Piaget's stages of intellectual development

Piaget’s Intellectual stages

• according to Piaget each child goes through 4 intellectual stages in the same order

• development through stages is determined by biological maturation and interaction with environment

• stages can’t be missed out - individual differences at rate of progress

Stages

• sensorimotor

• pre-operational

• concrete operational

• formal operational

Sensorimotor

• 0-2 years

• child beginning to interact with environment - senses

• increased physical mobility - crawling, running etc.

• object permanence achieved - child has knowledge that an object still exists even if it hidden

• requires ability to form a mental representation (schema) of the object

object permanence - toy-blanket study

Preoperational

• 2-7 years

• child beginning to think about their world symbolically through mental images

• playing pretend, imagination develops

• an object or word stands for more than itself

• learn to speak

• egocentric thinking

Egocentrism - three mountains task

Conservation (bridging between two stages)

Class inclusion (bridging between two stages)

Concrete Operational

• 7-11 years

• turning point in childs cognitive development marked by the beginning of logical or operational thought

• children can work things out in their head rather than physically trying to do things in the real world

• children understand numbers, mass and weight

• children achieve conservation - the understanding that something stays the same in quantity even though its appearance changes

Class inclusion - cows/beads

Conservation - counters & liquid vessels task

Formal Operational

• 11+ years

• develop the ability to think abstractly about concepts

• begin to logically test hypotheses

• can think beyond the current situation and look to the future

• understand thinking hypothetically as well as scientific reasoning

• e.g. solving algebraic equations

Formal operational thought - third eye problem & pendulum task

AO3 - Piaget’s stage theory

P = One downside of Piaget’s Stage Theory is the fact that intellectual development may not be a singular process as Piaget first thought

EX = Piaget believed that all aspects of cognition development occur together in a sequential process

EV = some research with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder suggested that not all aspects of cognition develop simultaneously. some children with Aspergers are very egocentric but develop normal reasoning and language skills, however, children with other types of ASD may have problems with language and egocentrism - showing that these cognitive skills are developed at different times.

EXT = additionally, children have vast individual differences in their achievements and abilities that may fall outside of Piaget’s stage theory

LB = Therefore, Piaget’s intellectual stages are not a one size fits all theory that can be applied to every child’s intellectual journey

AO3 - Piaget’s Stage theory

P = One issue with Piaget’s stage theory is that he may have underestimated the abilities of younger children

EX = more modern studies have shown that with the right kind of help, children are far more capable than Piaget first suggests

EV = e.g. later studies on egocentrism have found that if children had to locate scenes that were from familiar contects, the children could be less egocentric than the three mountains task suggested

EXT = furthermore, this thinking works alongside Vygotsky’s alternate theory that learning is a social process where the children need the support of expert others

LB = therefore Piaget’s research may have been limited and not fully discovered what children can achieve and when

Object permanence - Sensorimotor stage

• If you place a toy under a blanket, the child who has achieved object permanence knows it is there and can actively seek it

• at the beginning of this sensorimotor stage the child behaves as if the toy had simply disappeared

• attainment of object permanence signals the transition from the sensorimotor stage to the pre-opertional stage

Method

• Piaget hid a toy under a blanket when the child was watching

• he observed if the child searched for the toy or not

• searching for the toy was evidence of object permanence as he assumed that children could only search for a hidden toy if they had a mental representation of it

Results

• found that infants searched for the hidden toy when they were around 8 months old - had object permanence

AO3 - Object permanence research

P = Piaget’s concept of object permanence has been criticised for not considering all reasons behind a child not searching for an object

EX = he assumed that results of his study occur because the children under 8 months did not understand that the object still existed underneath the blanket (and therefore did not search for it)

EV = However, there are alternative reasons why a child may not search for an object. One reason is that the child could become distracted or lose interest in the object and therefore lack the motivation to search for it

EXT = additionally, a child/baby may not have the physical coordination to carry out the motor movements necessary for the retrieval of the object (Mehler and Dupoux, 1994)

LB = this is an issue as it suggest that Piaget’s object permanence research does not consider all possible explanations and is therefore not a fully comprehensive explanation for object permanence

Egocentrism - preoperational stage —> concrete operational stage

• refers to the childs inability to see a situation from another persons point of view

• feature of a preoperational child

• Piaget used the three mountains tasks to test whether children were egocentric

• egocentric children child assumes that other people see, hear and feel exactly the same as the child does

Method

• child sits at table and is presented with three mountains - snow, hut or red cross on top

• child allowed to walk around it and then sit down on one side

• a doll placed at various positions

• child shown 10 photos of mountains taken from different positions and asked to indicate which showed the dolls view

• assumed if the child picked the card with the dolls view, they were not egocentric

Results

• only 7s and 8s consistently chose the correct picture

AO3 - 3 mountains research - didn’t make sense

P = it can be argued that the three mountains tasks did not make sense to children and was made more difficult because the children had to match a doll’s view with a photograph

EV = Hughes (1975) devised a tasks which may have made more sense to a child - he showed the child a model with two intersecting walls, a ‘boy’ doll and a ‘policeman’ doll. He placed the policeman in various positions and asked the child to hide the boy from the policeman

EX = Hughes did this to make sure that the child understood what was being asked of them. If they made a mistake it was explained and the child tried again. The results of the study showed that 90% of the children in the sample (aged 3.5-5 years old) gave the correct answer.

