Cognition + Development - Piaget's theory

Question 1

Who is Piaget?

Answer 1

A developmetal psychologist who studied how children develop psychologically as they mature.

Question 2

What are schemas?

Answer 2

• A way of organising knowledge
• We are constantly using our schemas to make sense of the world
• Some schemas are innate; our schemas change and grow in complexity with experience

Question 3

What is disequilibrium?

Answer 3

A state of unbalance if we cannot understand something using our existing schema.

Question 4

What is equilibrium?

Answer 4

A state of balance which we achieve by discovering and acquiring the new information we need to make sense of our experiences. This may involve forming a new schema or be incorporating information into an existing schema.

Question 5

What is equilibration?

Answer 5

The process of achieving equilibrium again.

Question 6

What is assimilation?

Answer 6

When information is taken in and incorporated into an existing schema, without much change being required.

Question 7

What is accommodation?

Answer 7

When some sort of change is needed - either a whole new schema is required or radical change of an existing schema is required.

Question 8

Explain the strength that Piaget’s theory has research support that some schemas are innate.

Answer 8

• Babies as young as four days old preferred looking at features arranged as a face than the same features jumbled up.
• This finding has been replicated many times
• As the babies are so young they could not have learnt to recognise faces but rather must have a pre-existing schema for them
• This is adaptive because it means the infant will be able to interact with caregiver from birth and be able to bond

Question 9

Explain the strength that Piaget’s theory has research support (Howe) showing that schemas are individual and vary between people.

Answer 9

After the discussion about moving objects down a slope, the children had not come to the same conclusion or picked up the same facts.
This supports Piaget’s idea that children learn by forming their own personal mental representations.

Question 10

How is application to education a strength of Piaget’s theory?

Answer 10

• Piaget’s theory that children construct their own schemas in response to what they discover about the world led to schools placing an emphasis on discovery learning, with practical activities so that children could find out about how things work and how they relate to each other
• However, applying Piaget’s work to educating older children is unhelpful because our education system and testing is standardised. Our schemas are personal and differ between children, if learning through discovery they will learn different things, just as Howe found.

Question 11

How can Piaget’s theory be linked to debates?

Answer 11

Nature vs nurture
Nature:
- Biologically primed to learn
- Evolutionary explanation - some schemas are innate + aid our survival
- (Biological determinism)
Nurture:
- Our schemas develop in response to the environment
- Different experiences result in different schemas + our perceptions + way we interact with the world will differ as a result
(Environmental determinism)

Question 12

What are Piaget’s four stages of learning?

Answer 12

• Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years)
• Pre-operational stage (2-7 years)
• Concrete operational stage (7-11 years)
• Formal operational stage (11+ years)

Question 13

What is the sensorimotor stage?

Answer 13

• As children move through this stage, they become more masterful of and intentional with their movements
• From around 8 months of age and completing by 18-24 months, object permanence develops

Question 14

What is object permanence?

Answer 14

Understanding that thing exist when they are outside direct observation by the individual; that objects and people exist as separate permanent things.

Question 15

How did Piaget test object permanence?

Answer 15

He hid an object under a blanket.
Before 8 months - ‘out of sight, out of mind’
From 8 months, the infant would continue to look for the object.

Incomplete object permanence was tested by the A-not-B error test: babies are shown an object and see it repeatedly hidden under cloth A. They look for it under cloth A. Then when it is hidden under cloth B the child continues to look under A. Past 1 year of age, babies do not tend to make this error.
Object permanence is incomplete in children before 1 year.

Question 16

What is the pre-operational stage?

Answer 16

• Child can use language but lacks reasoning ability
• Children are yet to understand conservation
• Children are egocentric
• Children are yet to understand class inclusion

Question 17

What is conservation?

Answer 17

The idea that the essential properties of a thing are kept (conserved) even though some aspect of the thing may change.

Question 18

What were the three key areas of deficit in reasoning that Piaget identified and tested?

Answer 18

• Number
• Mass
• Volume

(In all tasks, pre-operational children were likely to say that they were different in answer to the second question.)

Question 19

How did Piaget test that children could not conserve number?

Answer 19

• Adult sets up two identical rows of coins; ask “are there the same number of coins or different/one has more?”
• Adult spreads out one row; asks “are there the same number of coins or different/one has more?”

