Piaget's stages of intellectual development Flashcards
Sensorimotor stage (around 0-2 years)
According to Piaget - baby’s early focus on physical sensations + developing some basic physical co-ordination.
babies learn by trial and error - that they can move their body in particular ways and eventually move other objects.
Baby also develops an understanding during first 2 years that other people are separate objects and they acquire some basic language
Around 8 months - baby is capable of understanding object permanence:
the understanding that objects still exist when they are out of sight
Piaget observed babies looking at objects and watched as the objects were moved out of sight.
Before 8 months, babies immediately switched their attentions away from the object once it was gone
from 8 months, babies continued to look for it - leading Piaget to believe that it was from this age that babies understood that objects continue to exist when removed from view
pre-operational stage (around 2-7 years)
CONSERVATION
basic mathematical understanding that quantity remains constant even when appearance of objects changes - demonstrated by Piaget in a number of situations
1) P placed 2 rows of eight identical counters side by side - even young children correctly reasoned that each row of counters had the same number
but when the counters in one row was pushed closer together, pre-operational children struggled to conserve and usually said there were fewer counters in that row
2) in his liquid conservation procedure Piaget found that when two identical containers A + B were placed side by side with the contents at the same height, most children spotted that they contained the same volume of liquid - but if the liquid poured into a taller, thinner vessel, younger children typically believed there was more liquid in the taller vessel
pre-operational stage (around 2-7 years)
EGOCENTRICISM
egocentrism - to see the world only from one’s own POV
- Piaget working with Inhelder described how egocentrism was demonstrated in the three model mountains - each with a different feature : a cross, house or snow.
A doll was placed at the side of the model so that it faced the scene from a different angle from the child
the child was asked what the doll would ‘see’ from a range of different pictures.
Pre-operational children tended to find this difficult and often chose the picture which matched the scene from their own point of view.
pre-operational stage (around 2-7 years)
CLASS INCLUSION
pre-operational stage children begin to understand classification - that objects fall into categories - so most pre-operational children can classify pugs, bull terriers and retrievers as dogs.
but Inhelder and Piaget found that children under the age of 7 struggle with the more advanced skill of class inclusion - the idea that classifications have subsets
- so when 7-8yrs old were show pictures of five dogs and two cats and asked ‘are there more dogs or animals?’ the children tended to respond that there were more dogs
it was interpreted that this is a meaning that younger children cannot simultaneously see a dog as a member of the dog and the animal class
Stage of concrete operations (around 7-11 years)
Piaget found from age 7 most children can conserve/ perform much better on tasks of egocentrism and class inclusion.
BUT although children now have better externally-verifiable reasoning abilities - what Piaget called operations - these are strictly concrete operations i.e. they can be applied only to physical objects in the child’s presence
they still struggle to reason about abstract ideas and to imagine objects or situations they cannot see.
those more advanced abilities appear in the final stage of formal operations.
Stage of formal operations (11+)
Piaget believed that from around 11, children are capable of formal reasoning - meaning they are able to focus on the form of an argument and not be distracted by its content
formal reasoning can be tested by using the pendulum task and also by means of syllogisms
e.g. ‘all yellow cats have two heads - I have a yellow cat called Charlie, how many heads does she have?’ - correct answer = 2
Piaget found that younger children became distracted by the content and answered that cats do not really have two heads - Piaget believed that once children can reason formally, they are capable of scientific reasoning and become able to appreciate abstract ideas
Limitation - Conservation research (McGarrigle and Donaldson)
Limitation of Piaget’s conclusion about conservation it that the research was flawed.
Children taking part in Piaget’s conservation studies may have been influenced by seeing the experimenter change the appearance of the counters or liquid.
McGarrigle and Donaldson set up a study, the counters appeared to be moved by accident. IN cone condition they replicated the standard Piaget task with 4-6 year olds. Like Piaget, they found most children answer incorrectly.
But in another condition, a ‘naughty teddy; appeared and knocked the counters closer together - now 72% correctly said there were the same number of counters as before.
Means - children aged 4-6 could conserve - as long as they were not put off by the way they were questioned. this could suggest that Piaget was wrong about the age at which conservation happens
Limitation - Class inclusion research (Sielger and Sventina)
Limitation - findings on class inclusion are contradicted by newer research.
Seilger and Sventina gave 100 five year old children from Slovenia ten class-inclusion tasks - receiving an explanation of the task after each session.
In one condition, they recover feedback that there must be more animals than dogs because there were nine animal but only six dogs.
A different group received feedback that there must be more animals because dogs were a subset of animals ( true explanation of class inclusion)
the scores across the sessions improved more for the latter group - suggesting that the children has acquired a real understanding of class inclusion
this means that children under seven can in fact understand class inclusion - contrary to Piaget’s beliefs
so Piaget underestimated what younger children could do.
Limitation - Egocentrism research (Hughes)
Limitation is lack of support for Piaget’s view of egocentrism.
Hughes tested the ability of children to see a situation from tow people’s viewpoints, using a model with two intersecting walls and three dolls, a boy and two police (similar to the mountain task)
Once familiarised with the task, children as young as 3 1/2 were able to position the boy doll where one police officer could not ‘‘see’ him 90% of the time - and four year olds could do this 90% of the time when there were two police officers to hide from.
this means that when tested with a scenario that makes more sense - children are able to decentre and imagine other perspectives much earlier than Piaget proposed.
This suggests Piaget underestimated the abilities of younger children and that his stages are incorrect.
Counterpoint
Issue with all of the limitations explained on this page is that they are criticisms of the age which particular cognitive stage is reached - not criticism of the characteristics of the stage itself.
e.g. Hughes’ pointed out that the children were able to decentre at a younger age than Piaget had claimed
But, it is still the case that this ability is not present in very young children and we can see from Hughes’ research that ability improves with age.
So the core principles of Piaget’s stages remain unchallenged but the methods he used meant the timings of his stages was wrong.
extra - Domain general and domain specific
Piaget believed that intellectual development is a single process and all aspects of cognition develop together.
So language, reasoning and egocentrism all develop pretty much in tandem
But research with autistic children suggests that actually these abilities may develop separately - some autistic children also experience co-occurring learning disabilities - they often face challenges with reasoning , language and egocentrism
but in other autistic children who do not have learning disabilities - these skills develop as they do in non autistic children
YouTube video - notes
assimilation - ‘same schema’
accommodation - ‘change and create’
development moves along in a state of equilibrium - we accommodate to create equilibrium
Class inclusion
The ability to recognise that an object can at the same time be an example of a subordinate group such as an apple, but also an example of a superordinate group such as fruit.
Limitations of object permanence:
- Piaget may have underestimated cognitive ability in relation to object permanence - believed it developed around 8 months but other studies such as the violation of expectation suggests younger infants 3-4 months may have had some awareness
also just because the baby does not search for the object does not mean they don’t know it still exists - they may lack motor skills/ attention span
