Chapter 9 Flashcards
Piaget’s account of a child’s development in the preoperational stage…ages,
3 other things
- The preoperational stage lasts from ages 2-7
- The child uses symbols to represent objects
- The gains in mental representation are shown in make believe play and symbol- real-word relations
- They can use an object to represent something else as long as this is straightforward e.g. Broom for horse or toy phone for phone but not broom for phone.
What are the basics of make believe play?
Does it start complicated? How so?
What is sociodramatic play?
Make believe play
• At the start is very simple, like toy phone for phone
• With age it becomes more advanced
• Detaches from real life conditions
• Less self-centred
• Sociodramatic play develops: the child plays a role as do their playmates
What are the broad benefits of make believe play?
Benefits of make-believe play
• This contributes to cognitive and social skills
What mental abilities are strengthened by make-believe play?
6 things
Sustained attention Memory Language & Literacy Creativity Regulation of Emotion Perspective taking
What is dual representation?
When does it strengthen
Is viewing a symbolic object as both an object and a symbol
Dual representation experiment
Showed an under three year old a model of a room and then hid a doll behind a chair in the model - told the child it was a representation of a room
Took them to a real room and asked the child to find the toy
The under three had to look around for it
The older child (3+) could use their knowledge of dual representation to find the object quickly and easily
Over 3s can do dual representation
What are representational play and self-regulation?
What is required for this?
What is learned by this?
How does make believe play involve them?
- In representational play children substitute one object for another or imagine the object
- The child holds the meaning of the missing object in their mind
- Which requires Memory
- This separation of the meaning from the object provides the foundation for symbols such as when hearing a book being read. The child understands the words he hears stand for the objects and action he sees on the page
- This helps them learn vocabulary, read and write and understand maps (or can do)
- If a child is playing a role in a game
- This also requires Self-regulation in which a child stops his behavior in order to follow the role he has been given (or has assumed) and must stop his immediate perceptions overpowering the symbolic nature of an object
According to piaget, what four things limit concrete operational thought?
Though the child has now more advanced thinking, there are 4 issues that limit them:
Egocentricism
Centration
Animiism
Appearance as reality
What is egocentricism?
What are its consequences?
Egocentricism
• They see the world from their perspective
• Have trouble seeing the world from other’s
• Do not understand that people have different ideas and feelings
• Preoperational youngsters will select a photo of how toy mountains will look to them and not experimenters (piaget & Inhelder)
• This also means they wont try to convince people because they assume they think the same way
• Wont be able to accept truths about the world
• Unless obvious, wont know why mom is scolding them or what they did wrong as for them, they did not
• Three mountains experiment
Ends at 7
What is the three mountains experiment?
When do the results change?
• Child is shown what the experimenter will see. Then moved and asked what they see. Ten asked what they think the experimenter will see. Will say their own, new perspective even though they have seen what the experimenter sees due to egocentricism.
This ends at 7.
What is centration?
Centration
• Is like tunnel vision
• Concentrate on one aspect of a problem but not the others
What is Animism?
Animism
• Preoperative children credit inanimate objects with life and life like properties
• A child may combine animism and egocentricism – ascribe the sun with their emotions (e.g. she is sad she can’t see the sun so assumes the sun is sad cos it cannot see her – both animism and egocentricism).
What problems do children have with appearance vs reality?
Can it be trained?
model toy (dual representation) experiment
Appearance as reality
• Believes an objects appearance tells what it is really like
• No knowledge that appearance might not be real – kid smiles when any = kid is happy, rubber made into pizza shape = is edible.
• Models that represent reality are hard for young preoperational kids
• Experiment – if a person hides a toy in a model of the room and shows this to a child, when the child goes into the real room, 3-year olds can find it easily but 2.5-year old’s cannot (DeLoach, Miller & Rosengram, 1997).
• This is called Dual representation: seeing a symbolic object as both an object and a symbol
• Adult teaching can help develop this such as experience with maps, photos, drawings and make-believe play (all of which are examples of dual representation
• This ability is strengthened at 3 years old
• Callaghan & Rankin (2002) found that training kids how drawings represented real things accelerated understanding of graphic symbols, but 32-month year olds caught up within a month of training.
• Earlier training does not always lead to better capacity as older children can catch up due to their advanced development
What issues with preoperational children have with conservation according to Piaget?
What is irreversibility?
What experiment demonstrates this?
What are the four experiments (eg mass)
Issues with conservation
• Understanding that psychical characteristics stay the same when appearance changes
• Due to centration and irreversibility
• Irreversibility: Inability to mentally reverse a series of steps
• E.g. conservation of liquid experiment – look at the level of the liquid
• Conservation of number – one row of coins is longer than the other
• Length – move sticks so one is to the left and right
• Mass – play dough – ball is bigger than a pat
• Area – spread out the green squares and child says cows have unequal grass to eat
What are the four conservation tasks Piaget did?
Conservation of number - coins
Mass - play dough
Liquid - liquid and glasses
Weight - does each bit of clay weight the same? Yes. Flatten one and ask again - different?
According to Piaget, what issues do children have with hierarchical organisation?
What is the class inclusion problem?
