2. Piaget’s theories – Flashcards
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what are piaget's stages?
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sensori motor pre-operational concrete operations formal operations
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what did piaget call a basic unit of understanding?
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a scheme
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what's a scheme described as?
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a cognitive structure that forms the basis of organising actions and mental representations so can understand and act upon environment. make frames of reference which we filter new info
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what are the three basic schemes we're born with?
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reflexive actions that can be performed on objects: sucking, looking and grasping
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what do babies first form schemes on?
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initially it's physical activity before they can form mental representations
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what did piaget call mental schemes?
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operations
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what are the two innate processes ?
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organisation and adaptation
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what's organisation?
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the predisposition to group particular observation into coherent knowledge
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what did piaget believe adaptation consist of?
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assimilation and accommodation
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what's assimilation?
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with new information they incorporate it into their existing schemes (e.g. all furry four leg animals = dog to child initially)
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what's accommodation?
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when a child then generates a new scheme for the new info
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what's equilibration?
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a state in which children's schemes are in balance and are undisturbed by conflict --- assimilate and accommodate to objects and situations to reach equilibrium
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what are piaget's stages for?
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show the (qualitative) shifts to new levels of thinking
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are the stages rigid?
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vary in age from one child to another BUT piaget thought they were universal in that everyone went through the same order and that when they were in that stage all skills would be the same order (e.g. literacy social etc)
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how long does the sensori motor stage last?
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first 2 years
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what are the six substages of the sensory motor stage?
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reflexive schemes primary circular reactions secondary circular reactions coordination of secondary schemes tertiary circular reactions beginning of thought
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what happens during sensori motor stage?
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all info comes through senses and motoric actions
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what's the reflexive schemes?
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covers the period from birth to one month.. when infants use their innate relexes to explore their world
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what are the primary circular reactions?
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from 1-4 months infants start to show degree of coordination between senses and motor behaviour behaviours focused around own body repetitive behaviours may have anticipation of events (e.g. getting fed)
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what are the secondary circular reactions?
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4-10 months more aware external world- direct behaviour reach and grasp objects still repetitive behaviours
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whats coordination of secondary schemes
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10-12 months infants deliberately combine schemes to achieve goals object permanence
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what are tertiary circular reactions
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12-18 months child search for novelty uses trial and error explore objects develops new ways of solving problems
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what's meant by the beginning of thought?
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18-24 months child able to endure mental representations mentally experiment / symbol use deferred imitation
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what's deferred imitation?
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the ability to copy or mimic actions of others some time after they've seen these actions- important type of learning in humans and facilitated by mirror neurons
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how old are infants in the preoperational stage?
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2- 7 years old
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what happens in the preoperational stage?
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increase in mental representation and accompanied by limitations
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what does the preoperational stage divide into?
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the symbolic function substage intuitive substage
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what's the symbolic function substage?
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children acquire the ability to mentally represent objects that are not physically present e.g. pretend play use of language increases learn around 9 words a day
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what are a preoperational child's limitations?
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ego centrism and animism
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what's ego centrism?
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tendency to perceive the world solely from one's own point of view (studied under theory of mind) people think same as they do
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how did piaget investigate egocentrism?
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through the three mountains task - child shown a model of three mountains and asked to choose the view that would be seen by someone in a different location from themselves and the preoperational child typically chooses view from own location
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what's animism?
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the belief that inaminate objects have lifelike qualities (e.g. thought)
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what's the intuitive thought substage?
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4-7 yrs old classify order and quantify in more systematic manner reasoning based on perception intuition not rational thinking
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what tests does piaget use during intuitive thought substage to show their limitations?
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seriation tasks transitive inference class inclusion tasks conservation tasks appearance vs reality tasks
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what are seriation tasks?
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putting items in a coherent / logical order
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what are transitive inference tasks?
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the relation between two (or more) premises (a>b.b>c) leads to an inference that is logically necessary
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what are class inclusion tasks?
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the ability to coordinate reason about parts and wholes simultaneously in recognising relations between classes and subclasses (e.g. more roses or flowers?)
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what are conservation tasks?
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recognise that certain characteristics of an object remain the same even when appearance changes (e.g. water in different sized glasses)
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what did piaget suggest as an explanation for the childs failure to conserve?
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three main limitations centration, reverssibility and focussing on the end state
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what's reversibility?
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the ability to imagine a series of steps both forward and reverse directions. characteristic of thinking in concrete operations stage
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what's decentration?
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the child cannot focus on two attributes e.g. height and width of glass...
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what's centration?
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tendency to focus on one attribute
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what does it mean by focussing on the end state rather than the means?
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rather than focussing on experimenters action of pouring liquid from one glass into another they focus on the end state
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according to piaget why do children fail appearance vs reality tasks?