Question 20

How did Piaget test that children could not conserve mass?

Answer 20

• Adult sets up two identical columns of play doh; asks “are they the same amount or different/one has more?”
• Adult squashes one column; asks “are they the same amount or different/one has more?”

Question 21

How did Piaget test that children could not conserve volume?

Answer 21

• Adult sets up two identical containers of liquid; asks “are they the same amount of liquid or different/one has more?”
• Adult pours one container into another of different shape; asks “are they the same amount of liquid or different/one has more?”

Question 22

What is egocentrism?

Answer 22

Only being able to see the world from your own point of view: physical perspective or an argument or opinion.

De-centering is being able to see it from another’s point of view.

Question 23

How was egocentrism tested for 2-7 year olds?

Answer 23

Piaget used the 3 mountains task to test whether children could de-centre their view of the world.
Four picture cards, child to select card illustrating their view of the 3 mountains board, dolly sat with a different view and the child had to select the card showing the dolly’s view. Pre-operating children gave their own view.

Question 24

What is class inclusion?

Answer 24

Understanding that things can be put into classes or categories.
Very young children understand that things can be placed in categories and are able to do this.
However, they do not show an understanding that categories can have subsets.

Question 25

How did Piaget test class inclusion?

Answer 25

Piaget showed that children aged 2-7 were able to put a pug, Labrador and German shepherd into a ‘dog’ category but could not accurately answer the question “are there more dogs or animals?”, when shown a display of cats and dogs together.

Question 26

What is the concrete operational stage?

Answer 26

• Children now have much better reasoning abilities
• The child can conserve, de-centre and understand class inclusion
• The child can reason about things that are concrete - that means real objects in their physical presence
• However, they are still not able to think in an abstract way

Question 27

How was concrete but not abstract thinking tested?

Answer 27

• Local thinking puzzles - if all yellow cats have two heads and I have a yellow cat, how many heads does my cat have?
• Children in the concrete operations stage get distracted by the fact that their experience tells them cats do not have two heads so are unable to separate the content from the form

Question 28

What is the formal operational stage?

Answer 28

Children become able to focus on the form of an argument and not be distracted by its content. This allows for scientific reasoning, logical argument, and an appreciation of abstract ideas.

Question 29

How is supporting evidence for the biological basis for Piaget’s theory a strength?

Answer 29

There is a large body of supporting evidence for the theory of biologically driven stages in cognitive development.
However some evidence shows that children go through the stages at vastly different ages to others.
Piaget suggest that the stages should be taken as rough estimates of the times when children go through the changes, and not a fixed schedule. There will be differences.
This strengths the validity.

Question 30

How is the fact that Piaget’s theory has useful applications a strength?

Answer 30

One long-lasting key idea is that the difference between the way children and adults think is qualitative.
For real learning to take place, a child must be at the appropriate stage in development.
So teaching a pre-operational child complex mathematical formulae will not be successful.
This has informed primary school teaching. In 1967 in the UK, a hugely influential report on primary teaching was published. It was based largely on Piaget’s work.
This means his theory is useful.

Question 31

Why is the fact that Piaget’s methodology was flawed a weakness?

Answer 31

For the conservation task, children may have thought the correct answer was ‘yes’ because the adult changed something. The child might have been responding to social desirability bias or demand characteristics. This effects validity.

Naughty teddy conservation research showed that when the teddy messed up the rows of coins so one looked longer, more children were able to correctly answer that the number was still the same.
This criticises his theory but suggests he was right that some pre-operational children cannot conserve, but overall he underestimated the abilities of the age group.

Egocentrism task: Children were asked to do a more real life example - asked them to place a naughty boy doll in a model with 3D walls so that policemen who were looking for him would not be able to see him.
90% of 3 and a half year olds were able to do this successfully, showing that they were able to see the situation from the perspective of the policemen.

Question 32

Why is the fact that development may not be a single process be a limitation of Piaget’s theory?

Answer 32

Many people with autism spectrum disorder develop ‘normally’ in terms of reasoning but can remain very egocentric. This suggests that is it not all one process as Piaget claimed. This effects the validity of his theory.