Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory and the Characteristics of Irreversibility

Introduction

Cognitive growth is the process through which people reason, discover, and take in their surroundings. It is the development of thinking and comprehension skills. It is said that Jean Piaget is the originator of cognitive development. He was a Swiss psychologist who studied how children’s minds developed as they were growing up. He claims that

“Cognitive development is a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of biological maturation and environmental experience.”

He studied the intellectual development of his three children.

Stages of Cognitive Development

According to Piaget, there are four stages of cognitive development which are as follows:

Sensorimotor Stage (From birth to 2 years)

The kid begins engaging with the surroundings at this period. Motor senses including sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste begin to develop in the kid. They begin to perceive the world using these senses. They begin to distinguish between living things and inanimate items. Children reach object permanence and acquire symbolic reasoning at the conclusion of this period.

Preoperational stage (2 to 6/7 years)

At this age, the youngster starts to use symbols to depict the world. The kid starts using words and symbols. The youngster develops the capacity for more sophisticated mental images. There are two phases in the preoperational stage:

Preconceptual stage (2 to 4 years)

At this point, verbal representation is used more frequently. Speech, however, is selfish.

Intuitive stage (4 to 7 years)

Speech shifts from being egocentric to being more sociable at this point. The youngster begins to base their knowledge on what they believe to be true.

Concrete operational stage (7 to 11/12 years)

The kid begins to acquire laws like conservation, decentration, and reversibility at this time. Children begin to get the capacity for mental processes and begin resolving issues in their heads. Their actions, however, are restricted to actual occasions and material things.

Formal operational stage (12 years to Adult)

At this point, the thoughts begin to become more fluid and abstract. They begin to consider the repercussions of their choices and begin to hone their problem-solving abilities. Additionally, they develop their inductive and deductive reasoning abilities.
Practical learning settings must be used, taking into account Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. The curriculum should be created by the developmental stages of the students.

Irreversibility in child

The inability to cognitively reverse an action is known as irreversibility. When things and symbols are altered, the cognitive incapacity to think in reverse order is referred to. A youngster believes that once something is done, it cannot be changed or undone. For instance, if a 3-year-old child is forming a ball out of dough while playing with it, the youngster could think that it is simple to flatten the ball or restore it to its former shape.

Characteristics of Irreversibility in a child

  • When a child is young, irreversibility arises when they mistakenly believe that once they have taken a certain course of action, they cannot go back.
  • In the preoperational stage of Piaget’s cognitive development hypothesis, irreversibility takes place.
  • In a child’s cognitive development, the idea of irreversibility refers to the notion that nothing can be undone or reversed.
  • Children don’t understand that certain things can be modified and returned to their original states while discussing irreversibility.
  • A child’s cognitive or mental inability to undo logical processes or a series of events is what is meant by irreversibility.
  • Children are unable to comprehend that activities can have both positive and negative outcomes when there is irreversibility.
  • A youngster is unable to think in the opposite sequence while they are irreversible.