ressions and motor reactions. Infants in the first few months of life have no awareness of stable objects and fleeting events; nor does the infant distinguish between "me" and "not me." The major qualitative change in the first two years of life is the development of such distinctions.
Piaget is generally credited with making others recognize some form of underlying orderly progression to children's cognitive development. However, like the work of Freud, Piaget's cognitive theories apply only to infancy and childhood. As such, cognitive learning does not receive much emphasis or data in the later stages of development. Many of Piaget's conclusions have caused controversy, and many of his empirical claims have been disputed. Some of his theoretical proposals have even come under serious criticism, yet studying cognition requires first examining Piaget's views, for these views shaped the way in which all subsequent investigators thought about the subject.
The study of moral reasoning has been strongly affected by Piaget's cognitive developmental approach. One moral theorist who took Piaget's work further is Lawrence Kohlberg. Kohlberg tried to extend Piaget's stage theory into adolescence and adulthood. Piaget had already found that older children were much more likely to consider intent where the concept of morality was concerned (Gleitman, 1991, p. 599). Kohlberg used a six-stage moral reasoning scale to define the different moral behavior a person uses to interact with others at different age levels. Kohlberg proposed that, with increasing age, the level of moral reasoning changes. For example, at age 7 almost all moral judgments are made in terms of avoiding punishment or gaining reward (much like the ego operates and much like Skinner's operant conditioning). However, by age 10, about half of one's moral judgments made are based on social approval.
...