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piaget believed young children tend to focus exclusively on the perceptual features of objects
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what age of children tend to fail appearance vs reality tasks?
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3 year olds
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why do 3 yr olds fail appearance vs reality tasks?
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two kinds of error: phenomenism and realism
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what's phenomenism?
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knowledge that is limited to appearances such that, in tasks that involve distinguishing reality from appearance, children report only appearance
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what's realism?
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believing that things are as they appear and not what they might be (e.g. saying sponge looks like a rock is a rock)
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what's the concrete operations stage?
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7-11 yrs thought more logical and reasonable- reasoning tied to concrete situations solved problems from previous stage
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Studies / criticisms of piagetian theory
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---
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what was a problem with the mountain task?
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-unfamiliar objects -rotate model (instead of pictures)
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what did Borke AND Newcombe and Huttenlocher find from using the above changes?
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children as young as 3/4 were able to identify correct perspective
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what has research shown that 14 month olds do which may show appreciation for other people's perceptions?
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rational imitation
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what's rational imitation?
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where infants produce action they think the adult intended to do, rather than what the adult actually did
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What did Gergely find about rational imitation?
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when infants observed adult turning on light with head with hands free.. infants copied behaviour. whereas if hands tied... infants used their hands
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what did Vaish find?
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children as young as 18 months sympathise with stranger who is in hurtful situation but no emotion (possession stolen).. infant prosocial and concerned
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what's a problem with piaget's research into animism?
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used objects children had little experience with and the wording may have confused the children
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what have mandler and mcdonough find?
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6-12 months can sort pictures of objects into categories and can distinguish between animate and inanimate objects
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what's a problem about research into animism ?
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innate? capacity inherent or through experience
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what's a problem about piaget's techniques for measuring transitive inferences?
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couldn't remember order
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what did bryant and trabasso do?
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trained children on adjacent pairs asked which was bigger B or D (which they hadn't been trained on) 4-6 year olds were able to do it
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what's a problem with bryant and trabsso's findings?
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could have yielded a false positive- simply pass because remember b bigger than d just because it was mentioned before .... children's performance was still larger than chance level
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what was a problem with piaget's questions on class inclusion?
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wording complicated
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what did markman and siebert find?
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childrens performance improved highlighting partwhole relations between objects using collective terms (bunch of flowers) rather than classes.
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what did gopnik and nazzi find?
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2-5 year olds can make categorisation judgements on non-observable properties... pterodactyl = dinosaur even though looks more like bird
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what did Gauvain find about age of conservation in different cultures?
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western--- conserve: number (7) liquid, length, mass (6/7) weight, volume (9-11+)
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what did piaget suggest for the different ages in each conservation task?
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reflected phenomenon called horizontal decalage... non synchronous development of children on piagetian tasks (e.g. cases in which children may succeed on conservation of number but not continuous quantity
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how did mcgarrigle and donaldson improve the conservation of number task?
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used naughty teddy- seem like an accident (rather than child looking out for what the researcher changed) children then more likely to produce same answer
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what's a problem with mcgarrigle and donaldson's experiment?
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could be that child was distracted by naughty teddy
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what did moore and frye do?
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Moore & Frye (1986) • 8 condi/ons: - Context (teddy vs. standard) - Transforma/on (length vs. addi/on) - Number of counters (4 vs. 7) • Dependent variable - Number of 'same' responses • 120 5-6 year-olds
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what did moore and frye find with the length change?
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they found similar results to McGarrigle and Donaldson
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what did moore and frye find with an addition of counters in both naughty teddy and experimenter conditions?
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in the experimenter's manipulation condition- more right answers with an addition (noticed the addition) in naughty teddy - more wrong answers (just said the same number of counters)... more distracted by the teddy?
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what did Mash AND Mounoud & Bower find?
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weight conservation present in infants... infants expect longer rods to weigh more . if rods weights are switched (made hollow) then infants arms will rise / fall if it was lighter/ heavier than expected.
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what did Mounoud and Bower find?
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if 18 month old infants saw transformation of longer rod by folding it they expected it to weigh the same
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what do the findings of the conservation of weight suggest?
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appears to sensorimotor form of the conservation of weight and is an example of vertical decalage
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what is verticle decalage?
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where the child has a level of understanding at one level (perhaps at the level of action) that has to be reconstructed at a later age at a different stage or level of understanding (perhaps at the level of thought)
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what's a problem with the conservation tasks?
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attentional and linguistic factors play a role on a child's failure at these tasks. but still not fully developed until they're in their school years
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what happened in rheta devries study?
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investigated children's ability to distinguish appearance from reality by allowing children to play with a cat called Maynard. all say it's a cat. but then cat covered cat with realistic mask of a dog. then children asked what animal it is.... 3 yr olds thought it was a cat.. 4/5 yr olds
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what did John Flavell et al find?
