Piaget’s theory

• Piaget's theory


  Piaget's theory explains children's cognitive development in terms of continually challenging and updating their schema through interacting with the environment
• Equilibrium


  Equilibrium is a desirable state as it means the child understands the world around them. When a new experience fits with an existing schema, its assimilated into that schema
• Disequilibrium

  Disequilibrium is when an experience doesn't fit within the child's existing schema. This is an unpleasant state because it means the child doesn't understand what is going on, causing confusion
• Achieving Equilibrium

  Confusion from disequilibrium creates a motivation to learn and return to the pleasant state of equilibrium. When a new experience doesn't fit within an existing schema, the child must create a new schema or update their existing schema to accommodate the new experience
• Piaget's stages of cognitive development

  • Sensorimotor (0-2yrs)- child learns object permanence (idea that physical things still exist even when they are no longer in sight)

  
  

  • Pre-operational (2-7yrs)- thinking is egocentric, child can only see things from their own perspective

  
  

  • Concrete operational (7-11yrs)- the child learns conservation, that an object can maintain its mass/volume/quantity even if its appearance changes. Child also learns class inclusion e.g. dogs are in the class 'animals'

  
  

  • Formal operational (>11yrs)- child learns to reason abstractly
• Egocentrism study


  Piaget and Inhelder (1956) 3 mountains task let children examine model of swiss mountain on a table. A doll was placed on top of one of the model mountains and the children were asked to select pictures of what the doll could see. 4 year olds selected the pictures of what they saw (not the doll) which suggests the children were unable to visualise things from another person's perspective.
• Conservation study

  Piaget (1952) showed 7 year olds two equal beakers of water A and B. The children could see that A and B contained the same amount of water. But when the water from B was poured into a taller, thinner, beaker C, the children thought beaker C contained more water
• Class inclusion study

  - Piaget and Inhelder (1956) showed children in the preoperational stage a picture with 5 dogs and 2 cats and then asked 'are there more dogs or more animals?'. The children would answer that there are more dogs, because they were unable to comprehend that each dog was a member of the dog class and the animal class
• AO3-Supporting evidence


  Piaget and Inhelder's studies support the 4 stages of development.
• AO3-Conflicting evidence


  Siegler and Svetina (2006) found that 5 year old children were able to learn class inclusion when it was explained to them, contradicting Piaget's claim that they don't learn this until 7 years of age.

  
  

  Hughes (1975) demonstrated that children aged 3-5 years old were able to see things from the perspective of a policeman doll, contradicting Piaget's claim that thinking in the pre-operational stage is egocentric.

  
  

  Baillargeon's VOE research suggests infants understand object permanence before 8 months of age.
• AO3-Methodological concerns


  much of Piaget's theory was based on unstructured observations and interviews with children so it may be biased towards Piaget's subjective interpretation