Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

Piaget proposed that cognition progresses in stages:

• Piaget said that we’re all born with the basics to allow cognitive progression- reflects and senses. He reckoned that more complex abilities become possible as children move through stages of intellectual development as they get older:

  • Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years):

    • The child’s knowledge is limited to what their senses tell them when they're exploring their surroundings. This exploration brings about an understanding of the concept of object permanence (if you put a towel over a toy, the toy is still there).

  • Preoperational stage (2-7):

    • The child has some language now, but makes logical mistakes - e.g. cats have four legs, so everything with four legs must be a cat. They typically can't do the three mountains task (see below) or conservation tasks. Children at this stage show egocentrism, irreversibility and centration

  • Concrete operational stage (7-11):

    • The child's use of logic improves and they can do conservation tasks. They no longer show egocentrism, irreversibility and centration but can't yet use abstract reasoning (reasoning in their head). They also understand class inclusion (knowing that objects can belong to two or more categories at once — for example, that a Labrador belongs to the category 'dog' and the category 'animal').

      • For example, the child is said to have decentred.

        • Decentring simply means being able to take account of more than one aspect of a situation.

  • Formal operational stage (11+ years):

    • The child is much more advanced now and can use abstract reasoning in problem-solving. They can also use hypotheses and theoretical principles, and deal with hypothetical situations.

1. Piaget used the idea of schemas a lot in his work. A schema contains all the information you know about an object, action or concept — e.g. the schema of a human face has two eyes, a mouth and a nose, and the schema of riding a bike contains all the movements you'd need to make.

2. Schemas help you to organise and interpret information - new experiences are either assimilated or accommodated

3. Assimilation and accommodation are part of a process that Piaget called equilibration — he believed that this process drives cognitive development.

4. Piaget reckoned that through equilibration, children try to find a balance between assimilation and accommodation. Where possible, new information is assimilated, but when it doesn't fit, accommodation is used to change or alter their existing schemas.

Stage 2:

Piaget used the Three Mountains task (1956) as evidence for his theory:

1. They built a 3-D model of three mountains (well, Piaget was from Switzerland).

2. The mountains had different landmarks on them - e.g. one had a cross on it, and another had a house.

3. They put a small doll on one of the mountains and then showed children photos of the mountains taken from various angles. The children were asked to pick the photo that matched what the doll could see.

4. They found that children at Piaget's preoperational stage (2-7 years old) picked the photo taken from their own perspective, rather than the one taken from the doll's perspective.

5. Piaget and Inhelder concluded that children at this stage were unable to put themselves in the doll's shoes. Piaget and Inhelder (1956)

Piaget used this and other experiments as evidence that children at his preoperational stage have the following qualities:

1. Egocentrism — they can only view the world from their own viewpoint. They're not sensitive to the fact that others may have different views or thoughts (as demonstrated by the three mountains task).

2. Irreversibility — they don't understand that you can undo an action (e.g. that you can reform a sausage-shaped piece of clay into its original ball shape).

3. Centration - they focus on small aspects of a task, not the task as a whole.

Egocentrism (Pre-Operational Stage):

• Means to see the world only from one’s own point of view.

• Piaget and Inhelder (1956) described how this was demonstrated in the three mountains task, in which children were shown three model mountains, each with a different feature. A doll was placed at the side of the model so that it faced the scene from a different angle to the child The child was asked to choose what the doll would see from a range of pictures.

• Pre-operational children found this difficult and often chose the picture that matched the scene from their own point of view

Conservation (Pre-Operational Stage):

• This is the basic understanding that quantity remains constant even when the appearance of objects changes.

• For example, Piaget found that when two containers are placed side by side with contents at the same height, most children spotted that they contain the same volume

• However, if the liquid is poured into a taller thinner vessel, younger children typically believe there is more liquid in the taller vessel

Evaluation of the Policeman Doll Study:

• Hughes (1975) argued that the three mountains task did not make sense to children and it was made more difficult because the children had to match the doll's view with a photograph.

• Instead, he showed children a model with two intersecting walls, a 'boy' doll and a 'policeman' doll. He then placed the policeman doll in various positions and asked the child to hide the boy doll from the policeman.

• Hughes did this to make sure that the child understood what was being asked of him and mistakes were explained. The child tried again. Interestingly, very few mistakes were made.

Overview of the Policeman Doll Study:

• Hughes then brought in a second policeman doll and placed both dolls at the end of two walls.

• The child was asked to hide the boy doll from both policemen, in other words, he had to take account of two different points of view.

• Hughes' sample comprised children between three and a half and five years of age, of whom 90 per cent gave correct answers.

• This shows that children have largely lost their egocentric thinking by four years of age because they are able to take the view of another.

• Hughes' experiment allowed them to demonstrate this because the task made sense to the child, whereas Piaget's did not.