Have issues with hierarchal Organisation
• Is the organisation of objects into classes and subclasses based on their similarity and difference
• Preoperational kids are bad at this
• Class inclusion problem
• Show child a whole category like flowers
• Show them it can be divided into blue flowers (4) and red flowers (8)
• Ask are there more red flowers than flowers
• Kids say yes even though red flowers are a subclass
• Why? Same two issues as for conservation
• According to piaget the child is centred on the number of red flowers (looks more than “flowers”)
• Also, cannot reverse the process to go up to superordinate group
• So answers red flowers
Piaget’s class inclusion problem?
Have issues with hierarchal Organisation
• Is the organisation of objects into classes and subclasses based on their similarity and difference
• Preoperational kids are bad at this
• Class inclusion problem
• Show child a whole category like flowers
• Show them it can be divided into blue flowers (4) and red flowers (8)
• Ask are there more red flowers than flowers
• Kids say yes even though red flowers are a subclass
• Why? Same two issues as for conservation
• According to piaget the child is centred on the number of red flowers (looks more than “flowers”)
• Also, cannot reverse the process to go up to superordinate group
• So answers red flowers
What other 7 things have been shown that extend Piaget’s work?
Naive theories become more elaborate in preschool years
• Movement – kids understand that animals can move themselves, but other objects can only be moved by animals. If they see a toy and an animal moving, they say only an animal can move themselves (Gelman & Gottfried, 1996).
• Growth – Kids know that animals get bigger and more complex, but things don’t (Rosengren, Gelman, Kalish & McCormak, 1991)
• Internal parts – Kids know internal parts of animate objects are different to outside (Simons & Keil, 1995).
• Inheritance – kids know that only offspring of animate things resemble their parents: Asked why a dog is pink -parent was pink/ Can is pink – mechanical causes (Springer & Keil, 1991; Weissman & Kalish, 1999).
• Healing – Kids know that animate things heal, and broken things must be fixed. Preschoolers know that hair grows back from a head but not a doll (Blackscheider, Shatz & Gelman, 1993)
• Don’t understand genetics and think adopted kids will resemble their parents (Solomon, Johnson, Zaitchik & Carey, 1996).
• Psychology (Lillard, 1999) kids can try to predict how other people will act.
What is the general criticism of Piaget?
Criticisms of Piaget
• Preoperational kids can do more than piaget thought
What are the observations which call into doubt Piaget’s account of egocentricism?
- Egocentricism – kid can take the perspective of others IF we use other kinds of objects
- If a child is shown familiar objects that they see regularly, they can take the perspective of other people and say what they might be seeing
- Possibly the novelty of the 3 mountains experimental situation makes this harder for children
- Also works if kids look through coloured glasses and adult does – they CAN say what the adult says
- A 3 or 4 year old speaks differently to a 2 year old: they know they don’t understand as well therefore they can take a perspective
- They know that something might seem small to them but big to a barbie doll therefore they can take perspective
What are the observations which call into doubt Piaget’s account of animism?
- Overestimated animistic thinking
- They might think that a robot can see, think and feel but they wont believe that a robot grows
- They might lack the understanding of how things work
- If they think a robot is alive its because they dont know there are mechanics inside
What are the observations which call into doubt Piaget’s account of conservation?
- They can do conservation if it is made obvious or simplified
- Use 3 items instead of 6 or 7
- In this case they can show conservation of numbers
- If you dissolve sugar cube in water – the child knows there was the same amount of sugar in the water as there was in the cube this is conservation of quality
What are the observations which call into doubt Piaget’s account of logical reasoning in concrete operational children?
- They will reason by analogy
- Asking them if play dough is to cut up play dough as apples are to cut up…. (child will say apples)
- So they have logical thought at this stage
What are the observations which call into doubt Piaget’s account of hierarchical categorization in concrete operational children?
- They can categorise into a hierarchy
* They fail at piaget like tasks, but they show obvious categorisation with things they know like furniture and animals
Summary of how we appraise Piaget and the concrete operational phase now
Piaget – Summary
• Huge contributions
• Not all findings hold up
• Some people think it is a gradual improvement in ability
• All the examples above are exemplar of operational thought
• SO, some deny the existence of a preoperational phase
• Some support a flexible stage model - a set of competences that evolve with time
• Not as rigid as Piaget
What is Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development?
The ZPD?
Scaffolding?
Viewed development as an apprenticeship
• Paiget and neo-piagetian approaches speak as if a child develops alone
• According to Vygotsky, children don’t develop alone but only with support from a caregiver and the learning arises out of interactions with each other
• Focused on the socio-cultural support and the role it played in a child’s physical and intellectual growth in a cultural world
• Zone of proximal development: The difference between what a child can do with the help of a skilled caregiver and what they can do alone
• Scaffolding: is a teaching style that matches the amount of assistance to the learner’s needs
• Helping others as much as needed but not more
What is private speech?
How did Piaget think of it? And Vygotsky?
- Children sometimes talk to themselves while playing this Is called private speech
- Piaget thought this was cos kids could not suppress it and egocentric because they did not think it would bother people
- Vygotsky felt this was really important – thought it was the foundation of all higher mental processes
- A child uses this to scaffold themselves
- When kids try to control themselves, they instruct themselves verbally
Eventually becomes internalized as inner speech
