Piaget's theory of intellectual development

Question 1

strength practical application

Answer 1

Piaget’s stage theory has great application to educational settings as it sets out the benchmarks for educators and health professionals to use to assess progress and flag any developmental delays that a child may be experiencing.

Question 2

strength changed understanding of children

Answer 2

Piaget’s stage theory changed the way that researchers think about children i.e. children are not simply smaller versions of adults: the way children think is fundamentally different from the way that adults think

Question 3

weakness
McGarrigle

Answer 3

McGarrigle set up study where counters appeared to be moved by accidents.
in one condition with 4-6 year olds they found the majority answered incorrectly. naughty teddy appeared to knock counters together 72% then said there was same number of counters.
however, in condition where
shows original research may have been flawed as Piaget’s children may be influenced by seeing experimenter change appearance of counters or liquid.
however, not testing full range of 2-7 year olds.

Question 4

weakness
Martin Hughes

Answer 4

tested ability of children to see a situation from two peoples viewpoints using a model with two intersecting walls and three dolls, a boy and two police officers. once familiar with the task children as young as 3.5 able to position baby doll where one police officer could not see him 90% of the time and four year olds could do this 90% of the time with two police officers. shows younger children can perform well on egocentrism tasks.

Question 5

weakness
Siegler

Answer 5

showed that children were capable of understanding class inclusion. Siegler gave 100 5-year olds ten class inclusion tasks receiving an explanation of the tasks after each session. in one condition they received feedback that there must be more animals than dogs because there was 9 animals 6 dogs.
in a different group there was feedback that there must be more animals because the dogs were a subset of animals. scores improved more for the latter group. shows younger children can understand class inclusion.