Piaget's Stages Of Intellectual Development

Question 1

Sensorimotor Stage 0-2yrs

Answer 1

• Baby’s focus is on physical sensations and basic coordination between what they see and their body movement. Learn via trial and error
• Learn to co-ordinate sensory input (what they see) with motor actions (with hand movements) through circular reactions where they repeat same actions to test sensorimotor relationships
• babies come to understand that other people are separate objects and they acquire some basic language
• around 8 months, they develop object permanence,

Question 2

Object Permanence

Answer 2

• the understanding that objects still exist when they’re out of sight
• prior to 8 months, babies lost interest in an object once they can’t see it and no longer aware of its existence
• after 8 months children continue to look for the object, this suggests that children understand that objects continue to exist when removed from view

Question 3

Pre-Operational Stage 2-7 yrs

Answer 3

• Conservation
• Egocentricism
• Class Inclusion

Question 4

Conservation

Answer 4

The basic mathematical understanding that quantity remains constant even when appearance of object changes.
This is due to childs reliance on perceptual rather than logic based reasoning i.e. based on the appearance of a situation rather than reality

Question 5

Number Conservation

Answer 5

two rows of counters side by side. Children were able to reason that there was the same no. of counters each row, however when counters were pushed together, children struggled to conserve; said there was less counters

Question 6

Egocentrism

Answer 6

Children only see the world from their position and are not aware of other perspectives

Question 7

Three Mountain Task

Answer 7

• shown 3 model mountains each with different feature
• a doll placed where it faced from different angle to child
• Child is asked what doll would see in which they found difficult to answer if not from their own

Question 8

Class Inclusion

Answer 8

an advanced classification skill, ability to recognise that objects fall into categories. Pre-operational children struggle to place things in more than one class

Question 9

Class Inclusion: ‘ Are there more dogs or animals’ task?

Answer 9

• children under 8 tended to respond that there were more dogs
• shows that younger children couldn’t simultaneously see a dog as a member of the dog class and animal class

Question 10

Concrete Operational Stage 7-11yrs

Answer 10

• Children have mastered conservation which provides evidence of the child’s command of logical operations
• Are improving on eocentricism and class inclusion
• better reasoning abilities but strictly on concrete operations
• struggle to reason about abstract ideas and imagine situations they cannot see

Question 11

Concrete Operations

Answer 11

the ability of only able to reason or operate on physical objects in the child’s presence

Question 12

Formal Operations Stage 11+yrs

Answer 12

• children capable of formal reasoning, so they’re able to focus on the form of an argument and not be distracted on content
• capable of scientific reasoning and become able to appreciate abstract ideas
• can solve abstract problems via hypothetico - deductive reasoning
• display idealistic thinking
• tested by syllogisms

Question 13

Hypothetico- deductive reasoning

Answer 13

thinking like a scientist

Question 14

Idealistic Thinking

Answer 14

imagine how things might be if certain changed are made

Question 15

AO3 - stages based on tests that may lack validity

Answer 15

• McGarrigle et al found that in a number conservation task, if the counters were moved accidentally, 72% of children under 7 correctly said the number was same
• this suggests that Piaget’s method may have led the children to think something must have changed so Piaget may have underestimated the conservation ability of children aged 4-6 years
• this therefore suggests that this age group could conserve, it just depended on the way the question was suggested meaning that Piaget was wrong about the conservation in the pre operational stage

Question 16

AO3 - Limitation is Piaget views that intellectual development as a single process

Answer 16

• Studies of children with autism suggest that intellectual abilities may develop independently as such children are typically very egocentric but develop normal reasoning and language
• these findings support a domain specific rather than a general view of development
• this therefore suggests that the assumption of Piaget’s theory being domain general may not be valid for all examples of development