Piaget and Inhelder (1956) 'Three mountains' task

Question 1

What was the aim of the three mountains task study?

Answer 1

To understand:

• The extent to which children of different ages were able to take the view of another person.
• Children’s overall system of putting together a number of different views of what they see.

Question 2

Who were the participants in the three mountains task study?

Answer 2

Childrens.

Question 3

What were the four main pieces of equipment in the three mountains task study?

Answer 3

Cardboard three mountains model, 10 pictures of the three mountains model taken from different angles, three pieces of coloured card to represent the mountains, and a wooden doll.

Question 4

What questions were children asked in the three mountains task study?

Answer 4

Childrens were asked to use the cardboard shapes to show how the mountain scene looked from different viewpoints.

• The child was shown ten pictures of the model and asked to pick out the picture that represented what they could see from different angles.
• The child chose a picture and then had to position the doll so it could see the viewpoint in the picture.

Question 5

What were the results of the three mountains task study?

Answer 5

Pre operational stage
- Children aged 4 to 7 in the pre operational stage choose pictures and place cardboard to show their own view.
- Children cannot place the doll in a position where the view matches a picture the child is shown.
Concrete operational stage
- Children 7 to 9 starts to understand that others looking from a different position can see the model differently
- By that age children can understand that the doll has a different view
- They gathered qualitative data and included observations about individual children in their report.

Question 6

What were the conclusions of the three mountains task study?

Answer 6

• Piaget and Inhelder concluded that children up to 7 years old were egocentric ( they cannot see from a viewpoint other than their own)
• Towards the end of pre operational stage, the children were more able to think about someone else’s viewpoint
• Children in the pre operational stage did not have the understanding of viewpoint yet.
• Older children were non egocentric.
• Older children were able to position their own viewpoint among views of others and construct mental representations of what others can see.

Question 7

What were the strengths of the three mountains task study?

Answer 7

• They provided a great deal of detail about what was done and importantly the results.
• They wrote about individual children, giving qualitative data that was rich in detail and had depth.

Question 8

What were the weaknesses of the three mountains task study?

Answer 8

• Other studies, using perhaps more realistic scenarios, did not give the same findings.
• The results suggest that children develop thinking ability progressively as they age, rather than in distinct stages- i.e. others have interpreted the findings differently from Piaget and Inhelder.

Question 9

How can it be explained that studies by others (e.g. Borke, 1975, and Willingham, 1997) produced findings different to Piaget and Inhelder?

Answer 9

They may have made the task more appropriate for the younger children- i.e. the three mountains task was just too difficult Other researchers used, for example, a turntable to rotate the mountains.

Criticised Piaget and Inhelder study. Did a study where young children tried crackers which they liked and broccoli which they didn’t like, whilst an adult demonstrated the reverse taste. Children aged 18 months could understand the adult liking the broccoli whilst they didn’t, which younger children couldn’t: the children of 18 months could appreciate the adult’s ‘view’.

Question 10

What is qualitative data?

Answer 10

Data that is descriptive, not numbers such as words or pictures

Question 11

What is reliability?

Answer 11

The consistency of an outcome or result of an investigation (a measure)