Download Evaluating Piaget`s Theory: Criticisms

Cognitive Development:
Jean Piaget
Chapter 6 in Berk’s book
Cognitive Development
 What is cognition?
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Thinking and how thinking changes with age
Includes how children LEARN things
 Can’t talk about cognition without talking about Jean Piaget…
 P i a g e t i s th e m a n o f c o g n i ti v e d e v e l o p m e n t…
Cognitive Development
 A bit of history
 Piaget was really interested in a field called
epistemology
 The big question of his theory:
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Where does knowledge come from?
Cognitive Development
 He studied kids- babies until adulthood
 Makes sense…right?
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Babies don’t have much knowledge, but they grow into
adults, who have a bunch of knowledge
Piaget’s Theory: Characteristics
 Stage Theory
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Stages are universal
Changes b/w stages are qualitative
Stable order
Piaget’s Theory: Characteristics
 Children are ACTIVE
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Kids intentionally try to accumulate knowledge in their
world
There is some inner drive to know things
Piaget’s Theory: Concepts
 Scheme/Schema
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Cognitive structure containing knowledge about
something
Ex: blanket, diet coke
We accumulate schemas when we encounter new
information
Piaget’s Theory: Concepts
 Assimilation
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The process of taking in new information into existing
schemas
New information is modified to fit into a pre-existing
schema
Ex: Cows as black and white
Piaget’s Theory: Concepts
 Accomodation
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The process of modifying or changing an existing
schema to fit new experiences or creating a new
schema all together
Ex: High chair and gravity
Piaget’s Theory: Concepts
 Example of schemas
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Let me give you a riddle…
What’s the answer?
Why would we not be able to answer that?
Piaget’s Theory: Concepts
 Example of schemas
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Because almost everyone’s schema about a surgeon
contains “Male”
We would need to accommodate in order to answer
this riddle
Piaget’s Theory: Concepts
 Equilibration
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Sums up changing balance b/w assimilation and
accomodation
Periodic restructuring of schemas
Broad, general, more substantial changes
Stage transition
Piaget’s Theory: Stages
 Sensori-Motor Period
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Birth to ~ 2 years
6 substages, but we won’t have time to cover them
Know what the big things are for each stage
Sensori-Motor Period
 According to Piaget, kids are born with no mental
abilities
 They only have reflexes
 First few months- infants modify what they do
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Ex. Sucking
Sensori-Motor Period
 4-8 months, babies start becoming interested in
outcomes beyond the limits of their own bodies
 No understanding of causality in the beginning
Sensori-Motor Period
 Causality:
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Les Cohen and research on causality
Habituation task with balls
Toward the end of this period, babies begin to
understand causality
Sensori-Motor Period
 Causality:
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~16 months- will start doing things over and over
again because they like the fact that THEY are doing
it.
Sensori-Motor Period
 Object Permanence
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Nope, don’t have this either
Test for object permanence?
~7-8 month olds don’t have this down yet
8-12 months- they start to get it
18 months- have strong concept
Sensori-Motor Period
 Object Permanence
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What’s this about?
Representational thought
Young ones can only think about what they see
We can think of many other things
Sensori-Motor Period
 Representational thought
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~18-24 months, babies start to form “internal mental
representations”
Once these are present, you have progressed to the
next stage…
Piaget’s Theory: Stages
 Preoperational Period
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Ages 2-6 years
Big development in this one
Internal mental representations are present and allow
for amazing things, but thinking and problem-solving
is limited
Preoperational Thought: Characteristics
 Egocentrism
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Thinking about the external world is always in terms
of their own perspective
How do we test this?
Three mountains task
Preoperational Thought: Characteristics
 Lacks reversibility
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Can’t manipulate mental objects
Ex.
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Do you have a brother?
W h a t’ s h i s n a m e ?
Does Jimmy have a brother?
Preoperational Period: Characteristics
 Centration
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Center/focus on a few perceptual features
We see this (as well as lack of reversibility) in
conservation tasks
Preoperational Period: Characteristics
 Centration
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Conservation: The understanding that certain
characteristics remain the same
Conservation tasks
 Conservation of liquid
 3 glasses- 2 are the same, 1 is taller and thinner
Preoperational Thought: Characteristics
 Why children fail water conservation task?
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They are lacking reversibility and displaying
centration
Preoperational Thought: Characteristics
 Other conservation tasks
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Solid quantity (Mass)
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Length
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Play doh
Pencils
Number
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Pennies, M & M’s
Preoperational Thought: Characteristics
 Lack Hierarchical Thought
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Can’t organize objects into classes and subclasses
Can classify objects into categories, but have hard time
when need to consider 2 things at once
Preoperational Thought: Characteristics
 Lack Hierarchical Thought
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Class inclusion task
Ex. Animals
Are there more cats or more animals?
