Chapter 5.2 Appraising Piaget: Support, Challenges, and Alternatives

Question 1

Critics of Timing of mastery of object permanence

Answer 1

infants might be incapable of mastering the concept of object permanence because the techniques used to test their abilities were not sensitive enough to their true capabilities
- ex. not searching for a toy not because she doesn’t understand that the rattle still exists, but because she hasn’t learned the motor skills necessary to do the searching

Question 2

Critics of children’s understanding of numbers

Answer 2

Children have an innate ability to count
- ex. children as young as three can easily tell the difference between rows of two and three toy animals, regardless of the animals spacing

Question 3

Critics of conservation

Answer 3

one can improve children’s performance

- ex. children can learn to answer conservation tasks correctly if they are given certain training and experiences

Question 4

Critics of cultural issues

Answer 4

performance differences between western and non-western children probably reflect a difference in experiences
-progress of cognitive development cannot be understood without considering a child’s culture