Piaget stages of intellectual development

• What are the 4 stages of Piaget's stages of intellectual development?


  1) sensorimotor

  2) pre-operational

  3) concrete operations

  4) formal operations
• At what age are children in the sensorimotor stage?

  0-2 years
• At what age does object permanence develop?

  8 months
• Describe the sensorimotor stage.


  . focus on physical touch

  . learn by trial and error

  . basic language and physical coordination

  . understand others are separate objects

  . object permanence = understanding object still exists when out of sight so continue to look for it
• What are the 3 reasoning abilities children in the pre-operational stage and describe them?


  conservation - the ability to realise quantity remains the same even when appearance changes

  egocentrism - only being able to see the world from their point of view

  class inclusion - class inclusion - recognising subsets
• Describe the task to measure egocentrism and the result in the pre-operational stage.

  3 mountains

  When child asked what doll could see (who was at a different angle to the child) child chose the pic that matched their own scene
• Describe the task to measure class inclusion and the result in the pre-operational stage.


  Piaget and Inhelder - showed 7-8 year olds 5 dogs and 2 cats. Asked 'Are there more dogs or animals?'. Said dogs.
• At what age is a child in the stage of concrete operations?

  7-11 years
• Describe the stage of concrete operations.


  conservation, egocentrism and class inclusion better but only applied to physical objects in child's presence. Struggle with abstract ideas and thing they can't see.
• What age are children in the pre-operational stage?

  2-7 years
• What age are children in the stage of formal operations?

  11+ years
• What is formal reasoning?


  focusing on the form of the argument not just the content
• State the question asked by Smith et al to measure formal reasoning.


  'All yellow cats have 2 heads. I have a yellow cat called Charlie. How many heads does Charlie have?
• How did McGarrigle and Donaldson change their replication of the conservation task compared to Piaget?


  in Piaget's children saw the experimenter change the counter/liquid but in McGarrigle and Donaldson's counters were moved by 'accident' by a 'naughty teddy' for experimental group and Piaget's experiment used for control group.
• What percentage of children in the test group of McGarrigle and Donaldson's study said the number of counters stayed the same?

  62%
• Describe Siegler and Svetina's study into class inclusion.


  tested 100 5 year olds who had 3 sessions of 10 class inclusion tasks. 1 group had post-test feedback to explain class inclusion - scores improved for this group.
• Who did an experiment similar to the 3 mountains and what did they use instead?


  Hughes

  2 intersecting walls and 3 dolls - 2 policemen and a boy
• Describe Hughes results.


  children as young as 3.5 could position boy doll where 1 policeman could not see him 90% of the time

  4 year olds could do this 90% of the time with 2 policemen
• What was Bradmetz' sample?

  62 children, followed from 7-15 years
• What type of people provide evidence against domain general?

  those on the autistic spectrum
• Which of Piaget's stages does Baillargeon challenge?


  Sensorimotor
• What 2 reasons, other than object permanence, are there for children stopping looking for an object once it is out of sight?

  . lack motor skills

  . lose interest because selective attention skills not developed enough
• key term - stages of intellectual development Piaget identified 4 stages of intellectual development. Each stage is characterised by a different level of reasoning ability. Although the exact ages vary from child to child, the key point is that all children develop through the same sequence of stages.
• key term - object permanence 


  the ability to realise that an object still exists when it passes out of the visual field. Piaget believed that this ability appears at around 8 months of age. Prior to this, children lose interest in an object once they can’t see it and presumably are no longer are aware of its existence.
• key term - conservation 


  the ability to realise that quantity remains the same even when the appearance of an object or group of objects changes. For example, the volume of liquid stays the same when poured between vessels of different shapes.
• key term - egocentrism

  the child’s tendency to only be able to see the world from their own point of view. This applied to both physical object – demonstrated in the 3 mountains task – and arguments in which the child can only appreciate their own perspective.v
• key term - class inclusion 


  an advanced classification skill in which we recognise that classes of objects have subsets and are themselves subsets of larger classes. Pre-operational children usually struggle to place things in more than one class.
• sensorimotor age (0-2 years) includes object permanence

  • A baby’s early focus is on physical sensation and on developing basic physical co-ordination. They learn by trial and error that they can deliberately move their body in particular ways and eventually they can move other objects.Babies also come to understand that other people are separate objects and they acquire some basic language.
• sensorimotor pt 2 object permanence

