of cognitive development. Two processes underlie this cognitive construction of the world: organization and adaptation. To make sense of our world, we organize our experiences. For example, we separate important ideas from less important ideas. We connect one idea to another. But not only do we organize our observations and experiences, we also adapt our thinking to include new ideas because additional information furthers understanding. Piaget (1954) believed that we adapt in two ways: assimilation and accommodation.
    → Assimilation occurs when individual is incorporate new information into their existing knowledge. Accommodation occurs when individual is adjust to new information. Consider a circumstance in which a 9-year-old girl is given a hammer and nails to hang a picture on the wall. She has never used a hammer, but from observation and vicarious experience she realizes that a hammer is an object to be held, that it is swung by the handle to hit the nail, and that it is usually swung a number of times. Recognizing each of these things, she fits her behavior into the information she already has (assimilation). However, the hammer is heavy, so she holds it near the top. She swings too hard and the nail bends, so she adjusts the pressure of her strikes. These adjustments reveal her ability to alter slightly her conception of the world (accommodation).
    Piaget thought that assimilation and accommodation operate even in the very young infant’s life. Newborns reflexively suck everything that touches their lips (assimilation), but, after several months of experience, they construct their understanding of the world differently. Some objects, such as fingers and the mother’s breast, can be sucked, but others such as fuzzy blankets, should not be sucked (accommodation).
    Piaget also believed that we go through four stages in understanding the world. Each of the stages is age-related and consists of distinct ways of thinking. Remember, it is the different way of understanding the world that makes one stage more advanced than another; knowing more information does not make the child’s thinking more advanced, in the Piagetian view. This is what Piaget meant when he said the child’s cognition is qualitatively different in one stage compared to another (Vidal, 2000). A What are Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development like?
    B The sensorimotor stage, which lasts from birth to about 2 years of age, is the first Piagetian stage. In this stage, infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences (such as seeing and hearing) with physical, motoric actions-hence the term sensorimotor. C At the end of the stage, 2-year-olds have sophisticated sensorimotor patterns and are beginning to operate with primitive symbols. D
    →The preoperational stage, which lasts from approximately 2 to 7 years of age, is the second Piagetian stage. In this stage, children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings. Symbolic thought goes beyond simple connections of sensory information and physical action. However, although preschool children can symbolically represent the world, according to Piaget, they still lack the ability to perform operations, the Piagetian term for internalized mental, actions that allow children to do mentally what they previously did physically.
    →The concrete operational stage, which lasts from approximately 7 to 11 years of age, is the third Piagetian stage. In this stage, children can perform operations, and logical reasoning replaces intuitive thought as long as reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples. For instance, concrete operational thinkers cannot imagine the steps necessary to complete an algebraic equation, which is too abstract for thinking at this stage of development.
    →The formal operational stage, which appears between the ages of 11 and 15, is the fourth and final Piagetian stage. In this stage, individuals move beyond concrete experiences and think in abstract and more logical terms. As part of thinking more abstractly, adolescents develop images of ideal circumstances. They might think about what an ideal parent is like and compare their parents to this ideal standard. They begin to entertain possibilities for the future and are fascinated with what they can be. In solving problems, formal operational thinkers are more systematic, developing hypotheses about why something is happening the way it is, then testing these hypotheses in a deductive manner.
What can be inferred from the passage about people who are older than 15 years of age?

选项 A、They must have completed all of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development.
B、They are probably in the formal operational state of development.
C、They have mastered deductive reasoning and are beginning to learn intuitively.
D、They may still not be able to solve problems systematically.

答案A

解析 Because the formal operational stage is the last stage in Piaget’s theory, and the age range is between 11 and 15, it must be concluded that people who are older than 15 have completed all of the stages. Choice B is not correct because the age range for the formal operational stage is between 11 and 15. Choice C is not correct because logical reasoning replaces intuitive thought in the concrete operational stage from 7 to 11 years of age. Choice D is not correct because there is no evidence to support this conclusion in the passage.
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