Cognitive+Development

__**Piaget's Stages**__
Piaget described the mechanism by which the mind processes new information. He said that a person understands whatever information fits into his established view of the world. When information does not fit, the person must reexamine and adjust his thinking to accommodate the new information. Piaget described four stages of cognitive development and relates them to a person's ability to understand and assimilate new information. Although there are four stages in Piaget's Cognitive Stages there are only two that occur during adolescence.

The first stage begins at about age 6 and continues in to early adolescence and is called the **Concrete Stage**. During this stage, accommodation increases. The child develops an ability to think abstractly and to make rational judgements about concrete or observable phenomena, which in the past he needed to manipulate physically to understand. In teaching this child, giving him the opportunity to ask questions and to explain things back to you allows him to mentally manipulate information.

During adolescence the youth enters the **Formal Operations Stage**. This stage brings cognition to its final form. This person no longer requires concrete objects to make rational judgements. At his point, he is capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning. Teaching for the adolescent may be wideranging because he'll be able to consider many possibilities from several perspectives.

//PIAGET'S COGNITIVE STAGES//. (1990). Retrieved July 13, 2010, from http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/piaget.htm



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