Piaget - Underestimation Of Pre-Op Child

Question 1

Why is identification of of specific milestones that highlight what children are capable of doing at different ages such a core concern with developmental psychology?

Answer 1

The dictate how teachers, doctors, educators deal with them.

Question 2

What do the critics believe the methodology flaws in Piaget’s cognitive theory lead to?

Answer 2

Issues with measurement sensitivity

Question 3

Where do these issues from critics stem from?

Answer 3

Initial interpretations about what Piaget was looking to achieve:

• age of acquisition interpretation (not good).
• differentiation over time interpretation (what should be looked at)

Question 4

What are the two interpretation models of Piaget’s cognitive theory?

Answer 4

Age of acquisition (AOA)

Differentiation over time (DOT)

Question 5

What are the kinds of critiques made of the Piaget theory in general?

Answer 5

Characterises development negatively
Doesn’t consider social FACTORS.
Mainly it underestimates the competence of the pre-operational child.

Question 6

In what two ways do critiques modify Piaget’s competence tests?

Answer 6

Change in methodology

Or a change in assessment

Question 7

What was Brainerd, 1977’s pet peeve?

Answer 7

Verbal expression was not part of Piaget’s definition of concrete operational ability
Judgements-only-based criterion
Control the strategies used to obtain those judgements

Sensitive indicator of competence

Question 8

What is the example of indirect assessment?

Answer 8

Class Inclusion, which Hodkin (1987) undertook.

Question 9

What are the 3 strategies used to solve a class inclusion task

Answer 9

Class inclusion (competence)
Subclass comparison (always leads to wrong answers)
Guessing

Question 10

How did Hodkin account for estimating guessing?

Answer 10

He included a forth question (superordinate class vs subclass)

Question 11

What stick always remains out of sight in the standard procedure task by Piaget?

Answer 11

The 3rd stick.

Question 12

Why do children fail transitivity tasks?

Answer 12

Because they FORGET THE PREMISE of a transitivity problem before they can make the inference - thus precautions need to take place to PREVENT DEFICITS OF MEMORY. (It’s not because they can’t reason).

(BRYANT & TRABASSO, 1971)

Question 13

Who compared the two different transitivity tasks?

Answer 13

Chapman & McBride 1992

Question 14

In the transitivity task - what non operation structure was being used to provide a functional solution?

Answer 14

Spatial information,

Question 15

In which other competencies measurements can critiques be found?

Answer 15

Conservation, representation of space and time.

Question 16

The fact that children do better on the modified task, does not imply…

Answer 16

That this is a more sensitive indicator of a competence.

Question 17

Why was this change crucial for critiques? And what was essential for Piaget?

Answer 17

For critiques, it was important to remove anything that may interfere with the competence being judged, but for Piaget it was important to maintain these aspects, as to not be in a situation where TRUE BELIEFS ARE MISTAKEN FOR NECCESSARY KNOWLEDGE.

Question 18

What was Piaget’s theory intended to do?

Answer 18

It was intended to show an appreciation for the invariant sequences of development, in which new structures are grown out of and are built upon existing ones. This is known as the differentiation over time interpretation.

Question 19

What was Piaget’s theory not intended to do?

Answer 19

It was not intended to be interpretated from an age of acquisition perspective. As age was not regarded a defining criteria within his model. It was not intended to illustrate at what age a competence is first enquired.