Piaget's theory of cognitive development Flashcards
What did Piaget believed in?
Children constructed for their learning through active engagment, trying out actions and seeing what effects they had
What was the key idea of Piaget?
Maturation
Piaget asserted that children did not know less than adults , they just reason differently
Maturation is the key to how children’s thinking changes - it is not just a matter of learning more
Piaget also looked over at children’s learning
- role of motivation in development
- The question of how knowledge develops
What are the 6 builiding blocks?
- Schemas
- Operations
- Disequilibrium
- Equilibrium
- Assimilation
- Accomadation
What are schemas?
This is a mental idea of knowledger and information. These are ‘programmes’ built for interacting with the world
Cognitive development includes the construction of increasingly detailed schema
Children are born with few schema but constructured new ones during infancy , including ‘me-schema’ - knowledge about themseleves
As adults we build schema for people, objects, physical actions and also for abstract ideas like justice or morality
What is an example of a schema?
Knowing which objecys are edible
What is disequilibrium?
When a child cannot make sense of their world because existing schema is insufficient - met through a lot of changes
They feel a sense of disequilibrium, which is uncomofrtable
To escape this, adapt to a new situation the child explores and learns - state of equilibrium
They cannot assimilate
What is an example of disequilibrium?
When a child moves to an entirely new country
What is equilibrium?
Equilibrium is a pleasant state of balance and occurs when experiences in the world match the state of our current schema
using existing schema ( assimilarion)
What is an example of equilibrium?
They use an existing schema to deal with new information through assimilation
What is assimilation?
This involes using existing schema to deal with new information
It takes place when the new experience does radically change our understanding of the schema so we incoporate the new experience in existing schema
An example of assimilation
- When a child with dogs at home meets another dog of a different breed, child will simply add the new dog to their dog-schema (assimilation)
- When baby is given a toy car, they grasp and suck on it like they did before with rattle
What is assimilation associated with?
Equilibrium
What is accomdation?
An experience is that very different from our current state cannot be assimilated (cannot use existing schema)
. It involves the creation of new schema /change to existing
An example of accomdation
- A child pets caats who has not come across dogs (no dog schema) on meeting a dog will incorpate the dog into cat schema
- When dog acts differently (e.g sitting when told and barking), child needs to do something dramatic than assimilation
- Child will accomdate by forming a separate dog-schema
- Both development and equilibrium take place
What is operations?
Combination fo two simple actions as child matures
e,g combine two actions of grasping and shaking
What are the four stages of cognitive development?
Sensorimeter period (0-2)
Pre-operational stages (2-7)
Concentrete operations (7-11)
Formal operations (11+)
What age is the sensorimeter period?
0-2
What is the characteristic of sensorimeter period?
A baby’s focus on physical sensations and basic coordinate between what they see and their body movements - trial and error method
They also come to understand other people as separate objects and acquire basic language
Develop object permance
What is object permance?
Understanding thar objects still exist when they are out of sight
Object permance ages
- Before 8 months , children immediately switch their attention away from object when its out of sight
- After 8 months the children will continue to look for it. Suggest that children then understand that object continue to exist when removed from view
What is concentret operations?
Children have masrerred conversation (tested by pouring water from wider glass to tall one)
They perform better on tasks involving egocentrism and class inclusion
However, still have some reasoning prboelsm - only able to reason or operate on physical objects in their presence (concentrete operations)
Only had operations in using existing schema on physical objects
They struggle to imagine objects
What is pre-operational stages?
The baby is active in its movement and apply basic language skills - around 2 years old
However, they lack reasoning abilities so display more errors in this area
What is egocentrism?
Tested using three mountains (Piaget and Inhelder 1956)
Children were shown three model mountains each with a different feature
Pre-opertionalised children tended to find it difficult to picture that showed a view other than their own
This is the skill in which seeing the world from another perspective
When does pre-opertionalised stage develop?
2-7 years
What do pre-opertionalised children also lack?
Convservation
Basic mathematical understanding that the quantity will stay the same even when appearence stays the same
Egocentrism
Class inclusion - underatand classify objects into different types of categories
What is a skill they do develop during pre-opertionalised stage?
Animisim
Belief that objects are inmate and have feelings
How is class inclusion tested?
Uisng picture of five dogs and two cats asking’Are there more dogs or animals?’
Children under 8 years old (pre-opertionalised) say they are more dogs (Piaget and Inhelder 1964)
They cannot simultaneously see dog as a member of dog class and animal class
When does concentrete operations develop?
7-11
What is formal operations?
Developed a good abstract reasoning
Being able to think beyond the here and now
Focus on formed arguement and not distracted by content
e.g process syllogisms ‘ All yellow cats have two heads’. I have a yellow cat called Charlie. How many heads does the cat have?
