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Jerome Bruner
Background
Bruner’s early work on child development came at a time when thinking in
the area was dominated by the behaviourists. Behaviourism had developed
as a means of producing an objective and measurable way of explaining
the learning process, based, as it was, on scientific rigour. Bruner
was to apply similar techniques to the study of the internal mental
processes involved in learning and was therefore an early pioneer of the
cognitive approach to psychology. Bruner was heavily influenced by the
work of jean Piaget and later by the work of Lev Vygotsky. His eventual
theory shows the influence of both.
The child
According to Bruner, the child’s cognitive structures mature with age as
a result of which the child can think and organize material in
increasingly complex ways. Here we see influence of Piaget again, but
also of the information processing model. Children are also seen as
naturally inquisitive, thirsty for knowledge and understanding. The
child naturally adapts to its environment and abstract thinking develops
through action.
Constructivist theory
of cognitive development
Like Piaget and Vygotsky, Bruner believes the child has to learn for
itself by making sense of its own environment. In fact Bruner could be
seen as an ‘extreme constructivist’ since he believes the World we
experience is a product of our mind. What we perceive and think of as
our World is constructed through our mind as a product of symbolic
processes.
Bruner rejected the idea of stages as popularized by Piaget and to a
lesser extent Vygotsky. Rather than looking at the ages of
developmental changes Bruner concentrates more on how knowledge is
represented and organized as the child develops.
Modes of
representation
This looks as though its stages but it isn’t! With stages the child
would progress from one to the next and then, crucially, leave the old
way of thinking or operating behind. For Bruner, the earlier ways of
thinking are still used later in life where they can be very useful for
some tasks.
Modes of representation are the ways (or format) in which the child
manipulates information.
1. Enactive (First
year)
This is similar to the first half of Piaget’s sensori-motor stage of
development. The child has little in the way of mental faculties so
‘thinking is a physical action.’ Knowledge is what the child can
manipulate or do with movements, for example tying knots, pointing etc.
In later life the enactive mode will allow riding a bike, swimming,
driving a car and so on. These are automatic patterns of activity that
have been ‘hard wired’ into our muscles. Thinking about how we do them
or trying to explain to others in words how to tie shoe laces or ride a
bike is practically impossible because they are enactive. As for
Piaget, the gaining of object permanence is a major qualitative change
in the child’s thinking.
2. Iconic (Second
year)
This is similar to the second half of Piaget’s sensori-motor and
preoperational stages of development. For the first time the child has
mental images that allow it to retain pictures after the stimulus has
gone. Drawing is now possible. These icons or images are built up from
past experience and based on a number of exposures to similar objects
and events. Our image of a cup isn’t based soley on seeing one cup but
on seeing many. However, at present the child lacks the ability to
solve problems.
3. Symbolic (six or
seven years onwards)
This is similar to Piaget’s concrete operational stage of development.
For Bruner, symbols include words (language), music, numbers and so an.
Anything we use to symbolize something else. The precise timing of this
one depends on the child, particularly its language ability. For the
first time the child can categorise, think logically and solve problems.
Bruner’s main interest was in the child’s transition from iconic to
symbolic modes.
A
major implication of Bruner’s theory is that cognitive development can
be speeded up by training children in the use of symbols. Some of the
studies that follow (e.g. Frank) suggest that this is the case. Clearly
this runs counter to Piaget who believed progress through his stages was
biologically determined.
Culture provides the ‘instructions’ about how humans should develop and
these are passed on from one generation to the next. Bruner clearly
disagrees with Piaget’s view of the child as isolated and learning on
its own. The child works with others to develop its framework for
thinking and this framework is culture-dependent. Again we see the
influence of Vygotsky
J
Bruner and Kenney
(1966)
Aims- what age
children start to use symbolic mode of representation.
Method- children
aged 3-7 shown a board divided into 9 squares. On each square was a
plastic beaker. Beakers of different sizes & widths, tallest at back &
widest on left, each child had to look at the beakers. There was a
reproduction test were the beakers were mixed up and the child was asked
to put them back how they were.
Transposition test
removed beakers and asked them to put them back in a mirror image of the
original arrangement
Results
Most 5 year olds
correctly completed the reproduction test however few under 7 could
complete the transposition task, most over 7 could complete both tasks.
The reproduction
task was designed to use iconic representation, as the child forms a
mental picture and copies it however the transposition task could not be
done as it doesn’t look like original arrangement.