C = on the other hand, it could be argued that this isn’t perspective taking rather this is understanding someone elses physical point of view and doesn’t show that the child can understand someone elses thoughts and feelings

LB = Despite this, this shows that by the time children have reached four years old they have largely lost their egocentric thinking and are able to take the view of another.

Class inclusion - preoperational stage —> concrete operational stage

• Piaget studied children’s ability to classify object

• Piaget’s explanation is that a child is unable to compare class with sub-class he referred to as because of centration

• centration refers to a child’s tendency to only deal with one aspect of a situation at a time

Piaget demonstrated that children in the early pre-operational stage had difficulty answering questions like ‘are there more blue cars or more cars’

• class inclusion refers to the ability to classify objects into two or more categories simultaneously

• it is not until a child can decentre that he can simultaneously compare both the whole and the parts which make up the whole - the child can then understand the relationship between class and sub-class

• they are experiencing centration if they can’t decentre

Method - bead study

• he found that children in the preoperational stage were unable to answer the question ‘are there more brown beads or more wooden beads’

  
  

AO3 = weakness = wording

P = It could be suggested that the way in which Piaget worded his questions prevented the children from understanding the task

EV = McGarrigle designed an experiment that tested Piaget’s explanation that a child is unable to compare class with sub-class because of centration. He used a slightly different version of Piaget’s test and used physical models of cows - three were black, one was white and they were all lying on their sides as if they were sleeping

EX = They were asked ‘are there more black cows or more cows’ and then ‘are there more black cows or sleeping cows’ and it was found that 25% of the children answered Q1 correctly but 48% of the children answered Q2 correctly which suggests that children are capable of understanding class inclusion earlier than Piaget believed.

C = On the other hand, it could be argued that McGarrigle simply made the task easier and children were able to answer the question correctly as the activity was easier to do and not because they understood class inclusion.

LB = McGarrigle concluded that the wording of Piaget’s questions was what prevented the younger children from showing that they understood the relationship between class and sub-class.

Conservation - pre-operational stage —> concrete operational stage

conservation is the ability to understand that the quantity of something remains the same even if its shape or appearance changes

• children in the preoperational stage are able to focus on only one aspect or dimension of problems

• this inability to decentre contributes to the preoperational child’s egocentrism

• the ability to solve this and other ‘conservation’ problems signals the transition to the concrete operational stage

Method - liquid vessel task

• Piaget used liquid conservation tasks to test a child’s understanding of how the amount of liquid in a container remains the same even if its appearance change

• he started with two glasses of the same shape and amount of liquid

• he asked the child if they are the same and then poured the liquid from one glass into a taller, thinner glass

• a child who cannot conserve will assume the taller glass has more liquid than the shorter glass

AO3 - weakness - underestimating - conservation

P = Piaget’s conservation tasks have been criticised for underestimating childrens abilities

EX = One feature of the Piagetian conservation task which may interfere with children’s understanding is that the adult purposely alters the appearance of something, so the child thinks this alteration is important

EV = McGarrigle and Donaldson (1974) devised a study of conservation of number in which the alteration was accidental. When two identical rows of sweets were laid out and the child was satisfied there were the same number in each, a ‘naught teddy’ appeared. Whilst playing around, teddy actually messed up one row of sweets. Once he was safely back in a box the children were asked if there were the same number of sweets.

EX = The children were between 4-6 and more than half gave the correct answer.

C = However, this could simply be down to the individual differences of the children and the fact that they may develop the skill of conservation at different stages.

LB = This suggests that, once again, Piaget’s design prevented the children from showing that they can conserve at a younger age than he claimed.

Formal reasoning - formal operational stage

the formal operational stage is characterised by the ability to formulate hypotheses and systematically test them to arrive at an answer to a problem

• adolescents can now deal with abstract ideas

• Piaget devised several tests of formal operational thought e.g. the third eye problem

• 9 year olds suggested the third eye should be on the forehead

• 11 year olds were more inventive suggesting that a third eye placed on the hand would be useful for seeing round corners

AO3 - formal operational - over-estimated adolescents

P = It could be argued that Piaget overestimated the abilities of adolescents in the formal operational stage

EX = Psychologists who have gone on to replicate this research or used a similar problem, have generally found that children cannot complete the task successfully until they are older

EV = Robert Siegler (1979) gave children a balance beam task in which some discs were placed either side of the center of balance. The researcher changed the number of discs or moved them along the beam, each time seeking the child to predict which way the balance would go. He found that from the age up five upwards, children apply rules that develop in the same sequence as Piaget’s findings

EX = He found that eventually, the children were able to take into account the interaction between the weight of the discs and the distance from the center, and so successfully predicted balance. However this did not happen until participants were between 13 and 17.

LB = He concluded that children’s cognitive development is based on acquiring and using rules in increasingly more compex situations, rather than in stages