Cognition + development - Piagets theory - stages of intellectual development

Question 1

What are Piaget’s four stages of learning?

Answer 1

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

Question 2

What is the sensorimotor stage?

Answer 2

• 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 3

What is object permanence?

Answer 3

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

Question 4

How did Piaget test object permanence?

Answer 4

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 5

What is the pre-operational stage?

Answer 5

• 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 6

What is conservation?

Answer 6

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

Question 7

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

Answer 7

• Number
• Mass
• Volume

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

Question 8

How did Piaget test that children could not conserve number?

Answer 8

• 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 9

How did Piaget test that children could not conserve mass?

Answer 9

• 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 10

How did Piaget test that children could not conserve volume?

Answer 10

• 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 11

What is egocentrism?

Answer 11

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 12

How was egocentrism tested for 2-7 year olds?

Answer 12

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 13

What is class inclusion?

Answer 13

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 14

How did Piaget test class inclusion?

Answer 14

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 15

What is the concrete operational stage?

Answer 15

• 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 16

How was concrete but not abstract thinking tested?

Answer 16

• 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 17

What is the formal operational stage?

Answer 17

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 18

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

Answer 18

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 19

Why is the fact that Piaget’s methodology was flawed a weakness?
(for conservation task)

Answer 19

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 20

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

Answer 20

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.