Conclusion
The study supports
the view that children on average begin to acquire the symbolic mode at
around 6 or 7 years of age. The task required the ability to mentally
transform the visual information and was dependent on statements such as
‘it gets fatter going one way and taller going in another’ etc. The
children were using language (symbolic mode) to guide their thinking.
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Evidence for the
modes
Frank
(reported by Bruner 1964)
An ingenious
reworking of the classic Piaget water conservation study:
Frank selected a
group of 4 to 6 year olds that had been unable to successfully complete
the original Piaget test.
Results of this
part of the test:
Results of this
second test
4 year olds: revert
back to their original (incorrect answer) that the tall cylinder has
more water
5 and 6 year olds
generally stick to the correct answer given when the beakers were
hidden.
Explanation of
findings
In the Piaget
original, children can see the whole procedure and so rely on their
iconic mode to solve the task. By screening the procedure Frank was
preventing iconic mode and by asking them to describe what was happening
was encouraging their symbolic mode. This more advanced mode of
thinking was capable of conservation whereas the lower, iconic was not.
Later, when tested
without the screen, the older children were now able to conserve.
However, the younger children generally failed, even if they had been
able to do the task when it was screened. This suggests that lessons
had not been learned by this group and they had returned to iconic
thinking. Four year olds, it would seem, are mostly unable to acquire
symbolic thinking. This last finding appears to support Piaget’s idea
of preparedness. Regardless of methods used, some children are just too
young to progress further
Sonstroem et al
(1966)
In a similar
reworking of a Piagetian conservation task, children were asked to roll
out a ball of plasticine (enactive mode) so it was longer and thinner.
They were asked to watch their own actions (iconic mode) and to describe
what they were doing (symbolic mode). By using all three modes
together, the children were far more successful in conserving amount.
But: Although the
above researchers (and Bruner) put this improved performance down to the
use of language, other research Furth (1966) on deaf children, seems to
suggest that although language helps it isn’t essential for the
development of abstract thinking
Language
Here we have a major difference with Piaget but clear influence from
Vygotsky.
Let’s consider the transition from iconic mode to symbolic mode. For
Bruner this comes about through the mastering of language. Like
Vygotsky, Bruner thinks language accommodates cognitive development and
the two then become inextricably intertwined and over time develop side
by side each helping the development of the other. For Piaget language
is merely a tool that develops as a result of cognitive development.
Language is needed for communication with adults and older peers who can
facilitate learning. Similarly it is essential for the scaffolding
process.
Language of course is also essential for thought!
Bruner suggests language training as a way of speeding up the cognitive
development of the child, the concept of which would be totally alien to
Piaget.
Evaluation
The ability to acquire language is common across all human cultures.
This has led to the nativist theory of language acquisition, basically
that the rules for acquiring grammar are hard wired into the human
brain. Linguist, philosopher, political activist and all-round brain
box, Noam Chomsky suggested that humans possess a LAD (Language
Acquisition Device) that allows us to learn the rules of grammar when we
are exposed to human speech.
Bruner however, believes we possess a LASS* (Language Acquisition Social
System). Simply listening to language is not sufficient. The child
needs to be exposed to the mutual eye gazing and turn taking that are
needed for conversation. Language, according to Bruner, needs to take
place in a social context.
Evidence for this is provided by the case of Jim (and other deprived
children e.g. Genie).
Jim was born to parents that were both deaf and dumb. Until the age of
three, Jim’s only exposure to language was through the television.
Although he learned speech it was noticeably odd, with him developing
his own, unique grammatical characteristics and poor articulation (Sachs
et al 1981). Bruner suggests that this was due to lack of social
interaction in the learning of speech.
However, social interaction doesn’t explain all the complexities of
acquisition. The language we hear is often incorrect, poorly defined,
incomplete and full of hesitations, mispronounciations and other errors,
yet despite this we still learn to talk! It also takes place at a very
early stage in human development, when other cognitive skills are barely
beginning and when complex thought doesn’t exist.
Culture
According to Bruner our culture determines the sort of person we
become. There ‘cannot be a self independent of one’s culture.’
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Stages
Sensori-motor (0-2 years)
The child lacks
internal schemas or representations. The child's understanding of its
world is directly through its senses from moment to moment. It is so
called because it senses its environment and carries out movement (motor)
to react to it. At this stage that is all the child can do!
Features:
Egocentricism.
