Piaget’s Theory

Question 1

Piaget believed that cognitive development was a result of what 2 influences?

Answer 1

Biological Maturation - effects of biological processes of ageing
As children get older, certain mental operations become possible
Environment - as children interact with their environment, their understanding of the world becomes more complex

Question 2

What is a schema?

Answer 2

Cognitive frameworks that contain our knowledge and understanding of objects, people or ideas
Children are born with basic innate schemas such as a me-schema (representation of the human face)

Question 3

What is assimilation?

Answer 3

The process of incorporating new information into an existing schema

Question 4

What is accommodation?

Answer 4

Occurs when a child changes or adapts an existing schema to understand new information that doesn’t seem to fit into existing knowledge

Question 5

What is equilibration?

Answer 5

The preferred mental state
Balance that occurs after a child has learnt new information that they have to accommodate for

Question 6

AO3: understanding of cognitive development ✅

Answer 6

P: one strength of Piaget’s theory is its contribution to our understanding of cognitive development
E: Piaget’s theory combines both nature and nurture to explain how thinking changes with age
E: it has also changed ideas about children, has had an influence of educational practise and has generated much research interest
L: this means that it has provided many valuable insights into how children’s minds develop

Question 7

AO3: discovery learning has had an impact of education ✅

Answer 7

P: one strength is that Piaget’s idea that children learn by actively exploring their environment (discovery learning) has had a huge influence of education
E: young children no longer sit in rows copying from the board. Instead, they engage actively in tasks that allow them to construct their own understanding
E: these child centred applications have changed the way children are taught today
L: this therefore has hopefully made education more effective and enjoyable, increasing the value of discovery learning in education

Question 8

AO3: too much emphasis on motivation ❌

Answer 8

P: Piaget has been criticised for overestimating how motivated children are to learn
E: he viewed learning as a motivated process in which children learn in order to escape the unpleasant feelings associated with disequilibrium
E: however, children vary greatly in their intellectual curiosity, and the children Piaget studied may have been more motivated to learn as they came mainly from the nursery attached to the university
L: this means that his findings may not generalise to all children

Question 9

Name the 4 stages of Piaget’s intellectual development.

Answer 9

Sensorimotor
Preoperational
Concrete operations stage
Formal operations stage

Question 10

What is the sensorimotor stage? (include reasoning ability)

Answer 10

• 0-2 years
• a child lacks internal schemas or representations, they only see the world through their senses and movement
• child repeats actions to test sensorimotor relationships
• object permanece: develops at 8 months, this is when a child is able to recognise that an object still exists even when it can’t be seen

Question 11

What is the research support for object permanence?

Answer 11

Blanket and ball study (Piaget, 1963)
- piaget hid a ball underneath a blanket whilst the child was watching and observed whether the child searched for it or not
- movement = object permanence
- results shows that children 8 months or over showed object permanence, whereas children below 8 months did not

Question 12

AO3: object permanence may happen earlier ❌

Answer 12

P: there is evidence that object permanence may occur earlier than piaget suggested
E: Baillargeon used a technique called violation of expectation (VOE). it exploits the fact that children tend for look longer at things that they haven’t encountered before.
E: the results found object permanence as early as 3 months
L: piagets results may be due to a motivation for the child to find the object or the child may not even have the physical coordination needed necessary to retrieve the object

Question 13

What is the preoperational stage? (include reasoning ability)

Answer 13

• 2-7 years
• children are able to think about things symbolically
• lack of conservation: they cannot understand that a quantity cannot change, even if it’s appearance does
• egocentrism: children can only see the world from their perspective and fail to recognise other peoples perspectives
• lack of class inclusion: young children can classify objects into categories but not sub groups

Question 14

What is research support for conservation and egocentrism?

