Freud's Psycho Sexual Stages - Essay Example

 Piaget's theory of cognitive development maintains that children are active participants in their own cognitive development. Piaget's theory begins with basic schemas, “cognitive structures or concepts used to identify and interpret objects, events, and other information in the environment” (Wood 54). Assimilation is the term Piaget uses to describe the way in which children try to fit these new things into their existing schemas. Not everything can be assimilated into existing schemas, and in these cases, children will learn to use Accommodation.

“In accommodation, existing schemas are modified or new schemas are created to process new information” (Wood 55). The transition from stage to stage is not abrupt but gradual with the first stage being the Sensorimotor stage. In this stage, infants gain an understanding of the world through their senses and their object permanence is developed in which children realize that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight. The Preoperational stage occurs next when the child is between 2 and 7 years of age.

“Here children become increasingly able to represent objects and events mentally with words and images” (Wood 56). At this stage, children will be able to imitate the behavior of a person who is no longer in sight through deferred imitation. Between the ages 7 and 12, the Concrete Operations stage causes thinking to be “less egocentric and they come to realize that people have thoughts and feelings different from their own” (Wood 56). Lastly, the Formal Operations stage at 12 and up, adolescents can “apply reversibility and conservation to abstract, verbal, hypothetical situations” (Wood 56), and they become interested in the world of ideas and create theories of their own.3. Kohlberg followed Piaget's work of moral development, but he believed that moral maturity took much longer than what Piaget originally proposed.

He identified 6 stages of development and grouped them into 3 levels. The conventional level where “thoughts are formed by individual perspective” (Wood 82). The 2nd level is when children learn the rules of reciprocity and that idea that if they give they will get. Finally, the 3rd level is the Post Conventional which is based on principles using a “prior to society” (Wood 82) perspective. This stage is an accumulation of the childs previous experiences. The child then uses these experiences to make moral decisions, and in the process, these decisions will shape his personality.

Kohlberg insists that these stages take much longer than the stages that Piaget had initially introduced and believed that his own 3 levels are a more accurate outline of what it means to be developmentally morally mature.