Piaget

Question 1

Who did Piaget begin his career working with?

Answer 1

Alfred Binet

Question 2

What type of theory was Piaget’s theory of child development?

Answer 2

Constructivist

Question 3

What did Piaget believe?

Answer 3

That children are active learners who construct their own knowledge through interacting with their environment

Question 4

What are the stages of Piaget’s theory of child development?

Answer 4

Sensorimotor
Pre-operational
Concrete operational
Formal operational

Question 5

What is a schema?

Answer 5

Mental representation or sets of rules that enable children to interact with their world through defining a particular category of behaviour; they develop through experience and become more complex with development

Question 6

Assimilation

Answer 6

The integration of new input into existing schemas, leading to more consolidated knowledge

Question 7

Accommodation

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Sensorimotor age

Answer 8

0 - 2 years

Question 9

Sensorimotor milestones

Answer 9

Increasingly able to explore
Dependence on presence of object reduces, begin to develop mental representations
Object permanence
Awareness of being distinct from the environment

Question 10

Pre-operaitional age

Answer 10

2 - 7 years

Question 11

Pre-operational milestones

Answer 11

Develop symbolic thinking (an object can represent something else or an idea)
Egocentrism is reduced
Conservation of number is mastered
Reduction in animism

Question 12

Concrete operational age

Answer 12

7 - 12 years

Question 13

Concrete operational milestones

Answer 13

Logical mental operations are possible with visual aids
Conservation of mass, length, weight and volume is mastered
Metacognition develops
Understand cause-effect relations

Question 14

Formal operational age

Answer 14

12+ years

Question 15

Formal operational milestones

Answer 15

Abstract reasoning develops enabling children to speculate and reason
Children begin to formulate and test their hypotheses in the world

Question 16

What is the rouge test?

Answer 16

If a red dot is drawn on a child’s forehead and they are put in front of a mirror, do they interact with the person in the mirror as if they are someone else?
Tests self-awareness

Question 17

Pre-conceptual sub-stage

Answer 17

Ages 2 - 4
Egocentrism reduces
Children are able to mentally represent ideas and objects (enables pretend play)
Reduction in animism

Question 18

Intuitive thought sub-stage

Answer 18

Ages 4 - 7
Children develop symbolic thought
They understand the same object can be of different sizes
Can systematically order and classify items

Question 19

What does compensation mean?

Answer 19

The observation that a narrower glass needs to be filled higher to include the same amount of water as a wider glass

Question 20

What is reversibility?

Answer 20

Since only the appearance of items has changed, this change can be undone, therefore in any transformation, the number/mass must have remained constant

Question 21

Impacts of Piaget’s work

Answer 21

Laid the groundwork for developmental psychology as a sub-discipline
Gave some of the first insights into children’s minds
Huge impact on education, supports child centred learning, let educators see children as active learners
Many of his findings have been replicated with new methods

Question 22

Limitations of Piaget’s theory

Answer 22

Piaget’s stages and ages children master them in are not all accurate
Some of Piaget’s tasks were too advanced and not child friendly and therefore may have underestimated children’s skills
The idea that a child cannot and should not be taught something if they are not yet at that stage has been disputed

Question 23

Young infants may have object permanence in some situations

Answer 23

Bower (1972) - young children show surprise when an object disappears from behind a screen

Baillargeon, Spelke and Wasserman (1975) - adopted eye movement paradigms to measure infant looking time

Question 24

Infants may be able to form mental representations

Answer 24

Infants can imitate actions they saw previously - suggests they may be able to form mental representations

Meltzoff & Moore (1994) - 6 week old infants could repeat tongue protrusion after 24 hours

Question 25

Children can pass egocentrism tasks earlier when the materials change

Answer 25

Borke (1975) found that when the three mountains task was modified to be about the perspective of a sesame street character looking at a fire engine, 3 - 5 year olds could do this task

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

Question 26

Conservation can be achieved earlier when the task instructions are simplified

Answer 26

McGarringle & Donaldson (1974) found that when a naughty teddy got muddled and changed the materials, 4 year olds answered better to the questions 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 (the container was damaged etc)