The child has no concept of 'self' so is unable to distinguish itself from
its environment. Unlike some of the other concepts Piaget believed that
egocentricism gradually reduces as the child gets older.
Research
evidence
See three mountains
task in preoperational stage.
Lacks object permanence.
Child assumes
that objects no longer exist if they’re not visible.
Research
evidence
Piaget carried out
research on his own children. They would be shown an attractive object
that would then be hidden from view. Children up to the age of 8 months
don’t bother to look for it assuming it to no longer exist. After 8
months children will continue to search for hidden objects.
Evidence
against
Bower & Wishart
(1972) showed objects to children between the ages of 1 and 4 months.
Lights were switched off so that the objects were no longer visible but
the child could be seen, by infrared camera, continuing to search for the
object.
Baillargeon and DeVos
(1991) employed an ingenious experiment using long and short carrots.
It relies on the concept that children will
spend longer looking at events that they consider to be impossible. In
this case, even though the carrots were not visible for a crucial stage of
the experiment children as young as three months old realised that they
still existed and spent longer puzzling over the ‘impossible situation.’
Clearly this casts
doubt on Piaget’s assertion that children didn’t develop object permanence
until 8 months of age!
Pre-Operational Stage (2 to 7 years)
Child is still
dominated by the external world, rather than it's own thoughts. However,
it now forms some simple internal representations of its world (schemas)
through its increasing ability to use language. The stage is called
'pre-operational' since the child is unable to perform operations (such as
heart by-passes and key hole surgery; well you know what I mean!). An
'operation' according to Piaget, is a mental rule for manipulating objects
or ideas into new forms, and then, crucially, being able to manipulate
them back again. Since preoperational children are unable to reverse
things mentally they are unable to do this.
Features:
Egocentricism
Child remains
egocentric but this now refers more to its inability to see things from
other people's perspectives, as famously demonstrated by the 'Three
Mountains' task.
Research
evidence
Piaget & Inhelder’s
‘Three Mountains Task.’ Children would be seated at a table with a 3D
model of three mountains in front of them. A doll would be placed in
various positions around the table and the child shown photos of various
views. They would be asked to choose the picture that best fitted the
view as seen from the doll. To complete this task successfully children
would have to imagine the view as seen by the doll. The researchers found
that children below the age of 7 had problems completing the task, tending
to choose the photo that showed their view of the mountains. Think of the
young girl in the video explaining her new toy to her grandfather on the
phone and assuming that because she could see it so could her granddad.
Evidence to
contradict Piaget
Hughes (1975)
repeated the three mountains task using a situation he thought would be
more familiar to the child, i.e. the naughty boy hiding from the
policeman. Hughes found that 90% of children aged 3 to 5 could complete
the task successfully, concluding that it was lack of understanding rather
than egocentricism that was causing the problems for Piaget's
participants.
Animism
This is related to
egocentricism and is the tendency to attribute feelings to inanimate
objects so for example the child may apologise for hurting its teddy bear
or decide to punish one of its toys for being naughty. I’ll restrain from
any adult humour here!
Realism
Believing that
psychological events, such as dreams, are real.
Lack of Conservation
The inability to
realise that some things remain unchanged despite looking different.
Piaget concentrated on conservation of number and volume. Piaget put this
down to the child's inability to pay attention to more than one
characteristic of a situation at a time and to its inability to reverse
operations in its head (e.g. to visualise the water being poured back into
the original container).
Piaget believed that
conservation of number develops first. He demonstrated this by the use of
counters. Children are shown 2 rows each with the same number of counters
and realise the 2 rows contain the same number. If the researcher
rearranges one of the rows by spacing the counters out the child believes
there are more.
Conservation of
volume, as demonstrated by pouring liquid from small wide beakers into
tall thin measuring cylinders, develops later, at the very end of the
preoperational stage.
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Evidence
against
McGarrigle &
Donaldson (1974) showed that children as young as 4 could conserve number
if the situation is given meaning.
It is also important
to note that Piaget concentrates almost entirely on mathematical skills
and logic. Between the ages of 7 and 11 children acquire a vast number of
other new skills that Piaget chose to ignore.
McGarrigle &
Donaldson (1974) repeated Piaget’s conservation experiment on 6-year-old
children. The child is shown 2 rows
of equal numbers of counters. The
child agrees that the 2 rows are the same.
