Piaget Psychology notes A2

PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE

DEVELOPMENT

PIAGTET’S THEORY
THE MECHANISMS OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
SCHEMA
- Self constructed mental structures
- Behavioural or cognitive schema are programmes people construct when dealing with the world
- New borns have very few but are developed overtime as a consequence of
child’s interaction with the world.
Assimilation When an existing schema is issued on a new object and incorporation of new information on existing schema
AccommodationWhen a child adapts existing schema in order to understand new information that does not appear to fit.
Equilibrium When a child is aware of shortcomings in existing thinking, they experience imbalance between what is understood and encountered. They try to reduce these imbalances by developing new schema by adapting ones until equilibrium is restored.
OperationsOperations is used to describe logical mental rules such as rules and arithmetic. Schemas and operations are ‘variant’ processes I.e. change a child matures assimilation and accommodation are invariant as they remain the same throughout a person’s life.
STAGES IN COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT STAGE 1: SENSORIMOTOR STAGE Kids learn to coordinate sensory input with motor actions though circular reactions where they repeat the same action over and over again to test sensor motor relationships.
Object permanence- very young infants believe if you can not see something it does not exist. Around 8 months they realise objects out of sight still exists.
STAGE 2: PRE- OPERATIONAL STAGEKids throughout are symbolic represent their word with images etc.
They are not capable of reversibility of thought- Piaget it was due to child’s reliance on perceptual rather than logic based reasoning.
Based on the appearance of a situation rather than reality (appearance- reality distinction). Logical system on what they see rather than any internal inconsistent rules.
At this stage they are egocentric and only see the world from their position and not aware of other perspectives.
STAGE 3- CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE Display skills of reversibility and decantration (no longer focus on one aspect of a task).
Can conserve quantities- conservation including recognising the quantities don’t change even if they look different.
Piaget found conservation provides evidence of the child’s command of logical operations and therefore very important.
STAGE 4- FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGEKids can solve problems using hypothetico- deductive reasoning, thinking like a scientist. Identitive thinking- no longer linked to how things are but able to imagine how things might be if certain changes are made.
COMMENTARY MECHANISMS OF DEVELOPMENT Little research to support Piaget’s ideas about disequilibrium.
Inhelder (1974) - kids learning was helped when there was mild conflict between what they expected to happen.
Byrant (1995)- it was not the conflict Piaget was talking about.
STAGES IN DEVELOPMENT
Sensorimotor stage Nativists claim infants have more knowledge about the world then Piaget suggested.
Davas et al (1991)- Infants as young as 3-4 months did display object permanence-
Rolling car task, a large or small carrot is placed on a toy train set and rolled along a track. At one point the train went behind a screen with a large window, the large carrot could not be seen behind the window, whilst the small one could not.
Kids looked longer at the larger carrot when it did not appear maybe expecting the top half to be seen showing object permanence.
Pre-operational stageThree mountains task- kids shown picture and asked to choose which showed their perspective. 4 year olds tend to show their perspective than the dolls.
Hughes (1975)- young kids could not cope if the test was not realistic for e.g. using a naughty boy doll hiding from the police.
Concrete operational stagePiaget demonstrated conservation by showing kids various display of quantity such as rows of counters, cylinders of plasterscine or beakers of water.
If the display were transformed so that the quantity appeared to have increased. Younger kids could not conserve the quantity. As if it is looked bigger it was bigger.
Only at around 7 kids could recognise quantities stayed the same even after their appearance had changed.
Formal operational stagePiaget and Inhelder (1956)- used ‘beaker problem’ to demonstrate how kids apply logical thinking to problem thinking. Kids were shown 5 yellow liquid filled beakers and asked to work out how to turn the liquid yellow by combining various liquids.
Young kids mixed random liquids whilst those at the formal operational stage developed a logical strategy.
Dasen (1994)- claims that only two thirds of adults ever regained this stage then not during adolescence
LIMITATIONSUnderestimated kids abilities at younger age. Theory emphasises too much logic and generally ignores social factors such as benefit of cooperative group work.
Research method is flawed- but there is evidence that still supports view that there are qualitative changed in cognitive development as a child matures.
STRENGTHSPiaget remains one of the most influential psychologists of the 20^th century, this has had enormous influence on education and psychological research.
Byrant (1995)- Piaget’s contribution was to highlight the radical differences in young kids and adults.
PIAGET’S RESEARCH METHODSBryant (1995)- simple yet ingenious investigations on quite complex topics.
- Involve kids from European academic families who valued certain aspects of cognitive development snd social classes greater value may be placed on.
- Questions may have been worded as difficult, so kids may have been viewed as incapable.
Byrant et al - younger kids did better when they were only asked one question instead of Piaget’s two questions before and after transformation.
Donaldson et al (1975)- deliberate transofrmation of conservation acted as a demand characteristics demanding an alternative response. ’Naughty teddy’ was better received.