Week 4- Piaget

8/7/2019 Week 4- Piaget

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WEEK 4: CHILDHOOD PIAGETS THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT


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OVERVIEW

Piaget

Historical roots and origins

Concepts

Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development

Criticisms


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INTRODUCTION

Developmental psychology before Piaget

y Psychoanalysis

y Behaviourism

In each case the child is seen as passive - Piaget

changed this view

Piaget developed the most comprehensive theoryof cognitive development

Still one of the most influential figures in

developmental psychology


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JEAN PIAGET (1896-1980)


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PIAGET - BACKGROUND

Born in Switzerland in 1896

Published his first article in 1907

Early studies were on water snails found in the

Swiss lakes

Doctorate at age 22

Life-long biological orientation and interest in

how organisms become adapted to their

environments


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PIAGETS FIRST ARTICLE


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ARTICLE FROM 1909


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PIAGET - BACKGROUND

He was not a developmental psychologist he was abiologist, interested in the nature, origins anddevelopment ofknowledge

y Epistemology

He viewed intelligence as a mechanism ofadaptation

Constructivist Theory child active in own development

Construction of knowledge

y Mental representations become progressively more elaborateas the child has experience of acting on the environment andexperiencing consequences of their actions


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PIAGET - BACKGROUND

Studied with Alfred Binet in Paris in the 1920s -

interested in systematic errors on IQ tests

Was surprised that simple reasoning tasks presented

to children aged 11-12 years led to difficultiesunsuspected by the adult

He noticed that children made systematic errors -

different age groups made different types of errors

He found that children think in different ways

compared to adults

This sparked his interest in how knowledge develops

(genetic epistemology) and led him to develop his

stage theory of cognitive development


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PIAGETIAN TERMINOLOGY

Development occurs through cognitive adaptation of

schemas, which involves three processes:

y Assimilation

y Accommodation

y Equilibration

As children learn and develop, they construct Schmes -

Translated as Schemes, Schemas or Schemata - singular

is Scheme or Schema These are organised patterns of behaviour, used to interact

with the world

Different types of schemas are constructed in each of the

stages


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Assimilation: Understanding the world through existingmental structures

Adding to an existing file

Accommodation: Modification of existing structures totake account of new information fundamental change

Creating a new file

Accommodation occurs when assimilation is not possiblebecause existing schemas are incompatible with the

situation

Adaptation should be viewed as the equilibrium betweenassimilation and accommodation

Equilibrium allows the child to progress from one stage to

the next


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EQUILIBRATION

The unceasing process whereby

individuals throughout life attempt to

integrate their diverse experiences into

unified, stable wholes in order to avoid thetension that would result from conflicting

mental elements


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Intelligence is therefore seen as a set of

operations that enable an organism to adapt to

its environment

Mental representations

Internalised and personal understanding of

aspects of the external world (Oates, Sheehy & Wood,

2007)

Understanding becomes more logical as child

develops


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STAGES


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PIAGETS THEORY OF COGNITIVE

DEVELOPMENT

Constructivist theory children seen as active agents -develop through interacting with / adapting to theenvironment

Each stage of development is qualitatively distinct

The stages are hierarchical and occur in a fixed sequencestages cannot be missed

Stages are never skipped

Are logically interdependent - later stages depend onhaving developed earlier ones

Progression is gradual, children do not suddenly move fromone stage to the next


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PIAGETS THEORY OF COGNITIVE

DEVELOPMENT

Piaget argued that childrens thinking progressed

through a series of stages, each characterised by

thinking of a particular quality which becomes

increasingly logical

Knowledge constructed by all children in same

order, same (step-wise) stages

DOMAIN GENERAL THEORY

y Once a particular level of understanding has been

reached, it should apply to all relevant problems


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PIAGETS STAGES OF COGNITIVE

DEVELOPMENT

Sensorimotor

0 to 2 years

FormalOperational

11 years +

ConcreteOperational

7 to 11 years

Pre-Operational

2 to 7 years


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SENSORI-MOTOR (0-2YEARS)

Infants are born with reflexes - first means of interacting

with the environment

y Such as grasping or sucking

Children begin to take in new knowledge and eventuallygenerate schemas

Environmental experience gives rise to more elaborate

behaviour patterns

For the infant, the world is what he / she directly

experiences

Without these experiences nothing exists


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SENSORI-MOTOR (0-2YEARS)