Preoperational Thought: Characteristics
 Lack Hierarchical Thought
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Kids below age 7-8 will answer “More cats”
Why? Focusing on one dimension
Don’t realize that objects can belong to more than one
c a te g o r y
Preoperational Thought: Characteristics
 Anamism
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Attribution of animate or living qualities to inanimate objects
Ex. Is the sun alive?
Yes, the sun follows me home
Preoperational Period
 Bottom line of preoperational period?
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Have trouble taking perspectives other than their own, pay
too much attention to perceptually salient dimensions,
thinking is very rigid
Piaget’s Theory: Stages
 Concrete Operations Period
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Ages 6-12 years
Thought becomes operational
 Can deal with things mentally, not just perceptually
 Start to understand abstract concepts like conservation
and classification
Concrete Operations Period
 Logic is limited to concrete ideas, but children in this stage
have what those pre-operational children don’t
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Conservation
Decentration
Reversibility
Hierarchical classification
Multiple classification
Seriation (eg, ability to arrange sticks)
Piaget’s Theory: Stages
 Formal Operational Period
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A g e s 1 2 - a d u l th o o d
Before this, operations could only be done on concrete
things (have to see it)
Now, kids can do it on abstract things
Thinking is more abstract and logical
Formal Operational Period
 Can now reason about abstract questions concerning
the nature of justice, truth, and morality
 Can also think about hypothetical events and the future
 Ability to reason with scientific thought
Formal Operational Period
 Ex. Pendulum problem
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Strings of different length, different weights, bar to
hang string from
Ask, “What influences the speed with which a
pendulum swings through its arc?”
Formal ops. will discover only string length is
important
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
 Many replications have been done on Piaget’s
findings
 Does Piaget’s theory universally apply to all
children?
 Has recently been criticized for highly abstract,
verbally demanding tasks
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory: Criticisms
 We have been able to find skills at earlier ages…
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Object permanence
 Piaget says: 18 mos.
 Baillargeon says: 4.5 mos.
 Baillargeon’s impossible event
 Baillargeon
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Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
Findings: 4.5 month-old looked longer at the impossible event
suggesting that they knew that the object still existed and that the
screen should stop.
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
 Conservation of Number
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Piaget says: CON isn’t solid until 6 - 6.5 years
Gelman says: children as young as 3 years can show some form of
CON
Magic Mouse-plate task
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
 V a l i d i ty o f P i a g e t’ s s ta g e s
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Not coherent as once thought
We can find kids partly in pre-operational stage and partly in
operational stage
 Ex. Emily
 Failed conservation of mass and liquid, but passed conservation of number
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
 V a l i d i ty o f P i a g e t’ s s ta g e s
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Neo-Piagetians are changing Piaget’s theory to better suit the current
research
Ex. They like idea of task-specific change- they believe that Piaget’s
strict stages need to be changed to a “related set of competencies
developing over an extended period of time.”
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
 Role of social interaction
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Piaget asserts that the child, as a self-motivated explorer, forms
ideas and tests them without any social interaction
Other researchers, like Vygotsky, argue that children can perform
better if interacting with a more advanced peer or adult
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
 Critics claim there are several things we can do to simplify the
tasks and better understand children’s abilities
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Verbal instructions as well as the required verbal responses should
be limited
Tasks should be less physically demanding
Tasks should be engaging
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
 Critics claim there are several things we can do to simplify the
tasks and better understand children’s abilities
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Structure the task so that the dependent measure is a familiar
behavior
Offer practice or pretraining
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
 Child is still an active seeker of knowledge but the social
environment is also important
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
Main characteristics:
 Theory is culturally-specific: Not universal
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We should expect children from different cultures to develop very
differently
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
 Theory is language-based
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Children become capable of mental representation via language
Private speech: Child’s verbal communication to themselves for
guidance and self-direction
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Vygotsky regarded this as the foundation for complex cognitive skills
(attention, memorization, planning, problem-solving)
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
 Higher cognitive processes originate in social interaction
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Via social interaction with more cognitively advanced others- we can
master activities
Vygotsky believed there was a range of tasks that the child could not
do on their own, but could solve with the help of adults or more
skilled peers
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
 Higher cognitive processes originate in social interaction
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Zone of proximal development
Children learn from adults through speech dialogues, making adults’
speech part of their own private speech
Scaffolding: offer support that is just above the child’s ability to do it
on his/her own
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
 Even Vygotsky has not gone unchallenged…
 Critics don’t like the idea that language as being of the utmost
importance
 What about direct observation? Imitation? Reinforcement?