Piaget: ‘Stages of Development’

• Piaget’s constructivism

  • Constructivist → Children construct knowledge for themselves in response to experience.
  • Children learn on their own, without adult instruction, and are intrinsically motivated (don’t need a reward) to do so.
  • Development progresses continuously (continuities) and in discrete stages (discontinuities)
• Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

  • Children undergo qualitative changes in how they think and understand the world
  • Knowledge is organised into increasingly complex cognitive structures: Schemas

  
• Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

  How do infants and children adapt their schemas?

  
• Piaget’s stages of cognitive development

  
• I. The sensorimotor stage

  
  

  Key achievements by the end of the sensorimotor stage:

  • Realisation that objects exist even when out of sight: object permanence
  • Ability to overcome fundamental egocentrism

  
• The sensorimotor stage: 1 – basic reflex activity (0-1 month)

  • Developing ability to control reflexes (e.g. grasping, sucking)
  • Only focusing on objects directly in front of them
  • Actions are only carried out for their own sake
• The sensorimotor stage: 2 – primary circular reactions (1-4 months)

  Producing repetitive behaviours focused on themselves

  • Often begins by chance (e.g. accidentally moving finger to mouth)
  • Repeated if pleasurable

  No understanding of object permanence!

  • Will not search for an object that disappears
• The sensorimotor stage: 3 – secondary circular reactions (4-8 months)


  • Producing repetitive behaviours focused on objects (e.g. shaking a rattle)
  • Capable of combining schemas (e.g. looking and shaking)
  • Forming the basis to overcome egocentrism
  • Beginning to become aware of object permanence
  • Searches for partially, but not fully, covered objects
• The sensorimotor stage: 4 – coordination of secondary circular reactions (8-12 months)

  • More sophisticated combinations of behaviours
  • Ability to plan to achieve a goal (“means-end coordination” – e.g. moving one object to reach another)

  Object permanence improved

  • Understanding of object solidity:  e.g. one object cannot move through another

  But still committing “A-not-B error”

  • Infant continues to look for object in location A
  • Even after object has been (visibly) moved to location B
• A-not-B-error: testing Piaget’s ideas

  • According to Piaget, A-not-B error occurs due to egocentrism: “my own actions summoned up the object!”

  Bremner & Bryant (1977):

  • Infants are moved around the table before B trial
  • Still reach for same (egocentric) location relative to their body à objectively correct response
  • Confirmation that error is made due to egocentric response
• Alternative explanations for A-not-B error?

  • Deficit in inhibitory control
  • Constraints on short-term memory
  • Attentional bias due to repeated observation of hiding event at location A
  • Misinterpretation of communicative signals (“we keep this kind of toy in location A”)
• A-not-B-error: testing Piaget’s ideas

  Topal et al. (2008)

  • A-not-B error is reduced in noncommunicative and non-social conditions
  • Interpretation: infants see A-trials as generalisable learning events due to social aspect

  
• The sensorimotor stage: 5 – tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months)

  Experimenting with external objects – trial and error

  Children as “little scientists” (e.g. dropping objects from different heights)

  No longer make A-not-B error

  But still not perfect!

  E.g. difficulties with “invisible displacement”

  • Object is hidden in a box, box is hidden
  • Object is secretly removed from box
  • Box, now empty, is shown to infant
  • → infant is surprised, but does not look for the object elsewhere
  • → infant is overly reliant on visual cues rather than mental representation
• The sensorimotor stage: 6 – internalisation of schemas / inventing new means by mental combination (18-24 months)

  • Object permanence fully developed
  • Beginnings of symbolic thought
  • Inventing new ways to achieve goals by mentally combining schemas
  • Ability to hold mental representation à related to language and social abilities?
• Object permanence: testing Piaget’s ideas

  
• Piaget’s stages of cognitive development

  
• Preoperational stage (2-7 years)

  With emergence of symbolic thought, child is able to:

  • Learn and use language
  • Social abilities – e.g., (deferred) imitation
  • Pretend/imaginative play

  However, the preoperational child is limited by:

  • Egocentrism
  • Pre-logical thinking
• Preoperational stage (2-7 years)


  Egocentrism

  Piaget’s Three Mountain’s test: Child is unable to describe what a doll sees from different positions around the table.

  However

  • later research shows that children as young as 3 can do the task under different circumstances (Borke, 1975)
  • By making mountains more distinctive (e.g. snow cap)
  • Having child rotate scaled-down model (rather than reconstruct)

  
• Preoperational stage (2-7 years)

  
• Preoperational stage (2-7 years)

  
• Piaget’s stages of cognitive development

  
• Concrete operational stage (7-11 years)

  • Conservation skills complete
  • Better inferences
  • Better perspective taking skills

  But:

  • thinking still tied to concrete reality à operations only possible with physically present objects
  • Difficulty performing more than one mental operation at once
• The formal operational stage (11+)

  • Capable of abstract thought
  • Problem solving no longer confined to reality, e.g.
  • “If all blue people live in red houses, are all people who live in red houses blue?”
  • Ability to review possible alternative in problem-solving scenario – hypothesis testing
  • E.g. systematically testing variables rather than trying things randomly
  • BUT:
  • Importance of culture!
  • Not all children in all cultures reach the formal operational stage at the same time / at all!
• Strengths and limitations of Piaget’s theory

  Strengths

  • Constructivist view – supported by evidence in many areas
  • Useful theoretical framework (schemas; assimilation; accommodation)
  • Provided methods of investigation for us to develop

  Limitations

  • Some cognitive abilities underestimated

  §Potential overemphasis of stages?

  • Methodological limitations (e.g. observations of his own children)
  • Underestimated social context of his experiments
  • Does not take into account social, emotional, or cultural contributions to learning