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Piagets Theory

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Abstract
Literature review of Piaget’s theory of developmental psychology (1954), object permanence and a critical evaluation of Piaget’s theory in relation to recent studies that show different results to that which Piaget originally gathered and based his stage theory on.
Introduction
The work of Jean Piaget (1896-1980), has made him go down in history as one of the most instrumental and influential figures in the history of psychology to date. His contribution to the world of psychology is based around the field of developmental psychology. He transformed this area of psychology and laid the foundations upon which subsequent research can be based around and undercover more of the truth behind the cognitive development of infants.
Piaget believed that the key to understanding children’s thought processes is not whether they get the answer right, rather the key lies within how they arrived at the answer (Holt et. al, 2012). Piaget stated that our brains hold schemas, which are responsible for organising our patterns of thoughts and actions (Holt et al., 2012). Building on this mental framework he introduced the concepts of assimilation and accommodation which helped lay down the foundation upon which he could build his work on.
Piaget committed 50 years of his life to study the intellectual development that occurs in children which ultimately led to the development of his well-acclaimed staged theory of cognitive development (Hock, 2009). His theory is based on the idea that four stages are involved in human cognitive development, which constantly occur in the same order as well as occurring relatively at the same age in all humans. The four stages include: sensori-motor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational and formal operational stage and within each stage they are broken down into smaller sub-sets respectively.
However, like all great

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