Answer 14

conservation - piaget (1954): two rows of identical numbers of counters were laid parallel to each other
the child was asked whether the number of counters was the same, then piaget would space out the counters on one row of counters, so they were further apart: the child was then asked the same question
results found that the children with lack of conservation would say the row of counters that were further spaced out had the larger number
egocentrism - three mountain study (piaget 1956): a child and a doll were sat either side of a mountain model, where there were both seeing different objects
the child was then shown a series of photos of the mountain model and was asked which photo looks most similar to the view the doll was seeing
results showed that children in the pre-operational stage picked the photo that was the most similar to their view

Question 15

AO3: conservation must have meaning ❌

Answer 15

McGarrigle and Donaldson (1974) repeated piagets conservation experiment using counters
- when the experiment was repeated, the exact same results were found as piagets original study: children in the pre-operational stage would say the counters that were more spread out had the larger number
- however, when a teddy bear was used instead and messed up the row of counters, 62% of children in the pre-operational age bracket were able to conserve
- it appears that the children in the original experiment assume that the researcher intends to alter the number of counters, or are asking a trick question

Question 16

AO3: three mountain experiment was too confusing ❌

Answer 16

• Hughes et al (1975) repeated the three mountain experiment, using a task that made more sense to young children
• The children were asked to hide a boy doll so one or two police officers could not see him -They found the children as young as 3 1/2 complete the task with one police officer 90% of the time and four-year-olds could do this 90% of the time when there were two police officers
• This suggests that the abstract nature of Piagets task created specific responses that led him to underestimate the cognitive abilities of young children

Question 17

AO3: class of inclusion questions are too confusing ❌

Answer 17

• Donaldson believed that the nature of the question confused the child
• she presented children with 4 toy cows lying on their side, as if they were asleep, 3 of the cows of brown and one was white
• When asked ‘are there more brown cows or white cows?’ children get it right, when asked ‘are there more brown cows or more cows?’ only 25% answer correctly as piaget would’ve predicted
• However when asked ‘are there more brown cows or sleeping cows?’ this percentage doubles
• they are now comparing to subordinate groups, brown cows and sleeping cows and the task becomes easier

Question 18

What is the concrete operations stage?

Answer 18

• 7-11 years
• can think logically, but only about physical objects they can see
• they struggle to think about abstract ideas and to imagine situations and objects they cannot see
• this means the child cannot work things out internally in their heads
• logical reasoning

Question 19

What is the formal operations stage?

Answer 19

• 11+ years
• able to think hypothetically and consider abstract ideas
• they are able to focus on the form of an argument, rather than be distracted by its content
• syllogism, abstract thoughts, hypothesis testing

Question 20

AO3: cultural bias ❌

Answer 20

P: a weakness of piagets intelectual stages is that it may contain cultural bias
E: Piagets european values mean that he may have focused these stages more on the concept of abstract thinking and ideas, as that is a practise in europe
E: however, this idea may not be applicable to children in other cultures that may place more value of concrete operations, such as practical activities
L: these children may have different abilities and therefore not conform to these stages, so they may not be universally applicable

Question 21

AO3: application to education ✅

Answer 21

P: a strength of piagets stages are their valuable application to educational practises
E: for example, abstract mathematical concepts and calculations are difficult to understand for a child below the concrete operations stage, as they have not developed logical thinking
E: piaget explains that this difficulty is due to the child not being biologically ready
L: if true, this suggests that school curriculums may need to be altered accordingly, to make sure that what a child is being taught is being understood

Question 22

AO3: underestimation of pre-operational children ❌

Answer 22

P: evidence suggests that piaget may have undermined children abilities when they are in the pre-operational stage
E: for example, it has been argued that piagets tasks confuse young children and therefore may suffer from demand characteristics
E: When children were tested with an easier tasks of hiding a boy doll from police officers, children as young as 3 and a half could complete the task with 1 police officer 90% of the time, and 4 years old could complete the task with 2 police officers 90% of the time
L: this suggests that the abstract nature of piagets methodology, and the way in which children were questioned was flawed as it created specific responses that led him to underestimate the cognitive abilities of young children