piaget's stages of intellectual development

Question 1

what are the 4 main cognitive abilities that all children acquire as they go through the stages of intellectual development?

Answer 1

object permeance, class inclusion, egocentricism and conservation

Question 2

what age range is the sensorimotor stage?

Answer 2

0-2 years

Question 3

what age range is the pre operational stage?

Answer 3

2-7 years

Question 4

what age range is the concrete operational stage?

Answer 4

7-11 years

Question 5

what age range is the formal operational stage?

Answer 5

11 years and above

Question 6

what happens during the sensorimotor stage?

Answer 6

the child focuses on physical sensations - basic actions like sucking, grasping, looking and listening.
They develop a basic use of language and by trial and error learn that they can move objects.
Develops object permeance - the understanding that objects still exist when they are out of sight, and learns that objects are seperate to humans/ people

Question 7

At what age does object permeance develop?

Answer 7

8 months

Question 8

How did piaget conclude what age object permeance develops?

Answer 8

He observed babies and noticed that before 8 months, they would not continue looking for an object that moved past their visual field, but after 8 months, they would continue to look for the object even when they cannot see it in thier visual field.

Question 9

what do children do in the pre-operational stage?

Answer 9

• They can use language (becomes more sophisticated) but lack reasoning, so display some classical faults in reasoning.
• They develop the cognitive abilities of class inclusion, egocentricism and convservation.

Question 10

what is egocentism?

Answer 10

A childs tendency to only be able to see the world from their own point of view/ perspective. This applies to both physical objects and in social situations (only apreciating their own side of the argument)

Question 11

what test was used to research into egocentrism with objects?

Answer 11

piaget and inhelder (1956) conducted the three mountains task. children in the pre operational stage were exposed to 3 mountains, topped with different objects - snow, a cross and a house. A doll was faced opposite the child, and they had to match images of the mountains to what they thought the doll could see. It was found that the majority of children recounted their own viewpoint as they could not understand that the doll would have a different view to what they could see.

Question 12

what is class inclusion?

Answer 12

it is the cognitive ability to appreciate that a group of objects can form a class, and the same group can be a subset of an even larger group.

Question 13

what did Piaget and Inhelder (1964) find out about class inclusion?

Answer 13

They found that children under the age of 7 stuggle with the more advanced skill of class inclusion - understanding that classifications have subsets.
When they showed 7-8 year old children pictures of 5 dogs and 2 cats and asked if there were more dogs or animals, they answered that there were more dogs. this showed that younger children cannot see dogs as members of both the ‘dog’ and ‘animal’ class.

Question 14

what is conservation?

Answer 14

the ability to realise that quanity remains the same even when the appearance of an object changes.

Question 15

what did piaget conclude with conservation and how did he reach this conclusion?

Answer 15

He conducted the liquid conservation task. After showing pre-operational children two identical beakers with the same volume of liquid in, they poured the contents of one into a taller, thinner beaker. children thought that there was more liquid in the taller beaker, despite watching it be poured in from the identical beaker.

He also conducted a number conservation experiment. He placed two identical rows of counters side by side, and all children guessed that there was the same number of counters in both rows. He then pushed the counters in one row closer together, and children in the pre-operational stage said that there were less counters in this row.

These demonstrate how children in the pre-operational stage do not understand the concept of ‘reversibility’ - the idea that an operant can be reversed, and the state of an object can be returned to normal.

Question 16

What happens in the concrete operational stage?

Answer 16

Children develop their skills of egocentism, class inclusion and conservation.
Children can only reason about objects physically in their present environment (concrete operational) so they still stuggle with abstract ideas and imagining ideas they cannot physically see.

Question 17

what happens in the formal operational stage?

Answer 17

Children are capable of formal reasoning, as they are able to focus on the form of an argument, and not be distracted by its content.
Children become capable of scientific thinking because they can reason abstract ideas. This was tested by Smith et al, through the use of sylolligisms. An example is ‘all cats have yellow heads. i have a yellow cat called charlie. how many heads does charlie have?’.The correct answer is ‘two’ but piaget found that younger children would get distracted by the content and argue that cats do not really have two heads.
Children in this stage can use deductive reasoning from a general idea to specific information.

Question 18

give a weakness of piaget’s stages of intellectual development theory

Answer 18

flawed experimental methods - it has been suggested that children taking part in his conservation experiments were influenced by seeing the experimenter change the appearance of the counters/liquid. this made them more likely to say that the amount has changed because they watched it happen, and then were asked if it had changed (leading questions)
McGarrigle and Donaldson conducted similar experiments where they had a ‘naughty teddy’ that accidentally moved the counters, and 72% of children said that there was the same amount as before.

Question 19

give another limitation of the stages of intellectual development

Answer 19

conflicting emperical evidence on children’s ability to decentre:
piaget believed that young children were only able to see the world from their own, personal perspective,and that the ability to decentre/ see the world from mulitple viewpoints grew with age.
HOWEVER, Martin Hughes(1975) conducted a smilar experiment to the 3 mountains task where children had 3 dolls (a boy and two police officers) and they had to place the boy where neither police officers could see him. They found that 3 1/2 year olds were able to do this 90% of the time when there was one police officer, and 4 year olds could do this 90% of the time when there was 2 police officers to hide the doll from. This suggests that sensorimotor children are able to conserve, and it is likely that Piaget’s original experiment was too complicated for 2-3 year olds to understand.

Question 20

whats another limitation of piaget’s stages of intelelctual development?

Answer 20

He focused on a general approach to understanding intellectual development and viewed that intellectual and cognitive abilities all developed at the same time and rate, with no ability being more important than the other.
This contrasts with Vygostky, who’s approach was domain-specific approach where cognitive abilities such as language were seen as more important than others, as his approach focused on learning being a social approach, so language was needed for this.
A more interactionist approach would be better adopted, as piaget’s approach is hard to generalise to children as it can be seen as too vague.