Developmental Semester 1 Week 2: Piaget

Question 1

Who is considered the founding father of developmental psychology?

Answer 1

Jean Piaget

Question 2

Where did Piaget begin his career, and what did he first consider?

Answer 2

Piaget began his career in Alfred Binet’s laboratory, where he first considered that children may see the world differently.

Question 3

What did Piaget’s influence contribute to the field of psychology?

Answer 3

• Gave a comprehensive account of cognitive development from birth to adolescence.
• Set the groundwork for developmental psychology as a sub-discipline.
• Provided the first insights into children’s minds, developed new methods, and inspired research into cognitive development.

Question 4

What is a famous quote by Piaget about teaching children?

Answer 4

“When you teach a child something, you take away forever their chance of discovering it for themselves.”

Question 5

What is Piaget’s Constructivist theory?

Answer 5

• Children are active learners who construct their own knowledge through interacting with their environment.
• They are “little scientists”

Question 6

How do children progress through the stages of cognitive development according to Piaget?

Answer 6

Children progress through these stages by organising schemas with increasing proficiency, through assimilation and accommodation of new information.

Question 7

What is a schemas in developmental psychology?

Answer 7

Schemas are mental representations or sets of rules that enable children to interact with their world by defining a particular category of behaviour. They develop through experience and become more complex with development.

Question 8

What are action-based/reflexive schemas and mental schemas?

Answer 8

• Action-based/reflexive schemas: Formed via physical interaction with the environment.
• Mental schemas: Do not require physical interaction with the environment; they are complex and abstract.
• Children move from the first to the second with age

Question 9

What is assimilation?

Answer 9

Assimilation is the integration of new information into existing schemas, leading to more consolidated knowledge.

Question 10

What is accommodation?

Answer 10

Accommodation is the adjustment of schemas to new information, leading to growing and changing knowledge. This can happen when we want to avoid disequilibrium.

Question 11

What is disequilibrium?

Answer 11

• When new knowledge leads children to realise their current understanding is inadequate or incomplete, it stimulates the adjustment of schemas.
• Disequilibrium promotes accommodation.

Question 12

How is a schema developed in language development?

Answer 12

• Children develop a schema that words in past tense end in ‘ed’.
• “Walk” becomes “walked” (assimilation: integrating new vocab into existing knowledge).
• “Eat” becomes “eated” but adults correct them to “ate,” causing disequilibrium and leading to accommodation.

Question 13

How do infants develop a schema for learning to crawl?

Answer 13

• Infants learn to crawl through movements like pulling and kicking (assimilation: new crawling strategies).
• When they try to climb stairs and find pulling or kicking ineffective, they experience accommodation, adjusting their schema.

Question 14

How do infants develop a schema for learning to grasp objects?

Answer 14

• Dummies, bottles, and rattles require firm grip so they learn to hold them tightly (assimilation)
• Cakes or cats require softer grip so they accommodate and learn to only grip tightly if the object is hard

Question 15

Sensorimotor - 0-2 years (senses and motor skills)

Answer 15

Key milestones:
- Increasingly able to explore the environment.
- Object permanence at 8 months
- Their dependence on the presence of objects reduces – they begin to develop mental representations (schemas) at 18-24 months - allowing for pretend play
- Deferred imitation occurs towards the end of this stage, repetition of other people’s behaviour after it has occurred
- Self-awareness develops at 18 months.

Question 16

Criticisms of the sensorimotor stage

Answer 16

• Infants may have object permanence prior to 8 months
• Baillargeon, Spelke, Wasserman 1975: Eye movement paradigms to measure infant looking time suggests children know where a hidden object is
• May be able to form mental representations prior to 18 months
• Evidenced by deferred imitation early in life, Meltzoff & Moore 1994: 6-week-old infants could imitate tongue protrusion after 24 hr delay

Question 17

Preoperational - 2-7 years (prior to mental operations)
- Preconceptual substage (2-4 years)

Answer 17

Key milestones:
- Children are egocentric.
- Develop symbolic thinking – the idea that one object can represent something else or an idea.
- Reduction in animism - attributing life-like qualities to inanimate objects.

Question 18

Preoperational - 2-7 years (prior to mental operations)
- Intuitive thought substage (4-7 years)

Answer 18

Key milestones:
- Conservation of numbers is mastered, even though appearance may change the amount stays the same - for numbers but not liquids and solids
- Intuitive problem solving
- Ability to order, classify and quantify items

Question 19

Criticisms of the preoperational stage

Answer 19

• Children can pass egocentrism tasks earlier when the materials change
• Borke 1975: when the Three Mountains Task was modified to be about the perspective of a sesame street character when looking at a fire engine, 3- to 5-year-olds could do the task.
• Conservation can be achieved earlier when task instructions are simplified
• McGarringle & Donaldson 1974: when a ‘naughty teddy’ got muddled and transformed, 4-year-olds answered better to the repeated question: “Is this the same height/weight/length as before?

Question 20

Concrete operational - 7-12 years (rigid mental operations)

Answer 20

Key milestones:
- Logical mental operations are possible with visual aids.
- Conservation of mass, length, weight, and volume is mastered.
Compensation - e.g. narrower glass must be filled higher to have the same volume
Reversibility - if only appearance has changed, the change can be undone
- Metacognition develops - thinking about thinking
- Understand cause-effect relations.

Question 21

Formal operational - 12+ years (sophisticated mental operations)

Answer 21

Key milestones:
- Abstract reasoning develops enabling children to speculate and reason.
- Children begin to formulate and test their hypotheses in the world.

Question 22

Criticisms of the formal operational stage

Answer 22

• Abstract thinking may develop later than age 12
• Danner & Day 1977: Abstract thinking can be improved with training

Question 23

Overall limitations of Piaget’s theories

Answer 23

• Piaget thought that observing children fail a task is sufficient evidence of their ability. Some of his tasks were too advanced for children, or demanding in terms of memory. He also rarely reported methods in detail.
• Piaget suggested that all typically developing children pass through the same stages, in the same order, and during the same period of time. He acknowledged that it might vary but didn’t explain it.