How does Piaget explain the way children's thinking develops as they grow?
Piaget's theory of cognitive development: schemas, assimilation and accommodation, and the four stages (sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational) with conservation, egocentrism and object permanence.
A focused answer to the OCR GCSE Psychology J203 development topic on Piaget's theory of cognitive development, covering schemas, assimilation and accommodation, the four stages (sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational), and key concepts including conservation, egocentrism and object permanence.
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What this dot point is asking
OCR wants you to describe Piaget's theory of cognitive development: how children build schemas through assimilation and accommodation, and the four stages they pass through (sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational), including conservation, egocentrism and object permanence.
Schemas, assimilation and accommodation
For Piaget, learning is active: children build and adjust schemas as they explore. A toddler with a "dog" schema may assimilate a new small dog into it. Meeting a cat that does not fit forces accommodation: the schema is changed or a new "cat" schema is formed. This constant adapting is how knowledge grows, and it underpins the educational ideas in learning and the growth mindset.
Key concepts: object permanence, conservation and egocentrism
- Object permanence: knowing an object still exists when it is out of sight. It develops in the sensorimotor stage; before it, a hidden toy is simply "gone" to the infant.
- Conservation: understanding that the amount of something stays the same even if its appearance changes (such as the same water poured into a taller, thinner glass). It develops in the concrete operational stage. Piaget's classic task showed pre-operational children wrongly judge the taller glass to hold more.
- Egocentrism: seeing the world only from your own viewpoint, unable to take another person's perspective. Piaget tested this with the "three mountains" task, where young children could not pick the view another person would see.
The four stages
Each stage represents a different way of thinking, not just more knowledge. The conservation of number task is the classic core study, Piaget (1952), in which young children think a spread-out row of counters has "more" than the same number bunched together.
Evaluating Piaget
Piaget's theory was hugely influential in education and is supported by his conservation and egocentrism tasks. However, later research suggests he underestimated children's abilities, partly because his tasks were confusing. When tasks are simplified (for example, a "naughty teddy" who moves the counters in the conservation task), children show conservation earlier than Piaget claimed. Critics also argue development may be more gradual than a fixed sequence of discrete stages implies. The nature versus nurture debate around development is explored further in nature, nurture and brain development.
Try this
Q1. Name Piaget's four stages of cognitive development in order. [4 marks]
- Cue. Sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, formal operational.
Q2. Define conservation. [2 marks]
- Cue. Understanding that amount stays the same even when appearance changes.
Q3. Identify the process by which an existing schema is changed to fit a new experience. [1 mark]
- Cue. Accommodation.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of OCR exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
OCR 20194 marksDescribe Piaget's four stages of cognitive development. (J203/01, Section B Development)Show worked answer →
A 4-mark Describe item rewards each stage named in order with its approximate age and a defining feature (roughly one mark per stage).
Sensorimotor (0 to 2 years): the child learns through senses and movement and develops object permanence. Pre-operational (2 to 7): the child uses language and symbols but is egocentric and cannot conserve. Concrete operational (7 to 11): the child can conserve and reason logically about real, concrete objects. Formal operational (11 and over): the child can think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems.
Markers reward the correct order, approximate ages and a key feature for each. They penalise muddling the order or attaching the wrong feature to a stage.
OCR 20215 marksExplain what is meant by assimilation and accommodation in Piaget's theory. (J203/01, Section B Development)Show worked answer →
A 5-mark Explain item rewards a clear definition of each process and an example of how they build knowledge.
A schema is a mental framework of ideas about something built from experience. Assimilation is fitting a new experience into an existing schema without changing it, for example a child who knows "dog" calling a new small dog a dog. Accommodation is changing or creating a schema when a new experience does not fit, for example the child meeting a cat and, after being corrected, forming a new "cat" schema. Together they explain how children adapt their thinking to the world as they develop.
Markers reward defining a schema, defining assimilation (fitting in) and accommodation (changing the schema), and ideally an example of each.
Related dot points
- The nature-nurture debate in development, early brain development and the role of maturation, and how genetic and environmental factors interact to shape cognitive and behavioural development.
A focused answer to the OCR GCSE Psychology J203 development topic on nature versus nurture and brain development, covering the nature-nurture debate, early brain development and maturation, the interaction of genes and environment, and the evidence used to support each side.
- Dweck's mindset theory: fixed and growth mindsets, the effect of praise (for effort versus ability) on motivation and achievement, and the role of learning and effort in development.
A focused answer to the OCR GCSE Psychology J203 development topic on learning and the growth mindset, covering Dweck's fixed and growth mindsets, the effect of praising effort versus ability on motivation and achievement, and how this links to development and education.
- The development core studies: the classic study Piaget (1952) on the conservation of number, and the contemporary study Blackwell et al. (2007) on mindset and mathematics achievement.
A focused answer to the OCR GCSE Psychology J203 development core studies, covering the classic study Piaget (1952) on the conservation of number and the contemporary study Blackwell et al. (2007) on mindset and mathematics achievement, including the aim, method, results, conclusions and evaluation of each.
- Applications of developmental psychology to education: how Piaget's stage theory and Dweck's mindset theory inform teaching methods, including readiness, discovery learning, praise and intervention programmes.
A focused answer to the OCR GCSE Psychology J203 development application on education, covering how Piaget's stage theory (readiness and discovery learning) and Dweck's mindset theory (effort praise and growth-mindset interventions) inform teaching methods, and the strengths and weaknesses of applying them.
Sources & how we know this
- OCR GCSE (9-1) Psychology J203 specification — OCR (2017)