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Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development Case Study

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According to Piaget (1929, 1954, 1963), the process of adaptation helps us to understand how a child constructs his/her world. Taking Piaget's theory of Cognitive Development with particular focus on the Sensori-Motor stage of development, I am going to discuss how understanding this stage might influence me when working with a baby as a nursing student in the future.

Piaget was a Swiss Psychologist and is most famous for his work and research on cognitive development. He put forward the Theory of Cognitive Development and key elements in this theory include the formation of “Schemas” and “organisation”. A “schema” is an individuals thoughts and beliefs about an object or event and “organisation” refers to the ability of the child to put stages of each period (eg. Sensori-Motor Period) into a logical order (Miller, …show more content…

“Piaget claimed that all organisms have an innate tendency to adapt to the environment.” Piaget also demonstrated the close relationship between organisation and adaptation (Miller, 2002). Piaget once said “Organisation is inseparable from adaptation: They are two complementary processes of a single mechanism...These two aspects of thought are in-dissociable: It is by adapting to things that thought organises itself and it is by organising itself that structures things” (Source: Miller, 2002). “Adaptation involves assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the process of fitting reality into ones current cognitive organisation[Schemas]... [and] Accommodation... refers to adjustments in cognitive organisation that result from the demands of reality”(Miller, 2002). Miller believed that accommodation happens because current structures that the mind already has in place have failed to understand or interpret a particular object or event in a satisfactory way. Assimilation and accommodation are very much closely related from birth to death (Miller,

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