Compare and Contrast the Theories of Piaget and Vygosky
Tiffany AbelleraBlas
BSHS/342
February 3, 2013
Dr. Branch

Compare and Contrast the Theories of Piaget and Vygosky
In this essay I will be comparing and contrasting the differences between two theorist, Jean Piaget (1896-1980) and Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934). Though both agreed that children’s cognitive development took place in stages. However they were distinguished by different styles of thinking. Piaget felt that children progressed in four different stages of cognitive development, This theory is know as Piaget’s Stage Theory because it deals with four stages of development, which are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. As for Vygotsky, he is most often associated with the social constructivist theory and came into three general claims: culture, language, and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Berk, 2010).
Piaget was the first to reveal that children reason and think differently at different periods in their lives. He said, “Children’s thinking is rigid, limited to one aspect of a situation at a time, and strongly influenced by the way things appear at the moment.” (Berk, 2010) According to his four stages, in the first stage sensorimotor, which occurs from birth to the age of two is the time in an infant’s life when the child basically deals with what is presented to him or her. Then learn about physical objects and are concerned with motor skills and the consequences of some of their actions. During this stage children will learn the concept of object permanence. This is where an object will continue to exist even if it is out of sight.
In the preoperational stage which last from two to seven years. In this stage it comes possible to carry on a conversation with a child and they also learn to count and use the concept of numbers. This stage is divided into