  They also develop object permanence at around 8 months (understanding objects still exist even when out of sight). Piaget observed babies look at objects and watched as the object was removed from sight.•Before 8 months, children immediately switch their attention away from the object once its out of sight.•After 8 months children continue to look for it. This suggests that children then understand that objects continue to exist when removed from view.
• pre-operational stage 


  By the age of 2 a toddler is mobile and can use language but still lacks adult reasoning ability – they display some characteristic errors in reasoning.
• pre-operational stage (2-7 years) - conservation 



  Conservation – the basic mathematic understanding that quantity remains constant even when the appearance of the object changed. Piaget demonstrated this through his number conservation experiments and his liquid conservation experiment.
• pre operational stage (2-7 years) - egocentrism 


  Egocentrism – this means to see the world only from ones own point of view. Piaget & Inhelder 1956 tested this in the 3 mountains task -> children were shown 3 model mountains each with a different feature: a cross, a house, or snow. A doll was placed at the side of the model so facing it from a different angle than the  child. Pre-operational children tended to find it difficult to select a picture that showed a view other than their own.
• pre-operational stage (2-7 years) - class inclusion 



  Class inclusion – this is the idea that objects fall into categories. Most pre-operational children can classify pugs, bull terriers and retrievers as dogs. Class inclusion is tested for example, using a picture of 5 dogs and 2 cats and asking are there more dogs or animals? Children under 8 tend to answer that there are more dogs (Piaget & Inhelder 1964). Younger children cannot simultaneously see a dog as a member of the dog class and the animal class – struggle with the idea classifications have subsets.
• concrete operations (7-11 years) 



  Piaget found by around age 7 most children can conserve and perform much better on tasks of egocentrism and class inclusion. However, although children now have better externally verifiable reasoning abilities – Piaget called operations – they are concrete operations i.e. they can only be applied to physical objects in child’s presence they struggle to reason about abstract ideas and struggle to imagine objects/situations they cannot see.
• stage of formal operation (11+) includes syllogisms 



  Children are capable of formal reasoning – they can focus on the form of an argument not be distracted by its content.Abstract reasoning develops – being able to think beyond the here and now. Children can now focus on the form of an argument and not be distracted by its content.
• how formal reasoning is tested (stage of formal operation 11+)


  Formal reasoning is tested by using the pendulum task and also by means of syllogisms -> For example: ‘All yellow cats have 2 heads. I have a yellow cat called Charlie. How many heads does Charlie have? – correct answer = 2.Piaget found that younger children became distracted by the content and answered that cats do not really have 2 heads. Piaget believed that once children can reason formally they are capable of scientific reasoning and become able to appreciate abstract ideas.
• one limitation is that the theory was based on tests that may lack validity 



  McGarrigle and Donaldson 1974 found that in a conservation of number task, if the counters were moved accidentally by a ‘naughty teddy’, 72% of children under 7 correctly said the number was the same as before. This suggests that Piaget underestimated the conservation ability of children ages 4-6. Piaget’s method may have led the children to think something must have changed. This is a limitation because it calls into question the nature of the pre-operational stage of intellectual development.
• another limitation is that lack of class inclusion ability is questioned 


  Siegler and Svetina 2006 found that when 5 year olds received feedback that pointed out subsets, they did develop an understanding of class inclusion. This was contrary to Piaget’s belief that class inclusion was not possible until a child has reached the necessary age of intellectual development. This again calls into question the validity of Piaget’s stages.
• a further limitation is that the assertions about egocentrism are not supported 


  Hughes 1975 found that even at 3 ½ years a child could position a boy doll in a model building with 2 intersecting walls so that the doll could not be seen by a policeman doll. This suggests that children are able to decentre and imagine other perspectives much earlier than Piaget proposed. This again suggest the manner of Piaget’s studies and tasks led him to underestimate children’s actual intellectual abilities and that the resultant stages were incorrect.
• a limitation is that childrens abilities were both over and underestimated 



  As well as underestimating what young children can do, Piaget may have overestimated other abilities such as achieving formal operations such as abstract reasoning. In addition there is evidence that, with practice, children can achieve logical thinking earlier than Piaget suggested. This challenged some of the basic principles of his theory if some stages are not universal and progression is not due to maturation.