Piaget's Stages of Intellectual Development

Define Piaget’s stages of intellectual development

• Piaget’s theory that we develop our intellectual abilities through going sequentially through 4 stages

• Each stage is characterised by different levels of reasoning abilities

What are the four stages of intellectual development and their ages?

1. Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)

2. Pre-operational Stage (2-7 years)

3. Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years)

4. Formal Operational Stage (11+ years)

Give the 4 key features of the sensorimotor stage

• Focus on physical sensations

• Develop basic co-ordination of physical actions

• Understand other people as separate objects

• Object permanence

What is object permanance and at what age does it develop?

• Ability to realise object still exists when out of sight

• 8 months

How did Piaget test for object permanence?

• Observing infants' reactions when an object was presented and then was covered with a blanket or removed from sight

• Infants that had not yet developed object permanence appeared confused/lost interest and did not search for object

• Infants that had developed object permanence reached out for object

What are the 2 key characteristics of the pre-operational stage?

• Language and mobility

• Lacks reasoning so makes characteristic reasoning errors

What are the 3 areas that children in the pre-operational stage characteristic reasoning stage make errors in?

• Conservation

• Egocentrism

• Class-inclusion

What is conservation?

Mathematical understanding that quantity remains the same even when the appearance of the object changes

Give two examples of how Piaget tested for conservation abilities

Liquid conservation

• Children without conservation abilities could not understand that there was the same volume of liquid in 2 glasses (which were different sizes) where the height of one liquid was greater than another

Area conservation

• Children without conservation abilities could not understand that there was the same number of pennies on each row if on one row the pennies were more spread out

What is egocentrism?

The inability to see the world from another person’s point of view

How did Piaget and Inhelder test for egocentrism?

1. Child sits on one side of table opposite doll

2. Model mountains on table

3. Child must describe what they see

4. Child swaps seats with doll

5. Child is asked to describe what the doll can see from its perspective

6. In Piaget and Inhelder’s study child described what they could see themselves, rather than what the doll could see from its perspective

What is class-inclusion?

The ability to recognise that classes of objects have subcategories

Give one way Piaget and Inhelder tested for class-inclusion in pre-operational stage children

Asked 7-8 year olds if there was “More dogs or animals?” in a photo of 5 dogs and 2 cats

What are the 3 key characteristics of the concrete operational stage?

• Ability to perform conservation and class-inclusion tasks

• Improved reasoning abilities when externally verifiable (physical evidence)

• Still struggle with abstract ideas/imagining objects and situations they cannot see

What are the 3 key characteristics of the formal operational stage?

• Becoming capable of formal reasoning

• Reason through things in a scientific way and test out hypotheses

• Reason through abstract ideas

What contradictory research is there for object permanence? Why is this important?

Bower and Wishart (1972)

• Findings: Infants aged 1 to 4 months continued to reach for an object for up to 90 seconds after the lights turned out

• Importance: Baby may have been distracted by the cloth in Piaget’s study, making findings unreliable. Therefore object permanence occurs at a much younger age than Piaget theorised

What contradictory research is there for conservation? Why is this important?

McGarrigle and Donaldson

• Procedure: Replicated conservation with an extra condition where a “naughty teddy” came in and moved counters by accident

• Findings: 72% gave correct answer, showing they did have conservation abilities. When researcher moved counters themselves, most children answered incorrectly

• Importance: Shows impact of researcher bias

  • Children assumed researcher wouldn’t ask unless they had changed something

  • So it was the way of questioning, not the conservation task, that led to children’s incorrect answer

  • Suggests Piaget’s age of conservation is incorrect

What contradictory research is there for egocentrism? Why is this important?

Hughes (1975)

• Procedure: Used similar task to mountain study. Used 3 intersecting walls, a boy and two police officers (more real-life)

Findings:

• Once familiar with task children aged 3.5 were able to put boy in position out of sight from police officer 90% of the time

• Children aged 4 were able to put boy in position out of sight from both police officers 90% of the time

• Importance: Able to de-centre much earlier than Piaget found

What contradictory research is there for class inclusion? Why is this important?

Siegler and Svetina

• Procedure

  • 100 5-year olds from Slovenia tested on 10-inclusion tasks with explanation after each session

  • Condition 1: told there are more animals than dogs in the photo because there are 7 animals but 5 dogs

  • Condition 2: told there are more animals than dogs in the photo because dogs are a sub-catergory of animals (true explanation)

• Findings: Scores improved significantly more for condition 2 → Due to children in this condition showing real understanding of class inclusion

• Importance: Under 7 year olds can understand class inclusion, suggestion Piaget’s method of measuring class inclusion lacks validity as he overestimated the age of class inclusion

How could you counteract the criticism of several aspects of the pre-operational stage having contradictory research? Why is this important?

The core principle of the pre-operational stage are unchallenged → Just incorrect methodology which led to Piaget finding incorrect age at which children develop abilities

How might we explain Piaget seemingly getting the ages of each stage wrong? How could this me countered?

• Used small, highly-intelligent sample of his and other professor’s children → Likely to gain abilities earlier

• Sample led Piaget to underestimate ages abilities develop → If children are more intelligent than average should have found overestimates

How did Piaget get it wrong regarding domain-specific vs domain-general cognitive development?

• Domain general: Piaget saw intellectual development as a singular process: all aspects of cognition develop at the same time (language, reasoning, egocentrism)

• However people with autism may develop these abilities separately which is “domain-specific” and have deficits in one area