Piaget theory:Development of thinking

Development of thinking 

Introduction to Piaget theory and  Piaget's Stages Piaget: General Evaluation with Applying Piaget to Education

           Background and introduction: Piaget is a towering figure in psychology and widely respected by all, including those who have criticised or adopted his theories.   Contrary to popular belief Piaget was not French (despite being called Jean), he was in fact Swiss.  Nor was he a psychologist (not at the outset anyway) but a zoologist (which should really be spelt zooologist surely!).  He had his first publication on molluscs when he was still at High School!

Whilst working with Binet (who was French) and an early pioneer of IQ tests, he became fascinated by child development and spent the next 50 some years of his life studying the subject.  As a result Piaget was a true expert in his field, which as we shall see later, also covered moral development.

Piaget’s theory is sometimes described as ‘genetic epistemology.’  ‘Genetic’ because he believed that the stages we progress through and the structures and processes we use, are inbuilt and true for all of us regardless of culture.  ‘Epistemology’ (not a word to be uttered when in the state suggested by the word) actually means the study of knowledge.  Basically Piaget believed that the way in which we learn about and adapt to our World is constant across all cultures and races, and proceeds as a set sequence in all.

Central to Piaget's theory is how the child adapts to an ever-changing World.  Piaget noticed that even the youngest of children are inquisitive and actively explore their world.  Piaget is most famous for his stages but any description of his theory must also include a discussion of the structures that underlie these stages.  It is tempting in an essay on Piaget to write exclusively about his stages, since you will know them backwards in great detail by the time the exam comes round.  However, it is essential that the other aspects of his theory are covered too.  His processes (or ‘functional invariants’ as he lovingly referred to them) are constant (as their name suggests) throughout all stages, working to make sense of our environment.  Schemas (strictly speaking the plural should be ‘schemata’) are the internal representations that we hang our understanding on.  Schemata were mentioned in AS memory and will crop up in other topics later in the year.  Enough waffle… lets get on with it.

Above: photo of Piaget in later life.  He died in 1980 at the age of 84 (despite being a ‘sickly’ as a child).

I got so excited telling you about the great man that I neglected to mention the structure of this first topic.  It covers the way our thinking develops over time, and how as we mature we become capable of more complex methods of thinking.  A number of theories have developed (that word again) to try and explain how this happens.  The syllabus currently specifies three: Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner.  As of 2011-12 series however, Bruner will be dropped. 

You may also come across ‘Information Processing’ which does appear later, but which you cannot be specifically tested on.

Schemas and associated concepts

Schema:  an internal representation of the world.  This acts as a framework on which the child bases its knowledge of its environment.  According to Piaget we are born with some schemata including sucking and grasping.  In the first year of life many other simple schemata develop, for example the schema for mum very quickly develops as the child learns to distinguish her from others as a source of food and comfort.  Later the schemata become more complex and include concepts such as density, grammar, love, nature-nurture debate etc.   Schemata are crucial as they enable us to interpret and predict events. 

Helen Bee (2000) believes that schemata are not so much the categories themselves but the action of categorising.

Equilibrium and disequilibrium:  the child requires a stable internal world.  If new experience does not match existing schema then a state of disequilibrium (or inbalance) is produced.  The child needs to accommodate to restore the balance, i.e. alter its perception of how things work.  Piaget saw this desire for equilibrium as innate and believed that it drives or motivates us to learn.   Simple examples would be having a schema for dog and misinterpreting a cat as a dog.  On being told the mistake this causes temporary confusion and the child needs to alter its schemata to allow for this. 

Disequilibrium is essential for learning!!!!

Adaptation: refers to how a child changes over time as it makes sense of the World in which it lives.  Adaptation comes about through the processes of assimilation and accommodation:

·       Assimilation:  new information or experiences can be fitted into the child's existing schema or current understanding of the world.  It sees a poodle and is able to fit this into the same schema as the family’s bull mastiff!

·       Accommodation:  new information or experiences cannot be fitted into the child's current understanding so it either has to alter existing schema or create a whole new schema;  for example cat doesn’t fit in with its schema for dog or George W Bush doesn’t tie in with its concept of intelligent life form!  In these cases new schemata need to be constructed or changes made to existing schemata.  So the child develops a schema for cat and one for nepotism in World Politics!

Operations

Not always mentioned specifically in texts but nevertheless crucial, by definition, to the stages.  Operations are mental transformations or manipulations that occur in the mind.  Piaget believed that it was operations that provided the rules by which the child is able to understand the world.  While schemas develop with experience operations only develop as the child’s brain develops.  So children in the first two stages do not possess operations, hence ‘preoperational.’  As the brain matures the child is capable of ever more complex understanding.

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.’  Young children glance at this one but seem to realise there's nothing unusual about it. However, they spend significantly longer looking at this one, suggesting that they realise its impossible.  That is they realise that the carrot should still be visible in the space. 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. Mind Changers: Jean Piaget and the Three Mountains 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.

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.

General criticisms Ages and stages Research 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.

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.   Next page