By the end of this stage, children will have

developed the symbolic function

They now have internal representations of the

external world that can be evoked without the

external world having to be present

During this stage, infants develop Object

permanence


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OBJECT PERMANENCE


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DEVELOPMENT

Sensorimotor

0 to 2 years

FormalOperational

11 years +

ConcreteOperational

7 to 11 years

Pre-Operational

2 to 7 years


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PRE-OPERATIONAL (2-7YEARS)

Children now understand that objects exist

independently of themselves

Children at this stage often engage in Symbolicplay one object can be used to symbolise

another

They start to form stable concepts and beginreasoning

They start using symbols


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PRE-OPERATIONAL (2-7YEARS)

However, there are lots of things they do not

understand

y Thinking is not logical

y Cannot conserve

y Animistic thinking

y

Are egocentric

Egocentrism - often (quite wrongly) confused

with selfishness


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EVIDENCE FOR EGOCENTRISM:THE THREE MOUNTAINS TASK

CHILD

Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1956). The childs

conception of space. London: Routledge &

Kegan Paul.

DOLL

-Child walks around 3D model of

mountains and various objects

-Child sits on one side of the model

-Experimenter moves a doll todifferent locations around the model

-Child is asked to choose which of a

selection of 10 photos best reflects

what the doll is seeing

-Up to the age of 6 years, children

tend to pick the photo that

corresponds to their own perspective

-By 7-8 years, children decentre and

consistently pick the correct photo


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CONSERVATION OF LIQUIDPhase 1: Phase 2: Phase 3:

Initial presentation Transformation Final State

Do the beakers have the same amount of liquid?

Children younger than 6-7 tend to say the taller beaker has more

liquid

They focus on one dimension (increase in height) but neglect

another dimensions (decrease in width)

Fail to reason that nothing has been added or taken away


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CONSERVATION OF NUMBER

Are there the same number of beads in each row?

Children younger than 6-7 tend to say the bottom row has more

beads

Focus on the length of the row rather than the number of beads

Fail to reason that nothing has been added

Phase 1: Phase 2: Phase 3:

Initial presentation Transformation Final State


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PRE-OPERATIONAL STAGE

All these problems are linked - in order to pass

them, the child must conserve a property of the

substance (mass, volume etc.)

At this stage, childrens thinking is dominated by

the look of the thing (Donaldson, 1978)

For Piaget, cognitive development consisted ofthe development of abstract problem-solving

capabilities that applied across domains


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DIFFERENCES IN CONSERVATION

PERFORMANCE

Piaget argued that pre-operational children fail to

understand invariance the concept that quantities remain

the same despite changes in superficial appearance

However, why do children pass different conservation tasks

at different ages?

Piaget referred to this uneven pattern as horizontal

dcalage


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DEVELOPMENT

Sensorimotor

0 to 2 years

FormalOperational

11 years +

ConcreteOperational

7 to 11 years

Pre-Operational

2 to 7 years


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CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE (7-11YEARS)

Childrens thinking becomes more logical but is

still dominated by the concrete (here and now)

They develop rules based on own experience

They can manipulate the environment

symbolically, they can imagine actions and

consequences

However, they cannot anticipate something that

could happen which they have not personally

experienced (Oates et al., 2007)


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CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE (7-11

YEARS)

From the age of 7, children no longer show egocentrism

or animism

They start to use concrete operations

Types of concrete operation:

y Conservationy Seriation

y Class inclusion

y Transitivity


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CONCRETE OPERATION: SERIATION

Seriation - the ability to order stimuli across adimension (such as length)

Children from the age of 7 are capable of this task

Seriation


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CONCRETE OPERATION: CLASS INCLUSION

Children are asked:

Are there more yellow flowers ormore flowers?

Blue flowers Yellow flowers

Children younger than

7 more yellow

flowers

Children older than 7 -more flowers

Concrete operational

children understand the

hierarchicalrelationship between

the superordinate

(flowers) and

subordinate (blue or

yellow flowers) category


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CONCRETE OPERATION: TRANSITIVITY

During the concrete operational stage, childrenbecome capable of making transitive inferences

y They infer the relationship between two objects byknowing their relationships to a third object

If a > b and b > c, then a > c

OR: IfJohn is taller than Simon and Simon is

taller than Peter, thenJohn is taller than Peter

Children younger than 7 years of age cannotmake this kind of logical inference


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DEVELOPMENT

Sensorimotor

0 to 2 years

FormalOperational

11 years +

ConcreteOperational

7 to 11 years

Pre-Operational

2 to 7 years


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FORMAL OPERATIONAL (11YEARS +)

Children can now reason in purely abstract ways

without reference to concrete experience

Logical, systematic and scientific reasoning

Can generate hypotheses about the world


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FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE

Concrete operational children are bound by reality -

Formal operational adolescents are not

Therefore, formal operational thinkers can solve

problems such as:

If ants are bigger than dogs and dogs are bigger than

elephants, which animals are the biggest?

