piaget's stages of intellectual development

Question 1

sensorimotor stage (0-2 years)

Answer 1

• early focus is on physical sensations and developing basic physical co-ordination
• learn by trial and error that they can move their body in particular ways and eventually that they can move objects
• develops an understanding that people are separate objects, aquire some basic language
• by around 8 months, capable of understanding object permanence (that objects still exist when they are out of sight)
• Piaget observed babies looking at objects and watched as the objects were removed from sight
• before 8 months, immediately switched attention away from objects, but after 8 months would look for it

Question 2

pre-operational stage (2-7 years)

Answer 2

• mobile and can use language but lacks adult reasoning ability, display some characteristic errors in reasoning

conservation - basic understanding that quantity remains constant even when appearance of object changes. Piaget placed 2 rows of 8 counters side by side, when counters in one row were pushed closer together, children struggled to conserve.

egocentrism - to see the world only from one’s point of view. Piaget and Inhelder did three mountains task, each mountain had a different symbol. Doll was placed at the side of the model (different perspective), children found it difficult to say which symbol the doll saw, often chose symbol that they saw.

class inclusion - most children understand that objects fall into categories. Piaget and Inhelder found that they struggled with the idea that classifications have subsets. When shown pictures of 5 dogs and 2 cats, and asked if there were more dogs or animals, most children said dogs. Children cannot simultaneously see a dog to fall under the categories of both dogs and animals.

Question 3

stage of concrete operations (7-11 years)

Answer 3

• most children can conserve and perform much better on tasks of egocentrism and class inclusion
• however, reasoning abilities (operations) are strictly concrete, they can only be applied to objects in the child’s presence
• still struggle to reason about abstract ideas and to imagine things they cannot see

Question 4

stage of formal operations (11+)

Answer 4

• become able to focus on the form of an argument and not be distracted by its content
• eg. ‘All yellow cats have two heads. Charlie is a yellow cat. How many heads does he have?’.
• Piaget found that younger children became distracted by content and answered that cats do not really have two heads
• believed that once children can reason formally, capable of scientific reasoning and understanding abstract ideas

Question 5

evaluation limitation - conservation research

Answer 5

• children in studies may have been influenced by seeing the experimenter change the appearance and then asking if it was the same
• McGarrigle and Donaldson did a study where the counters appeared to have moved by accident
• in one condition they replicated the standard Piaget task and found that most children answered incorrectly
• however in another condition a ‘naughty teddy’ came in and knocked the counters, 72% said there was the same amount as before
• this means that children aged 4-6 could conserve, as long as they were not put off by the way they were questioned

Question 6

evaluation limitation - class inclusion research

Answer 6

• findings are contradicted by newer research
• Siegler and Svetina showed that children were capable of understanding class inclusion
• they gave 100 children ten class inclusion tests, in one condition they received feedback that there must be more animals than dogs because there were 9 animals and 6 dogs
• scores across sessions improved more for the latter group, suggesting a real understanding
• Piaget underestimated what younger children could do

Question 7

evaluation limitation - egocentrism research

Answer 7

• Hughes tested ability of children to see a situation from two people’s points of view using a model with two intersecting walls and three dolls (boy and 2 police officers)
• children as young as 3.5 years were able to position the boy doll where one police officer could not see him 90% of the time
• when tested in a scenario that makes more sense, children are able to imagine different perspectives much earlier than Piaget thought