piaget's intellectual development

• piaget's intellectual development theory

  piaget - we develop our reasoning ability (operations) in stages

  • they develop through going sequentially through four stages which are each characterised by gaining a particular mental ability

  the stages are as follows

  • sensorimotor - 0-2 years
  • pre-operational - 2-7 years
  • concrete operations - 7-11 years
  • formal operations - 11+ years
• sensorimotor stage

  first stage - 0-2 years

  • focus on physical sensations
  • develop basic coordination of physical actions
  • understands other people as separate objects
  • aquires basic language
  • develops object permanence at 8 months - the understanding that an object still exists when it is out of sight, before this stage babies immediately lose interest when they can no longer see an object, presumably because they believe it no longer exists
• pre-operational stage

  second stage - 2-7 years

  • has language and is mobile
  • lacks reasoning so makes characteristic reasoning errors in three areas
  • conservation
  • egocentrism
  • class-inclusion
• conservation

  an error in the pre-operational stage - mathematically understanding that quantity remains constant when the appearance of the object changes, children in the pre-operational stage are unable to reason conservation

  • awareness of conservation of different things develops at different ages (number then area then weight)
  • often tested using liquid in differently shaped beakers
• egocentrism

  an error in the pre-operational stage - the ability to only see the world from their own point of view, children in this stage are egocentric and so unable to decentre

  • piaget + inhelder's three mountains task - children were unable to describe what the doll would see and instead describe what they could currently see, despite having previously seen the mountains from the doll's perspective

  
• class inclusion

  an error in the pre-operational stage - the ability to recognise that classes of objects have subcategories

  • preoperational children recognise that things fall into classes but can't place things into more than one class simultaneously
  • piaget + inhelder - 'are there more dogs or animals?'
• concrete operational stage

  third stage - 7-11 years

  • are able to perform the errors that they previously made in the preconvential stage, so are able to decentre and understand ideas of conservation and class-inclusion
  • imprved reasoning when their argument or the answer is externally viable
  • struggle with abstract ideas or situations they can't see
• formal operational stage

  fourth stage - 11+ years

  • become capable of reasoning through the form of an argument without being distracted by its content - formal reasoning
  • can reason through things in a scientific way and test hypotheses eg. pendulum test
  • can reason through abstract ideas like syllogisms (abstract logic tests)
  • smith - 'all yellow cats have two heads. i have a yellow cat called charlie. how many heads does charlie have?'
• evaluation

  • baillargeon - children develop object permanence much younger than piaget suggested
  • mcgarrigle + donaldson - replicated conservation task but 'naughty teddy' changed where the counters were and 72% of preoperational children gave the correct answer - shows researcher bias
  • hughes - used more real life version of three mountains and found 3.5 y/os could hide toys from a toy police officer 90% of the time
  • siegler + svetina - tested 100 5 year olds and explained why to some participants afterwards who then showed significant improvement - underestimated the importance of others
• more evaluation

  • core principles are unchallenged - disputing evidence purely disagrees with the age of the stages, not the general importance of them
  • explanation for incorrect ages - piaget used a small sample of his children or other professors' children which may explain incorrect ages
  • however would expect those children to develop more slowly not more quickly
  • domain general v domain specific - intellectual development is seen as a singular process which is mostly true and why schools work, but people with autism may develop abilities separately so limited application