AO3 - Piaget's Theory

• The influence of Piaget’s ideas in Developmental Psychology has been enormous. He changed how people viewed the child’s world and their methods of studying children.
• Piaget's ideas have been of practical use in understanding and communicating with children, particularly in the field of education.
• Critics such as Vygotsky and Bruner prefer not to talk about stages at all, they see development as a continuous process.
• Research has shown that the formal operational stage is not always met. Keating (1979) reported that 40-60% of college students fail at formal operation tasks.
• Dasen (1994) states that only one-third of adults ever reach the formal operational stage.
• As 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.
• Dasen (1994) conducted research in remote parts of the central Australian desert with 8-14 year old Aborigines. He gave them conservation of liquid tasks and spatial awareness tasks. He found that the ability to conserve came later in the aboriginal children, between aged 10 and 13.
• Vygotsky, a contemporary of Piaget, argued that social interaction is crucial for cognitive development.
• Piaget's research was valid as he carried out detailed naturalistic observations of children, and from these he wrote diary descriptions charting their development. He also used clinical interviews and observations of older children who were able to understand questions and hold conversations.
• As Piaget conducted the observations alone the data collected was based on his own subjective interpretation of events, lowering the reliability of his findings.
• Gathering data from children can be problematic; they may not understand the questions, they have short attention spans and they cannot express themselves very well and also may be trying to please the experimenter.
• Hughes (1975) suggested that Piaget underestimated the abilities of children because his tests were sometimes confusing or difficult to understand.
• Behaviourism would also refute Piaget’s schema theory because it cannot be directly observed as it is an internal process. Therefore, they would claim it cannot be objectively measured.
• Piaget studied his own children and the children of his colleagues in Geneva in order to deduce general principles about the intellectual development of all children, which is biased.
• Piaget's samples were very small, mainly composed of European children from families of high socio-economic status. Researchers have therefore questioned the generalisability of the data.
• Howe et al (1992) demonstrated how children pick up different facts and knowledge despite experiencing the same learning activity.
• Piaget’s ideas changed how education was delivered in the classroom using more interactive, discovery learning, rather than the traditional teacher-led experiences.
• Lazonder & Harmsen (2016) concluded that discovery learning with considerable input from teachers was the most effective way to learn.
• McGarrigle & Donaldson (1974) suggest that younger children can conserve if they are not put off by the questioning.
• McGarrigle & Donaldson (1974) set up a study for conservation of number, where the counters appeared to be moved by accident. In one condition they replicated Piaget’s task asking children to say which row has more counters or if they were the same. They found similar results to Piaget in that children aged 4-6 answered incorrectly. However, in another condition a ‘naughty teddy’ appeared and knocked all the counters closer together, and subsequently 72% gave the correct answer.
• Siegler & Svetina (2006) showed that children under 7 years old can in fact understand class inclusion, which goes against Piaget.
• Siegler & Svetina (2006) gave 100 five-year-olds from Slovenia ten class inclusion tasks, getting an explanation of the task each time. If the children received feedback, they performed better on the task.
• Hughes (1975) tested the ability of children to see a situation from two different perspectives using a method similar to the mountain task but with a boy toy and two policeman dolls. His results contradict Piaget.
• In Hughes (1975) the sample comprised of children aged 3.5-5 years old, of whom 90% gave correct answers. Even when he devised a more complex situation, with more walls and a third policeman, 90% of four-year-olds were successful.
• Bradmetz (1999) followed up on the development of 62 children from age 7-15 years, regularly testing them for formal thinking skills. At age 15 only one participant could reliably carry out the tasks, contradicting the idea that formal thinking begins in early adolescence.