PIAGET'S stage theory - 2 Flashcards
Preoporational stage
2-7 years
2 parts- symbolic function stage and intuitive stage
in this stage you see impressive increase in mental representation
symbolic function stage
2-4 years
children begin to mentally represent objects that are not objectivly visible so they no longer require sensory input. This is shown in pretend play- under 2 year olds will pretend to use a teacup but will not use that tea cup as a hat- as they get older they use disimlar objects such as a banana as a telephone.
Also shown in their language and production of drawings
from around 2 years children learn 9 words a day
After 2 years they undersatdn the symbolic nature of drawings e.g. wont try and eat a picture of a banana
Egocentrism
This is a limitation of children in this stage- they fail to see the world from others point of view.
PIAGET AND INHELDER came up with the 3 mountain task- a child is asked to walk around a model and then asked from e.g. the dolls persepctive what they can see. Finidngs found that the children said what they could see and not what the doll could see. However their are issues with this study- Using more familiar objects such as trees and houses and allowing children to move the doll rather than look at images showed that children as young as 4 years could identify the perspectives correctly.
Study into egocentrism (GERGELY ET AL) via rational imitation which is when the child repeats an action they think the adult intended to do rather than what they did- e.g study where they watched mother turn off the light with their head with hands tied and not tied - when hands were tied the child used their hands as they infered its not what was intended to do (copied after a weeks delay)
Also tested through levels of sympathy - children as young as 18 months watched strangers with no emotional in a hurtfull situation (another stealing off them) and showed symptahy towards them- this goes against piaget
Animism
Another limitation to this stage of development is children thinking inanimate objects have emotions- for example if they drop their teddy the teddy will be in pain or the clouds are sad when it rains. Piaget tested this using verbal questions e.g. if you pricked a stone would it feel it.
here Piaget thought that egocentric thinking stops them from accomodating as they cannot add new ideas ir adapt their schemas.
Critisisms to Piaget here is that he used unfamiliar objects and relied on verbal justifications. research has shown that 6 - 12 months can sort images of inanimate objects and animate objects (MANDLER AND MCDONALD).
And at 2.5 years children will attribute wishes and emotions to humans and animals but never to objects.
Intuitive thought substage
4-7 years. shift in childs reasoning - begin to order, classify, quantifiy in a more systematic order but it is still based on perception and intuition rather than rational thinking.
Seriation tasks- putting things into logical order- PIAGET found children ordering lengths of sticks will do so wrong - but it is argued that this is due to memory capacity not logical reasoning ability
TRANSITIVE INFERENCES- logical inferences based off previous knowledge
BRYANT AND TRABSSO- shwoed 4 year olds can make inferences as long as they are trained to remember the information (making sure its not a memory task as well)- 4-6 year olds could do the hardest transittive question.
Hierarchical seperation tasks- class inclusion
Another limitation to preoporational stage e.g. roses and tulips- they can identify there are more roses than tulips but when asked if there are more roses than flowers they would say flowers.
MARKMAN AND SIEBERT found asking simpler questions showed that 4 year olds could correctly answer this- for example asking if someone holding the roses or someone holding the bunch of flowers had more.
Another challenge to PIAGET view that children make judgments based off how they appear- being told birds are warm blooded and dinosaurs and cold blooded and saying a labelled dinosaur although looks more like a bird is cold blooded.
BLEWITT also found that y the age of 2 children were able to categorize into a simple and complex level.
Conservation tasks
Objects remain the same despite their position/ size/ shape. LIQUID TEST- CLAY TEST- COUNTER TEST- LENGTH OF STICKS- (PIAGET’S CONSERVATION TASKS)
In western cultures children begin to conserve at the age of 6 and 7 but not conserve weight and mass until 9 and 11. as volume is seen as the hardest conservation task.
DONALDSON questioned this as he argued maybe they answer wrong due to how the question is asked- for example the child may wonder why they are asking the same question and so answer that one is longer as they expect there to be a different answer as why else would they ask again. MCGARREL AND DINALDSON used a ‘naughty teddy’ which messed up the counters and children were more likely to get it right as the child has less expectation that a change has actually taken place due to physical manipulation.
ROCHEL GELMAN- ‘the magic mice paradigm’ 3 year old’s were shwon a plpate of 2 mice and 3 mice and then covered with a sheet asked which one ‘won’ or ‘lost’ and they identified the plate holding 3 mice was the winner. They changed numbers on the plate lfited the cover and children saw a change had taken place and piaget would think they would pick based on row length but GELMAN found that when the 3 mice was simply pushed togetehr to represent the spacing between the 2 they still identified correctly showing that children conserve much earlier.
The appearance- reality distinction
RHETA DEVRIES- allowed a child to play with a cat called ‘Maynard’ initially all children were saying it was a cat- they then covered Maynard face with a dog mask and asked what they saw and most 3 year old’s said they saw a dog so saw the cats appearance not reality as it was still actually a cat. Whilst 4/5 year old’s did not think it was a dog they still did not answer correctly. 6 year old’s all answered correctly.
JHON FLAVELL had similar findings by showing children objects that looked like one thing but in reality was another e.g. a rock that was a sponge. They were asked ‘what does it look like’ ‘what is it really for’ and 4/5 year olds answered saying it looked like a rock but really its a sponge but 3 year olds answered incorectly in a phenomenism (children report only appearance) manner i.e. say object looks like a sponge and is a sponge OR in a realism error i.e. object looks like a rock and is really a rock. Concluded 3 year olds are not sufficient at dual encoding.
DeLoache- showed 2.5 could not but 3 year olds do possess the ability to represent an object in more than one way at the same time. They were shown a model that provided information about current location of a hidden object. Children recieved an orientation task where relation between the model( model of the room)and ful size room is pointed out. They saw experimenter hide a small snoopy dog in the model and told them it was hidden in the same place in the full size room. to succeed at the task children must understand the relation between the model and full size room.
Research has shown is may be the fact that 3 year olds cannot verbalize what they think and the questions such as what really does it do confuses them but when asked to respond physically they got it right,