Answer - two
Younger children are distracted by the fact that cats have more than two heads
What is the age when formal operations develop?
11+
A limitation of Piaget’s theory
Class inclusion ability was questioned
- Sieger and Sventia found out that 5 -year old recieved feedback that pointed out subsets they did develop an understanding of class inclusion
- This was contray to Piagrt belief that class inclusion was not possible until a child has reached a necessary intellutcal development of 7 years old
- This again questions the validity of Piaget’s stages
A limitation
Underestimate the role of people
- Piaget recongised teacher are important for setting up discovery situations for children but for other theories suggest that the role of others in learning is more central
- e.g Vygotsky argued that learning is more of a social process and more advanced learning is possible by the help of others
- Suggest that Piaget’s theory is somehow limited to the explanation of cognitive development process
A second limtiation
Full role of language is not acknowledged
- To Piaget’s language is just a cognitive ability that develops in line with other abilites
- Other researchers such as Vygotsky have placed a lot more importance on language development suggesting it is more crucail for broader cognitive development
- If language is central to learning and it is not fully examined in the theory, theory lacks validity
A strength of Piaget
revolutionised teaching
- Activity - orientated clasrooms allow children to learn in a more natural way. The children engage in tasks allowing them to construct their understanding of cirriculmun
- E.g early year’s classrooms is focused on play and discovering new aspects of the world
- Strength as it has a positive impact on education and continue to seek out active ways of learning
Grace’s family has a pet budgerigar named Yorkie.
Grace likes to sit next to his cage and watch him flap his wings and crack seeds pods with beak.
Grace knows that Yorkie is a bird as he has wings, a beak and feathers.
She can now identify other birds who come in her garden and use the bird feeder as they can share similar features and behaviours to Yorkie
She calls out ‘birdie’ whenever she spots one in a garden
One day Grace’s grandparents took her at the zoo.
She is fascinated by the penguins but doesn’t call out birdie when seeing them
Granddad explained that they are birds as they have feathers and a farm of wings but they are suited to the water,
Next time they visit the zoo, Gracie shouts ‘birdie’ when seeing penguins
Gracie has used a schema to develop the knowledge Yorkie is a bird and justifying it with wings and a beak
She now use assimilation with a schema when she calls out ‘birdie’ because they have similar features and use existing schema
When she goes to zoo, she doesn’t call out birdie as information of a penguin doesn’t have the ‘wings’ that are in the existing schema - causes disequilibrium as they can’t fly
She uses accomdation as changes understanding of schema in grandfather’s explanation (for next time)
Beaker experiment
Piaget and Inhelder
- Piaget’s theory is supproted by findings
- This involved children showing two equal amounts of substance and assumed if they were the same
- Then transformed their appearnece by pouring one into a tall glass
- Provides support for his theory as pre-operationalised children would claim that the tall beaker had more ‘juice’. This shows that conversation hasn’t developed yet
Objects moving down a slope experiment
- Howe e tal (1992) put 9-12 year olds in a group to discuss how objects move down a slope
- They found that the level of children’s knowledge and understanding increased after discussion
- Crucially, children did not reach the same conclusion or factual knowledge.
- This supports the Piaget’s idea of learning through forming mental representations
Key experiment
Piaget and Inhelder
Cardboard shapes - Cardboard shapes
- This experiment found children given three cardboard shapes
- Asked which shape the doll would see and pick out of 10 pictures
- They show that children under seven years wasn’t able to see from the doll’s viewpoint
- They made up showing their own view point of the doll
- Concluding young children are egocentric
Outline and evaulate Piaget’s research into object permance
AO1
- Piaget uses the term object permance in building blocks - define
- This exists around the ages of 8-9 months
- His aim was to investigate at what age children develop object permance
- Demonstrated in toy and cloth study by hidding toy in front of child
- Findings - found that infants searched about hidden toy around 8 months old
- Conclusion - Children around 8 months formed mental representation about the object
Outline and evaulate Piaget’s research into object permance
A03
- His theory was based on the ideas how his own children developed. This is shown from a Western perspective and has a different traditiional view. They have no multicultral evidence. Piaget should use produce and collect multicultral data
- Piaget has each ability forming at a certain age. He has not considered the enivnromental side of how each skill has developed. Therfore, it questions its findings and validity. Therefore, Piaget should take an interactionist side
What to include in essay of
‘Discuss Piaget’s theory of cognitive development’
- Only name schema, building blocks , operations , assimilation , accomdation, equilibrium, disequilibrium
- Cogntiive development stages - name of stage, age , description