If the researcher then messes one of the rows up, without altering the
number of counters, only 16% believe that the number of counters is still the
same. So far just as Piaget would have
predicted. However, when a naughty teddy bear messes up the row of counters 62%
of children in this age group are able to conserve!
This shows that children are better able to conserve than Piaget
proposed. M & D assume that in the
original condition it appears to the child that the researchers are intending to
alter the number of counters, or that they are asking a trick question.
In the teddy condition there is a reason for the counters just to be
messed up so the situation has meaning.
Rose & Black (1974)
believed asking the child the same question twice was confusing. ‘Are
there the same number of buttons in each row?’ The buttons would then be
rearranged and the question repeated. Perhaps the children believe this
to be a trick question. Samuel & Bryant (1984) repeated the counters
experiment but only asked the question once, after the counters had been
rearranged. This produced more correct answers!
General
evaluation points on this stage:
Piaget’s research has
generated lots of research into this particular stage, but it has been
inconclusive or at odds with Piaget’s original work:
Piaget often
under-estimated the age at which children could perform activities.
Wheldall & Poborca (1980) believe that children are unable to perform
conservation tasks because they don't understand the question.
Variations in an
experimental procedure can produce very different findings. Some studies
conclude that children are still egocentric others that they have out
grown this characteristic.
Piaget’s original
studies were often poorly thought through and for example were not suited
to the age range of the children he was studying. Instructions may have
been confusing or the tasks themselves too complex. For example ‘Three
Mountains’ task which was manageable when re-worked by Hughes in a more
familiar format.
Concrete Operations Stage (7 to 11
years)
The child is now able
to carry out operations on its environment and develops logical thought.
However, it still requires concrete examples, being unable to think in
abstract terms. Less importance is attached to information from our
senses as we use thought and imagination more.
Features
Reversibility
refers to the ability to mentally picture an action being carried out in
reverse. This is essential for conservation, e.g. imagining the water
being poured back into the original beaker.
Conservation
made possible by the ability to decentre. Conservation of number is first
(5 to 6 years), followed by conservation of weight (7 to 8 years) and
finally conservation of volume by 11 years of age.
Transitivity
is only
possible with concrete examples. For example 'Jackie is fairer than
Sarah, Jackie is darker than Nicola. Who is the darkest?' The concrete
operational child would not be able to work this one out mentally, it
would require dolls or pictures of the three girls. Similarly A > B > C.
This would not be possible since it requires abstract thought rather than
concrete examples.
Research
Evidence
Piaget's own studies
demonstrated that children in this age group were able to conserve
successfully.
Other studies have
broadly backed Piaget’s findings for this stage, although he has been
criticised for failing to consider other cultures.
· Jahoda
(1983) found that children as young as 9 years old in Zimbabwe could
understand abstract economic concepts if they’d worked in their parents’
business.
· Price-Williams
(1969) showed conservation in children as young as 6 years old who had
been raised in pottery making factories.
Formal Operational stage (11 years
onwards)
Piaget used the term
‘formal’ since children in this stage can concentrate on the form of an
argument without being distracted by the content (Jarvis 2001). For
example if x is greater than y but less than z. The child can now work
this out without needing to know what x, y and z refer to. Smith et al
(1998) provide the following example:
‘All green birds have
two heads. I have a green bird called Charlie. How many heads does
Charlie have?’ A child in the earlier stages would be bogged down by the
content, i.e. birds have one head. Formal thinkers can concentrate on the
structure (or form) of the question in this context.
Piaget maintained
that everyone would reach this stage eventually, even if it took us until
20. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that this is not the
case and that certainly it tends to occur later than Piaget predicted.
Bradmetz (1999), in a
longitudinal study showed that out of 62 children tested at the age of 15,
on a series of Piagetian tasks, only one had reached formal thought!
Features
Abstract thought
The child can now
think in abstract terms so no longer requires concrete examples to solve
problems.
Hypothetical thought
The child is able to
consider things that it has no experience of and consider imaginary
scenarios.
Hypotheses testing
Faced with a problem
the formal thinker will approach it logically, produce a list of
possibilities and test each one systematically. (Think of GCSE science
coursework).
Solve syllogisms
These are a form of
reasoning in which a conclusion is reached from a number of statements.
For example:
When B is
larger than C, X is smaller than C. But C is never larger than B.
True or
false, X is never larger than B?
Other features
This level of thought
also allows for an appreciation of values and ideals (necessary for more
advanced moral thinking).
