Introduction To Business Psychology

Cognitive Development: Children thinking about the world
The process by which a child understanding of the world changes as a function of age and experience.
When an infants born, she cannot speak, see, observe etc. but as she grows her senses developed and acquiring ability to understand the world and stimuli. As time passes she grows older and older along with increasing experience. How this development is achieved and by what manners? Developmental psychologists gave a number of theories but the most known is Jean Piaget’s theory.

Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development:
Jean Piaget’s theory has the most impact then other theories of cognitive development. Jean Piaget’s in 1970 suggested that children around the world proceed through a series of four stages in a fixed order. He maintained that these stages differ not only in the quantity of information acquired at each stage but in the quality of knowledge as well. He suggested that movement from one stage to the next stage occurs when a child reaches an appropriate level of maturation and is exposed to relevant type of experiences; moreover he said that without having such experiences children cannot reach their highest level of cognitive growth.

• The Sensorimotor stage: From birth to 2 years
1. In this stage children acquire information about the world by touching, sucking, chewing, shaking and manipulating objects.
2. Infants from birth to 9 months lack Object permanence, but after 9 months they soon get the ability. For example if you hide an object from their view then they will try to find that object, before 9 months they do not try at all.
3. Infants in this stage do not pay attention to images, language and other kind of symbols.

• PreOperational Stage: From 2 to 7 years.
1. In this stage the most important thing is the development of language. Internal systems developed that allow children to describe people, events, and feeling.
2. Even they use symbols in their play, for example use book as toy car.
3. They use Egocentric thoughts (The phenomenon in which children are unable to separate their own belief, and thoughts from others.) for example if a child sees that there is candy in a box, he assumes that someone else also knows that there is candy in that box.
4. They can classify the object by single feature only, for example groups together all the red blocks regardless of shape or all the square blocks regardless of color
5. Principles of conservation is not developed yet, e.g. the same amount of liquid poured in a long and narrow glass, child of this stage shows that this glass has more liquid.


• Concrete Operational Stage: from 7 to 12 years.
1. In this stage children learn the principle of conservation.
2. They think in a more logical manner, i.e. they learn the phenomenon of reversibility. E.g. From mud we can make a ball, and then from Ball we can made an egg. The egg can be reversed to the ball.
3. Classify objects according to several features and can order them in series along a single dimension such as size.
4. In this stage they cannot think about abstract things. As they are only bound to physical (Concrete) things.

• Formal Operation Stage: From 12 years to up.
1. In this stage they develop the thinking about abstract things. They make use of logical technique to solve a problem. For example if they are asked what is the main cause to speed up the pendulum, the length, the weight or the force. People of this stage approach the problem systematically; they examine the effects of changes one variable at one time. This ability to rule out competing possibilities characterizes formal operational stage.

Adolescence:
The developmental stage between childhood and adulthood is called adolescence, i.e. the age from 13 to 19.
Children lower then 13 show manners of childhood. But after 13 as they grow older they achieve many characteristics that separate them from children at this stage they are called adolescence. Adolescence is characterized by marked physiological changes such as sexual feelings, body growth and also cognitive development. In this stage youths think that they are adults and try to live their life as they want, and do not accept any pressure from the parent’s side.