Piaget and Cognition

Developmental psychology is one of the most widely chosen fields of psychology. This area of psychology explores the behavioral changes that occur during a person’s life. Most developmental psychologists, however, concentrate on studying the behavior of children, from the time of birth to adolescence, thus becoming child psychologists. Child psychology has been around for a long time, dating back to the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle.
In order to study behavior in children, psychologists use one of the four main theories: the maturational theory, the psychoanalytical theory, the learning theory, and the cognitive theory. Aspects such as judgment, reasoning, and awareness are all part of cognition, which is the mental process of knowing, (Carey & Gelman, 1991). Under the cognitive theory, children are seen as active problem solvers. Their natural curiosity and desire to master challenging tasks lead to the forming of their own theories about the world. ‘The theori...