Research
evidence
Piaget would set
children the task of finding what determines the frequency of swing of a
pendulum. Concrete thinkers normally believe that it is the push that the
experimenter gives it. When they test possibilities they fail to control
other variables. The formal thinker on the other hand considers all
possible variables such as push, length of string, weight of bob etc.
They carefully isolate variables and control confounding variables.
Evidence
against
1.
Some psychologists argue that formal
operational thought is not as important to everyday life as Piaget seems
to have concluded. Since most problems we face have no one obvious right
answer, logical thought is not always necessary.
2. It
seems many adults never actually reach Piaget’s description of formal
thinking.
3. Gladwin
(1970) argues that the tests Piaget used are inappropriate for testing
non-western culture. The Pulawat navigators of Polynesia demonstrate
formal thinking when navigating in their canoes but fail western tests
designed to test their formal thinking.
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General criticismsAges and stagesResearch mostly suggests that children acquire their skills earlier than Piaget suggested (e.g. Hughes, McGarrigle and Donaldson etc).
Some psychologists
believe that only 30% of the population reach formal ops. This is the
one stage were Piaget seems to have over-estimated rather than
under-estimated the ability of the child. Dasen argues that some
cultures don’t develop formal operational thought at all.
Many of the stages
overlap (decalage) for example during the concrete stage there is
constant development in small sub-stages as the child learns to conserve
number then amount and finally liquid. So rather than a sudden
stop-start stage process, development becomes more of a steady
progression.
Cross-cultural
evidence
From a
cross-cultural perspective the order of the stages seems to be
universal, although rate of progression varies.
Dasen (1984)
carried out conservation type tests and tests of spatial relationships
on Aboriginal children ages eight to fourteen.
Typically he found
that they performed less well than Western children on conservation
tasks with this skill not being developed until the age of 13 in some of
those tested whereas spatial awareness developed younger than in the
west. In fact when tested for conservation many adults couldn’t
complete the task successfully. Such finding are perhaps not surprising
in a group of people that spend so much time on the move and amounts
don’t need to be measured accurately. However, when Aborigines live in
western societies and receive a western education their skills develop
in line with western norms.
This would suggest
that the stages are not as universal as Piaget believed and also
suggests that culture is a major influence on development. See
Vygotsky’s theory for an explanation of this one.
Performance and ability.Piaget measured a child’s performance and assumed that this was a true reflection of its underlying ability. For whatever reason children do not always perform to the best of their ability, e.g. lack of understanding of the problem, as highlighted by McGarrigle & Donaldson (1974).
Other abilities.
Piaget tended to
focus on logical and mathematical thought development, neglecting other
developments such as memory and social abilities etc. These may account
for the wide individual differences between children.
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Methods.
Hughes and
McGarrigle & Donaldson have shown that using different methods, children
can achieve stages at an earlier age than was predicted. They believe
Piaget’s experiments were over complex and used language that the child
was unable to relate to.
Piaget used the
clinical interview technique, which is time consuming. As a result his
sample sizes tended to be small.
When observing
behaviour it is usual to use inter-rater reliability (two or more people
observing and comparing notes in some way) in order to reduce bias.
Piaget could have used this method but preferred to observe alone making
his research less reliable and reducing its validity.
Demand characteristics
It is believed that
children in Piaget’s experiments may have given answers that they
thought Piaget wanted to hear rather than the answers that they believed
to be right.
Unrealistic
As Segall (1999)
points out, Piaget portrays a child as an ‘idealised, non-existent
individual, completely divorced form the social environment.’ As we’ll
see later, Vygotsky helps to redress this balance.
Individual
differences
These were largely
ignored. Piaget admitted that he wanted to produce a general (nomothetic)
theory of development of intelligence and knowledge. He wasn’t
interested in individual differences.
General Favourable comments
Much of Piaget’s
work has received widespread support. Piaget did adapt his early
theories to take account of criticisms. He also believed that one day
it could be integrated with other theories to produce a rounded view of
child development.
Productivity
Few Psychologists,
if any, have provoked as much follow up research. Over the years this
has added significantly to our understanding of child development. For
example Bruner and the Information Processing theories both take Piaget
as a starting point.
Always mention
how influential Piaget’s work has been, both in influencing educational
policies (although this was not Piaget’s intention) and in stimulating
other research. Schaffer (2004) believes the theory is still the most
comprehensive account of how a child comes to understand the World.
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