Concrete operational child: Elephants (reality based)

Formal operational adolescent:Ants (realm of

possibility)


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FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE

Adolescents are able to come up with theories,

generate hypotheses, and create ways of testing

these hypotheses

Whereas concrete operational thinkers tend to

havejust one theory about something, formal

operational thinkers may have multiple theories

about the same thing


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SUMMARISING PIAGETS STAGES

Sensori-motor stage - infants understand theworld through senses and actions

Pre-operational stage - child understands the

world through symbols, including words andmental images

Concrete operational stage - child understand theworld through logical thinking and categories

Formal operation stage adolescent / adultunderstands the world through hypotheticalthinking and scientific reasoning


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EVALUATING THE THEORY

Subsequent research has revealed that infants havemore advanced understanding than Piaget thought

Piaget argued that mental representation (evidence

through deferred imitation) does not emerge until theend of the sensori-motor stage (18-24 months)

Recent research, however, suggests that 6-month-oldsare capable of deferred imitation of simple actions

(Hayne, Boniface & Barr, 2000)

Piaget also argued that infants lack objectpermanence until 8-9 months - however, rememberevidence from lecture 1


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Piaget claimed that pre-operational children are

egocentric, cannot conserve, and do not

understand class inclusion

However, subsequent research suggests that

children younger than 7 years of age can succeed

on many concrete operational tasks

Depends on the way in which task is presented


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Various researchers have found that children

could in fact correctly answer questions and carry

out tasks - if they were asked in a different way

Donaldson and colleagues argued that Piagetsproblems and the questions he asked children did

not make human sense to the child

Inappropriate (egocentric) use of language

See Donaldson (1978)


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EARLIER CONSERVATION SKILLS - NAUGHTYTEDDY

STUDY(MCGARRIGLE & DONALDSON, 1974)

Children warned that a naughty teddy might mess up

the game - changing the task pragmatics

Naughty teddy spreads out one row of beads

This accidental change affects the childs interpretation

Majority of4-year-olds, who failed the traditional

version, passed the naughty teddy version

McGarrigle, J., & Donaldson, M. (1974).Conservation accidents. Cognition, 3, 341-350.


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EARLIER CLASS INCLUSION

Markman and Seibert (1976) class inclusion study

Referred to the superordinate category in terms herd, pile, forest -

see questions below

In this version, children as young as 5 years of age passed

Children are asked: Who would have more,

someone who owned the white cows or

someone who owned the herd?

Rather than asking: Who would have more,someone who owned the white cows orsomeone who owned the cows?


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Original findings have not always been replicated -subsequent studies show that adolescents do notperform as well as Inhelder and Piaget found

Epstein (1979) found that only 32% of 15-year-old and34% of 18-year-olds passed formal operational tasks

Formal operational thinking may continue to developinto adulthood

Some adults do not pass the tasks

Individual differences?


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CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

Think about how specific environmental factorscould determine childrens performance on thesetasks

Education and culture?

In some cultures (e.g., Wolof children in Senegal),approximately 50% of 10-13 year-olds pass

conservation tasks (Greenfield, 1966)

Think back on our discussion during the lecturelast week - Ethnocentricity


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PRAISE AND PROBLEMS FOR PIAGET

Praisey Revolutionary ideas (at the time) compared to

psychoanalysis and behaviourism child aspassive

y Set the agenda for the discipline - ideas stillinfluential

y Recognition of childs own role

y Children reason differently from adults

y Developed ingenious methods

y Abundance ofobservational material


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PRAISE AND PROBLEMS FOR PIAGET

Problems

y Neglected social / contextual influences on

childrens development

y Neglected teaching, languagey Young children have been found to think more

logically than he predicted

y Stages not clear-cut

y He did get what develops right much of thetime, but got when it develops wrong in many

cases

Week 4- Piaget

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