What is Piaget’s theory of infant development?

• Cognitive Processes—Piaget thought that children actively construct mental structures to help them adapt to the world.

• Piaget proposed that children accomplish adaptation through processes such as

o schemes,
o assimilation,
o accommodation,
o organization,
o equilibrium, and
o equilibration.

• Adaptation involves adjusting to new environmental demands

1. We build mental structures to help us adapt
2. Children actively construct their own cognitive worlds

• Schemes are actions or mental representations that the developing brain creates to organize knowledge.

• Assimilation occurs when children incorporate new information or experiences into existing schemes.

• Accommodation occurs when children adjust existing schemes to take new information and experiences into account.

• Organization is the grouping of isolated behaviours and thoughts into a higher order system.

• Equilibration and stages of development—According to Piaget,
o children constantly assimilate and accommodate as they seek cognitive equilibrium;

o equilibration is the term Piaget used to describe the mechanism by which children shift from one stage of thought to the next.

o Equilibrium – mechanism for shifting from one level of thought to another

o Disequilibrium – result of cognitive conflict

o Cognition: qualitatively different in each stage of development


What are some early environmental influences on intelligence?

• Nutrition

Although excellent nourishment offers ideal bodily development, additionally , it may impact cognition. Scientific reports associated with malnourished children find lower ratings on the Bayley test. Some various different scientific reports having children provided necessary health proteins dietary health products show greater cognitive development..

• Poverty

Children delivered in to poverty tend to be more susceptible to ailments that may adversely impact intellectual development. Treatment applications that teach parents in enriching studying methods and increasing total well being have got important results in intellectual development.

• Best intervention programs are
o Long lasting
o Time-intensive
o Providing direct educational benefits Often in educational context Does not rely solely on parental training
o Comprehensive and multidimensional