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3 yr olds couldn't distinguish between a sponge that looked like rock or an a stone that looked like an egg but 4/5 yr olds could
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What did Rice et al find?
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if it was seen as a trick to someone else child would see the rock sponge as a sponge (problems with the experiment itself?)
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what have some researchers argued about childrens failures on tasks that involves appearance vs reality?
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could result from a difficulty in formulating the appearance-reality distinction into words.. e.g. sapp et al compared 3 yr olds performance on flavell's study.. using typical verbal response paradigm and non-verbal response condition. non verbal condition= take picture of teddy and sponge that looks like rock then children were asked to respond to a reality request e.g. pass me an item to clean up water with.. majority 3 yr olds show correct answer in non-verbal condition.. but in contrast many of same children gave inappropriate answers when the verbal response was used.
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what have people argued about the conservation tasks depending on the context?
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kids in nigeria who rarely send children to school didn't understand conservation tasks till around 11 children brazil poorly educated but sold books 6-9 year olds poor at standard calss inclusion tasks but when applied to selling stuff performed well (Ceci and Roazzi)
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what do many researchers argue with piaget's descriptions of basic processes?
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they are vague and tend to describe rather than explain how a change occurs.
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what's a problem with piaget's theory in terms of misjudging ages?
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piaget often misjudged ages at which children show evidence for understanding a particular concept. this may have resulted from the fact that he often failed to distinguish between competence and performance. recent studies have shown that there are many other factors (memory capacity, context) other than understanding a concept that may be required to solve a task. children may not have failed tasks not because they lacked competence but rather because they failed to demonstrate their competence on classical piagetian tasks
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what is a problem about culture in piagetian theory?
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some argue that piaget didn't pay enough attention to the role of culture and social interaction in shaping cognitive development.. in particular the effect of schooling suggests that piaget's assumption that children's learning by acting on the environment is too narrow
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what is it argued about schooling?
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it is argued that teachers and adults guide children's learning by helping them focus on important issues or aspects of a situation, hence they are scaffolding the children's learning, an issue that's discussed more
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what's scaffolding?
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the process whereby adults structure and simplify a child's environment in order to facilitate their learning.
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what's questions have been raised about the universality of Piaget's stages?
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according to piaget's conception once a person has consolidated the skills and understanding of a particular stage, that person will be functioning cognitively in that stage regardless of the particular problem or domain of knowledge. many researchers propose that child might use concrete operational thinking on one task and use preoperational thinking on one task and use preoperation thinking on another. although researchers have increasingly challenged piaget's notion that broad stages of development exist there is still disagreement on how general or specific cognitive development actually is.
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*** Case's Neo-Piagetian Theory
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***
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what does Case have in comon with Piaget?
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Case interpreted cognitive change occuring as a series of four stages or structural levels
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what were Case's stages?
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sensorimotor stage (0-2 yrs) the interrelational stage (2-8 yrs) dimensional stage (5-11 yrs) vectorial stage (11-19 yrs)
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what was dfferent about Case from Piaget?
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Case adopted an information processing perspective to cognitive development in that he attributes changes within each stage and across stages to increases in central processing speed and working memory capacity
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what's working memory?
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short term memory store in which mental operations such as rehearsal and categorisation take place
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why is case's theory called neopiagetion?
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expands piaget's views by providing an alternative theoretical account
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what did case attributed the increase in working memory capacity is?
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brain development, automatisation, and the formation of central conceptual structures
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what's meant by brain development?
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as children get older neurological changes within the brain result in increased working memory capacity. this means that as a child gets older they are able to attend to more operation in their working memory at the same time ... however at a given age there's a biological limit on how many operations can be stored in working memory
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what's meant by automisation?
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as children get older they become more practised with piagetian operations and by repeatedly practising certain operations, their processing operations of these operations becomes more automatic. this increased efficiency in processing operations or schemes means that there are fewer demands on working memory and free working memory capacity can be used for combining schemes and generating new ones.
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what is meant by the formation of central conceptual structures?
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that increased processing efficiency combined with increased free working memory capacity allows children to generate central conceptual structures- semantic networks of concepts which represent children's knowledge in a particular cognitive domain (e.g. number, space) case argues that when children form a new conceptual structure they move to the next stage of development
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what happens once all these schemes have become sufficiently automatic?
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they are integrated into a central conceptual structure (network of concepts_ that enables them to effectively process information about a range of conservation tasks
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how is case's theory better for explaining horizontal decalafe?
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his theory provides more satisfactory account. simply, conservation tasks vary in their processing demands, with those tasks which require more working memory capacity being aqcuired later. the development of central conceptual structures, however is not only affected by biological maturation (e.g. central processing speed and increased working memory capacity) but also through social and individual experience. (e.g. child interested in reading not drawing will display more advanced conceptual structures in reading
