Piaget's stages of development

Question 1

summary of Piaget’s stages of development

Answer 1

the stages reflect the increasing sophistication of their thoughts
the sequence in which the stages are acquired is universal across cultures and they follow the same invariant order, however, children don’t go through the stages at the same rate

Question 2

assumptions about children’s intelligence

Answer 2

children and adult intelligence differ in terms of quality rather than quantity (children see the world and think differently)

children actively rather than passively build up their knowledge about the world

Question 3

Piaget’s research

Answer 3

naturalistic and controlled observations of his 3 kids where he wrote diary descriptions charting their development

clinical observations and interviews of older children who were able to understand more complex questions and hold conversations

Question 4

name the 4 stages of development

Answer 4

sensorimotor stage
preoperational stage
concrete operational stage
formal operational stage

Question 5

sensorimotor stage

Answer 5

0-2 years
infant learns about the world through their senses and actions
- object permanence
- self recognition (body schema?)
- deferred imitation
- representational play
- ability to represent the world mentally

Question 6

object permanence

Answer 6

cognitive ability to appreciate that an object continues to exist even when the individual cannot see it anymore, this requires ability to form a schema- a mental representation of the object

Question 7

object permanence research

Answer 7

once 8 months years old, children begin to search for objects even after it has passed out of their visual field

Question 8

preoperational stage

Answer 8

2-7 years
because they only just started to develop these cognitive abilities, they are unable to learn ‘concrete’ subjects which require abstract reasoning i.e. science
- symbolic thought
- not yet capable of logical thought and problem solving
- animism
- egocentrism

Question 9

animism

Answer 9

the tendency for infants to think that inanimate objects have life and feelings

Question 10

egocentrism

Answer 10

the tendency of preoperational children to only view the world from their perspective both physically and socially (by only considering their side of the argument in social situations)

Question 11

egocentrism research

Answer 11

(for physical egocentrism)

Piaget and Inhelder’s 3 mountain task

Question 12

Piaget and Inhelder’s 3 mountain task

Answer 12

preoperational children shown 3 mountains, topped with different objects such as a cross, a house or snow

a doll was placed so that it sat facing the opposite side of the mountains

the children then had to use images to show what they thought the doll could see

most recounted their own viewpoint demonstrating that they can only see the world from their perspective and were egocentric

Question 13

concrete operational stage

Answer 13

7-11 years

• logical thought
• class inclusion
• conservation
• reduced egocentrism
• ability to mentally reverse things
• think logically about concrete events

Question 14

class inclusion

Answer 14

the ability to appreciate that a group of objects can form a class, and that these can be subsets of larger groups

Question 15

class inclusion research

Answer 15

Piaget and Inhelder

Question 16

Piaget and Inhelder

Answer 16

showed 7-8 year old pictures of 5 dogs and 2 cats, and then asked them if there were more dogs or animals

most replied saying that there were more dogs, demonstrating that preoperational children struggle to understand that objects can belong to numerous classes

Question 17

conservation

Answer 17

the ability to appreciate that the quantity of an object remains the same even if it’s appearance changes

Question 18

conservation research

Answer 18

liquid conservation task

Question 19

liquid conservation task

Answer 19

after the preoperational children were shown 2 identical beakers and the liquid in one was poured into a taller thinner beaker

most would report that the taller one contained more liquid

also demonstrates that reversibility is not understood at this age which is the ability to recognise that an operant can be reversed and an object’s state return to it’s original

Question 20

reduced egocentrism

Answer 20

can consider how others might think and feel

Question 21

formal operational stage

Answer 21

11+ years
- scientific reasoning
- ability to reason about abstract ideas and hypothetical problems as thoughts are entirely freed from physical and perceptual constraints
(research by Smith et al using neologisms)