piagets theory

• piaget believed that cogniton processes in stages
• we are all born with basic cognitive progression but it gets more complex as we age
• 4 stages in development - sensorimotor - peroperational - concrete operational - formal operational
• sensorimotor is 0 - 2 years
• preoperational is 2 - 7 years
• concrete operational stage is 7 - 11 years
• formal operational stage is 11+ years
• sensorimotor - childs knowledge is limited to what their senses tell them - explore and begin to develop object permenance
• peroperational stage - has some language but makes logic mistakes - cannot do conservation or three mountains task - show egocentrism
• concrete operational - logic improves can do conservation tasks - no longer show egocentrism - cannot use abstract reasoning - understand class inclusion that you can belong to more than one category at a time
• formal operational - child is much more advanced - can use abstract reasoning in problem solving - can use hypothesis and theoretical principles
• piaget used his ideas of schemas in this work
• schemas - contain all the info you know about something
• schemas - help you organise and interpret info - info is assimilated or accomodated
• when info is taken in it can lead to equilibrium or disequilibrium
• piaget used the mountain task as evidence for the theory
• mountains had different landmarks on them - children asked to put the doll so she can see whats in the photo
• children are little scientists who learn through experimenting
• schemas are bad - lead to incorrect inferences
• sensorimotor criticism - Bower and wishart - methodological criticism - changed methodology and object permenance shown much earlier on
• crit preoperational - mcgarngile and donaldson - naughty teddy study - 68% of 4-6 could conserve if change was accidental
• concrete operational crit - schaffer asked children where they would put a 3 dolls to hide from police - 90% 3 year olds hid 1 doll - 90% of 4 year olds hid 2 dolls
• formal operational - bradmetz - 15yr olds given a formal reasoning task - only one showed formal reasoning - more research shows pfc doesn't develop onto mid 20s
• piaget crit - madows criticised piaget that maturation cannot be sped up - meadows found that direct tuition can speed up development
• piaget crit - cultural bias - children in his studies were from academics at the uni
• piaget strength - plowden report - review of primary education based on piagets work