McGarrigle and Donaldson:

• McGarrigle and Donaldson retested this on 80 children between 4-6 years old. They had 2 conditions in the first one the experimenter altered the row of beads and in the second one the ‘naughty teddy’ swooped down and lengthened the row. When it was the experimenter 16% showed conservation across the tasks whereas when it was the naughty teddy, 62% did

Class Inclusion (Pre-operational stage):

• Early in the pre-operational stage children begin to understand classification- the idea that objects fall into categories

• Most pre-operational children can classify different breeds of dogs in general

• However, Piaget found that children under the age of 7 struggled with more advanced subsets

  • When they showed 7-8-year-olds pictures of 5 dogs and 2 cats, then asked are there more dogs or animals? They responded that there were more dogs

  • Piaget interpreted this as meaning that young children cannot simultaneously see a dog as a member of the dog class and the animal class

Evaluation:

• Strength:

  • The influence of Piaget’s ideas in development psychology has been enormous. He changed how people viewed the child’s world and their methods of studying children

  • Piaget’s ideas have generated a huge amount of research which has increased our understanding of cognitive development

  • His ideas have been practical use in understanding and communicating with children, particularly in the field of education (Discovery Learning)

• Weakness:

  • Some researchers do not talk about stages at all and see the development as a continuous process. Others have queried the age ranges of the stages. Some studies have shown that progress to the formal operational stage is not guaranteed

  • For example, Keating (1979) reported that 40-60% of college students fail at formal operational tasks, and Dasen (1994) states that only one-third of adults overreach the formal operational stage

  • Because Piaget concentrated on the universal stages of cognitive development and biological maturation, he failed to consider the effect that the social setting and culture may have on cognitive development

• Cultural Bias:

  • Dasen (1994) in remote parts of the central Australian desert he gave 8-14-year-old Aborigines the conservation of liquid tasks and spatial awareness tasks. He found that the ability to conserve came later in the aboriginal children, between ages 10 and 13 (as opposed to between 5 and 7, with Piaget’s Swiss sample)

  • However, he found that spatial awareness abilities developed earlier amongst the Aboriginal children than the Swiss children

  • Such a study demonstrated cognitive development is not purely dependent on maturation but on cultural factors too- spatial awareness is crucial for nomadic groups of people

• Procedural Problems:

  • Piaget’s methods (observation and clinical interviews) are more open to biased interpretation than other methods. Piaget made careful, detailed naturalistic observations of children, and from these, he wrote diary descriptions charting their development

  • Because Piaget conducted the observations alone the data collected are based on his own subjective interpretation of events

    • It would have been more reliable if Piaget conducted the observations with another researcher and compared the results afterwards to check if they were similar (i.e. Have inter-rater reliability)

• Research Methods:

  • Piaget used the clinical method. This provided rich and detailed information, however, semi-structured interviews were used so the questioning wasn’t standardised and therefore could not be generalised

  • The results were based on conversations between Piaget and the children and therefore he could have only used the information that agreed with his hypothesis. This could have resulted in experimenter bias

  • He is well known for his belief in constructionist views believing that knowledge is accumulated through interaction with the world

  • His theory contributed to the use of discovery play in early education

• Strengths of the Theory:

  • Piaget’s work has informed early education i.e the existence of ‘discovery play’

  • Theory is universal

  • Takes a nomothetic approach

  • Cognitive development itself has good temporal validity as children will always develop intellectually

  • Considers both nature and nurture

• Limitations- Methodology:

  • Questions were not standardised- possible researcher bias

  • The experiments were too complicated for children to understand. Samuel and Bryant argue that asking the same question twice causes children to make mistakes. The assumption is that the first answer must have been wrong

  • Studies are outdated, and some are culturally biased e.g. Three Mountains. Children from specific countries would not have been exposed to mountains

• Piaget may have underplayed the role of other people in learning

• He did not believe children learn best on their own, but he saw other people as important sources of information during discovery learning

  • For example, the adults set up situations in which learning can take place

• However, other psychologists suggest that other people are absolutely central to the process, and children are capable of much more advanced learning if this is supported by a peer or an expert adult (Vygotsky)

How they develop through the stages:

• An understanding of Piaget’s ‘Mechanisms of Development’ is crucial to being able to describe and explain the four stages

• As children develop through the stages they are constantly adapting their schemas and moving to and from states of equilibrium and disequilibrium

Schemas and Adaption:

• Schemas are cognitive frameworks building blocks of knowledge that help us to define, categorise, organise and respond to the world around us.

• In Piaget's theory, schemas are changed in order to restore equilibrium.

• There are 2 cognitive states (Equilibrium + Disequilibrium ) and 2 processes (Accommodation + Assimilation) in relation to schemas which also develop as the child progresses through the 4 stages of intellectual development.

Key Terms:

• Equilibrium - the world around us makes sense.

• Disequilibrium - something in our environment that does not make sense. We need to change the existing schema.

• Accommodation - the process of modifying (developing a new schema) to fit a new experience.

• Assimilation - the process whereby a new experience is understood in terms of an existing schema.

Evidence for and against Piaget’s stages of Cognitive Development:

1. There’s cross-cultural similarity in the stages- studies have suggested that children of all backgrounds progress through the stages in the same way, which provides support for Piaget’s theory

2. Piaget underestimated abilities at each age — for example, the experiment with Naughty Teddy showed that preoperational children can understand the concept of conservation.

3. He said that practice and teaching wouldn't speed up progression through the stages, but this isn't true - it's been found that teaching can help to move children on through the stages.

4. Piaget's methodology was also questionable. His use of observations and clinical interviews were open to subjective interpretation.

5. Piaget didn't think that language was important in cognitive development. He thought that you needed cognitive development first in order to allow language to develop. However, other theorists, such as Vygotsky, have taken a different view on this,