Lesson 2 - Piaget

Question 1

What did Piaget propose?

Answer 1

Theory of cognitive development

Question 2

Who is Piaget?

Answer 2

Piaget 1896-1980

One of the founders of Developmental psychology

Piaget began his career working at Alfred Binet’s laboratory, examining intelligence testing in children. Led Piaget to consider that children may see the world in a different way.

They’re different from adults, have a different understanding

Question 3

What theory of cognitive development did Piaget propose?

Answer 3

Constructivist theory of cognitive development
Constructivist means children are active constructors of their own knowledge through interacting w their environment, guiding their own development by making hypotheses and testing them through interacting with their environment. They test them like scientists.

Question 4

Children move through 4 stages of cognitive development in the same order, which are characterised by qualitatively different ways of thinking. To go through these stages, children need to organise what with increasing what?

Answer 4

organise schemas with increasing proficiency

Question 5

What is proficiency?

Answer 5

Children start to organise schemas and will want to adapt to their env as they gain skills and want to do this

Question 6

What two things are needed for children to organise schemas?

Answer 6

Assimilation and accommodation of new info is necessary

Question 7

What is a schema?

Answer 7

Mental representation or set of rules that we have developed thru experience, packages of info speeding up the process of intteracting w env

Question 8

What are schemas organised and changed by the dual process of?

Answer 8

Assimilation and accommodation

Question 9

What is assimilation?

Answer 9

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

More experience more knowledge. Experience, gain.

Question 10

What is accommodation?

Answer 10

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

Change in knowledge

Question 11

What is disequilibrium?

Answer 11

Important in changing knowledge, promoting accommodation
Disequilibrium occurs when new knowledge leads to children realising their current understanding is incomplete or inadequate

Question 12

What are the four stages of cognitive development?

Answer 12

Sensorimotor
Preoperational

Question 13

What is the sensorimotor stage and when does it develop?

Answer 13

0-2 years
Increasingly able to explore the environment
their dependence on the presence of objects reduces - they begin to develop mental representations
Object permanence
There is an awareness of being distinct from the environment (self awareness)

Question 14

What is the Preoperational stage and when does it develop?

Answer 14

2-7 years
Develop symbolic thinking - the idea that one object can represent something else or an idea
children are egocentric
conservation of numbers is mastered
Reduction in animism

Question 15

What is the Concrete operational stage and when does it develop?

Answer 15

7-12 years

Logical mental operations are possible with visual aids
conservation of mass, length, weight and volume is mastered.
metacognition develops
understand cause effect relations

Question 16

What is the operational stage and when does it develop?

Answer 16

12+ years
Abstract reasoning develops enabling children to speculate and reason.
children begin to formulate and test their hypotheses in the world

Question 17

What is object permanence?

Answer 17

children learn that when things (objects or people) are hidden, they do not cease to exist.
Develops at around 8 months

Question 18

What are mental representations?

Answer 18

Mental representations are the building blocks of pretend play and memory
Development of mental representations takes months of age.
Object permanence leads to mental representations
Deferred imitation occurs toward the end of the sensorimotor stage - repetition of other peoples behaviour after it has occurred.

An important milestone as it demonstrates that infants are able to form mental representations eg schemas and can recall these

Question 19

What is self-awareness?

Answer 19

Infants begin to develop self recognition at around 18 months of age

The Rouge Test - do children recognise themselves in the mirror.

Question 20

What are the two substages of the pre-operational

Answer 20

1. Preconceptual (2-4 years)
2. Intuitive thought (4-7 years)

Question 21

PRECONCEPTUAL SUBSTAGE (2-4 years)

Answer 21

Key milestones

1. The presence of egocentrism
2. Symbolic functions - using mental representations to pretend one object is another. Pretend play
3. Reduction in animism - the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike properties.

Question 22

What is egocentrism?

Answer 22

The inability to acknowledge another persons perspective

Children assume that others see, hear, and feel the way that they do

Evidence from the Three Mountains Task (Piaget and Inhelder 1956)

Question 23

Intuitive thought?

