Piagets Stages of Cognitive Development Essays

Piagets Stages of Cognitive Development Essays Piagets Stages of Cognitive Development Paper Piagets Stages of Cognitive Development Paper Up to this present day and age, there have been many different theories and approaches on how the common man develops. Of these, the most reasonable and recognized ones seem to be Piagets Stages of Cognitive Development, Freuds Stages of Psychosexual Development, and Eriksons Theory of Psychosocial Development. These three theories all approach this topic in very different ways, yet they all may be correct.  Firstly, we have look at how these approaches are similar. The most obvious one is that they all show how the common human being develops, but not in the same way. Also, Freuds theory and Eriksons theory are similar in several ways. Both stress and show the emotional dynamics of social development. Basically, this is saying that they both believe that learning the rules of society are different than learning how to walk or how to swim. Also, they both present four similar stages in he beginning, oral, anal, phallic/genital, and latency. Furthermore, they both talk about anxiety, clinical behavior, emotional behavior, abnormal behavior, and neurosis/psychosis behavior. For an specific reason, which will be explained later on, Piagets stages are very different, hence the miniscule similarity, if there are any. Secondly, we look at how these models differ. Piagets is clearly the most different. His model is composed of four, well researched stages, sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operations, and finally, formal operations. What these stages talk about are how the human being develops cognitively or how their thinking develops. This is different, as opposed to Freuds and Eriksons, which are mainly physically. On the other hand, Eriksons though similar to Freuds, has some differences. His theory doesnt stop at latency, unlike Freuds, or Piagets, which doesnt even include any same stages. It goes on with puberty, young adulthood, adulthood, and maturity, otherwise known as old age. Also, Eriksons model presents stages that can be passed after resolving the issue of their stage. Freuds and Piagets say that they grow into them, meaning they dont really have control on how fast they progress, but they do have control on whether they do want to progress. As we can see, these approaches all are capable of being perfectly right, even though they approach the topic in a different way. Its like saying someone took one road to get somewhere, and another took a different route and both got at the same destination at the same time. There wasnt a wrong road, they were both valid. Just as in this example, the three models are all capable of being valid.