3. Piaget's Theory (21 cards)

Philosophical bases of Piaget's theory

Constructivism (child actively builds knowledge), interactionism (through action on the environment), Kantian structuralism (innate organizing structures), and biological adaptation (assimilation, accommodation, equilibration).

Piaget's four core processes

Schemas (mental frameworks); assimilation (fitting new info into existing schema); accommodation (changing schema to fit new info); equilibration (drive to balance the two).

Assimilation (Piaget)

Incorporating new information into an existing schema without changing the schema. e.g., a child calls all men "daddy."

Accommodation (Piaget)

Changing an existing schema to fit new information that doesn't fit. e.g., child learns "daddy" refers only to their father.

Equilibration (Piaget)

The driving force of cognitive development — the motivation to resolve conflict between assimilation and accommodation, restoring cognitive balance.

Sensorimotor stage (Piaget)

Birth to ~2 years. Intelligence is action-based. Ends with object permanence and beginnings of mental representation. Six sub-stages. Key milestone: deferred imitation and symbolic play at end.

Object permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when out of sight. Piaget said ~8 months; Baillargeon's violation-of-expectation research showed signs at 3–4 months.

Criticism of the sensorimotor stage

Piaget underestimated infant competence. Baillargeon's violation-of-expectation paradigm shows object permanence at 3–4 months — far earlier than Piaget's methods revealed.

Preoperational stage (Piaget)

~2–7 years. Symbolic thinking and language emerge. Limitations: egocentrism; lacks conservation; centration; animism; irreversibility.

Egocentrism (Piaget)

Child cannot take another person's perspective. Demonstrated in the three-mountains task. Criticized: Hughes' policeman doll task shows perspective-taking is possible earlier in simpler contexts.

Conservation (Piaget)

Understanding that quantity stays the same despite perceptual changes. Lacking in preoperational stage. Criticized: McGarrigle & Donaldson's naughty teddy study showed younger children conserve when task language is simplified.

Centration

Preoperational child focuses on only one dimension of a situation at a time (e.g., height of water, ignoring width). Contributes to failure on conservation tasks.

Criticism of the preoperational stage

Egocentrism and lack of conservation are overstated. Simpler, more ecologically valid tasks (Hughes; McGarrigle & Donaldson) reveal earlier competence.

Concrete operational stage (Piaget)

~7–11 years. Logical operations possible but only with concrete objects. Masters conservation, classification, seriation, reversibility, and transitive inference.

Criticism of the concrete operational stage

Logical ability is domain-specific and depends on content familiarity, not a global logical structure. Cross-cultural studies show variation in when conservation is passed.

Formal operational stage (Piaget)

~11 years+. Abstract, hypothetical, and deductive reasoning. Systematic scientific thinking (isolating variables). Criticized: not universal — schooling and culture play a major role (Cole & Scribner).

Criticism of the formal operational stage

Many adults never fully achieve formal operations, or only in domains of expertise. Cross-cultural evidence (Cole & Scribner) shows schooling — not just biology — drives abstract reasoning.

Major criticisms of Piaget's theory (overview)

Underestimated infant/child competence; stages not abrupt; neglected social/cultural factors (Vygotsky); formal operations not universal; undervalued language; clinical interview had demand characteristics.

Vygotsky vs. Piaget

Vygotsky argued cognitive development is socially mediated — learning happens through interaction with others (ZPD, scaffolding), not through solo discovery. Piaget treated the child as a lone scientist.

Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

The distance between what a child can do alone and what they can do with guidance from a more capable other. Learning is most effective within this zone.

Scaffolding

Support provided by a more skilled person that allows a learner to accomplish a task they couldn't do alone; gradually withdrawn as competence grows.