Answer 23

key milestones

Conservation of numbers is mastered

Children develop intuitive problem solving

Children are able to systematically order, classify and quantify items but do not necessarily understand the principles behind items and groups.

Question 24

What is the conservation of numbers?

Answer 24

The realisation that while the appearance of items may change, the number or amount stays the same

Children in the preoperational stage do not have this skill for liquids and solids

Question 25

What is concrete operational?

Answer 25

Rigid mental operations 7-12 years
Children become more flexible in their thinking but lack abstract reasoning.
Can focus on more than one thing at a time

Question 26

What are the key milestones of concrete operational?

Answer 26

1. Metacognition develops. Thinking about thinking
2. Conservation, classification and categorisation in multiple domains such as number, weight and height is mastered
3. Children begin to understand cause effect relationships
4. Children can perform mental operations (ie solve problems) based on objects that are present

Question 27

What is reversibility?

Answer 27

If only the appearance of items has changed, this change can be undone. Therefore, the number and mass must have remained constant.

Answer 28

Conservation

Compensation - e.g a narrower glass needs to be filled higher to include the same amount of water as a wider glass.

Reversibility - if only the appearance of items has changed, this change can be undone. Therefore, the number and mass must have remained constant.

Question 29

What is formal operation?

Answer 29

2+ YEARS

FORMAL = SOPHISTICATED (ie complex)

MENTAL OPERATIONS = LOGICAL REASONING, ABSTRACT THOUGHT, HYPOTHESIS FORMULATION
]
children begin to
Reason hypothetically (without objects present)

Deduce conclusions from abstract statements

Question 30

What are the preoperational stage limitations?

Answer 30

children can pass egocentrism tasks earlier when the materials change.

Borke (1975) found that 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

Hughes’s 1975 found that 60% of 3 year olds can hide a doll so a policeman can’t see it

Conservation can be achieved earlier when the task instructions are simplified

McGarringle & Donaldson (1974) found that 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?”

Light et al 1979 found that 70% of 4 year olds demonstrate conservation skills if the change of container is explained eg previous container was damaged

Question 30

What are some limitations of the Sensorimotor stage? 0-2 yrs

Answer 30

Infants may have object permanence prior to 8 months.

Young children show surprise when an object disappears from behind a screen (Bower 1972).

Eye movement paradigms to measure infant looking time suggests that children know where a hidden object is (Eg Baillargeon, Spelke, Wasserman 1975)

Infants may be able to form mental representations prior or before 18 months

Evidenced by deferred imitation occurring early in life.

Meltzoff and Moore 1994 found that 6 week old infants could imitate and repeat tongue protrusion after 24 hour delay.

Question 31

What are formal operations stage limitations?

Answer 31

abstract thinking can develop much later than 12 years of age

Abstract thinking can be improved with training (Danner and Day 1977)

Structuring activities and guiding children can help them to solve problems.

Is it enough for children to learn by themselves as Piaget suggested? Scaffolding

Question 32

What are some limitations overall of Piaget’s theory?

Answer 32

Observing children fail to perform specific tasks is sufficient evidence of their ability at a given age.”

Some ofPiaget’s tasks were too advanced for young children. Remember, we need to be careful when designing tasks for children!

○Many ofPiaget’s tasks are demanding in terms of memory.**This may explain why young children performed so poorly on some tasks (Bryant & Trabasso, 1971).

○Methodological limitationsPiaget rarely reported methods in detail, the number of children he tested, and who passed the tasks

Question 33

All typically developing children pass through the same stages, in the same order, and during the same period of time

Answer 33

Some children are able to master conservation at an early age.

○Object permanence may occur much earlier than Piaget thought.

○Abstract thinking can develop much later than age 12.

○Piaget acknowledged variability but failed to explain it.

○Piaget described change but explanatory value of development may be low.

○Cognitive development may not be discontinuous (i.e., occur in stages).