Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development (II) PDF

Esther Mercado Garrido [email protected]  Tertiary circular Secondary reactions (12- Circular 18 months) Reactions 4-8 months Reflexes 0-1 month...

Esther Mercado Garrido [email protected]  Tertiary circular Secondary reactions (12- Circular 18 months) Reactions 4-8 months Reflexes 0-1 month Sensorimotor Stage Preoperational Concrete Formal Operational Operational Stage (0 – 2 years) Stage Period Primary Circular Coordination of Reactions (1-4 Secondary months) Schemes 8-12 months The beginnings of thought and language (18- 24 months) o For Piaget the development of object permanence is a fundamental milestone and critical precursor of emerging symbolic representation and language ability, and according to Piaget the development of object permanence took place across the 6 stages of the sensorimotor period. o It is only during the last stage of the sensorimotor from 18 -24 months that the infant is able to make inferences about the positions of unseen objects even when the objects have been displaced several times. Bower (1982) and the work of Baillargeon (1985) have suggested that children show signs of object permanence at an earlier age. (1) Piaget underestimated the child’s abilities (2) Infants are progressively learning to combine developments in perception and awareness of object permanence  Preoperational Concrete Formal Sensorimotor Stage Operational Operational Stage (2 – 7 years) Stage Period 2 to 7 years. Children gain the ability to use mental representation to think about the world This period is marked by the appearance of the symbolic function → the ability to make one thing (i.e., word/object) stand for, or represent, something else Piaget talks about preconceptual (2 to 4 years) and intuitive (4 – 7 years) stages. Logical errors include animism, egocentrism and centration  2 – 4 years Children acquire the ability to represent an object that it is not physically present. They no longer need sensory input to think of things (e.g. pretend play) Characterized by animistic thinking and egocentricity Preconceptual animism: Animism is the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities such as thoughts, feelings and wishes and are capable of independent action. Attributing life to inanimate objects. It is raining because the clouds are feeling sad The car is tired after driving Plants feel pain when the kid for a while picks their flowers Piaget (1960) P: Does the sun move? C: Yes, when one walks it follows. When one turns around it turns around too. Doesn’t it ever follow you too? P: Why does it move? C: Because when one walks, it goes too. P: Why does it go? C: To hear what we say. P: Is it alive? C: ‘Of course, otherwise it wouldn’t follow us, it couldn’t shine.’ Was Piaget correct? Bullock (1985): some objects are more open to magical interpretations – the sun, the moon and wind. But children as young as 4 years know that inanimate objects, such as statues, cannot move on their own (Massey and Gelman, 1988). Egocentrism is the tendency to perceive the world solely from one’s own point of view, having difficulty recognising another person’s point of view. Children often assume that people will perceive and think about the world in the same way they do. Piaget asks the Child: What do I see? Younger children pick the picture of the view they themselves see ! They don’t consistently identify another’s point of view until 9 or 10 years old. Criticism: Borke (1975) improved performance: (1) Using familiar objects: added mountains with snow-caps, trees, etc. (2) Provided a small rotating model for display of ‘perspective’ rather than select from a set of pictures, which helped children as young as 3 to provide the correct answer.  4 – 7 years Children begin to classify, order and quantify in a more systemic manner. Intuitive because although a child can carry out mental operations, they remain largely unaware of the underlying principles. Reasoning is based on perception and intuition, rather than rational thinking Although a basic or intuitive type of logic is developing, depending on the task demands, the child during the preoperational stage is limited in their reasoning and thinking abilities: Limited reasoning about Classes and Logical Relations (seriation, classification), Centration and Conservation The preoperational child often has difficulty performing a seriation task. That is, they cannot put a group of objects in order on the basis of a particular dimension, such as length. During this stage they gradually acquire the ability to classify, but have a limited performance. Focus on one aspect of any problem or communication at a time. There are more dogs than cats There are more dogs than animals Focus on one aspect of any problem or communication at a time. I don’t live in Ireland; I live in Galway!! The most famous example of the preoperational child’s centrism is what Piaget refers to as their inability to conserve. Conservation: Altering an object’s appearance does not change its basic properties. Preoperational children’s cognitive abilities are characterized by three basic limitations: 1) The inability to grasp the notion of reversibility, 2) The tendency to focus on the end state of an action or a task rather than the means to this end state, and 3) Centration (i.e., the tendency to focus on only one dimension of a problem).  In general, ToM is used to refer to children’s developing concepts of mental activity—an understanding of how the human mind works and a knowledge that humans are cognitive beings whose mental states are not always shared with or accessible to others. Between ages 3-5, children really start to think about others’ thoughts and feelings, and this is when true ToM emerges. The traditional test for ToM is a false-belief task. A false-belief task is commonly used in child development research to assess a child’s understanding that other people can have beliefs about the world which are not true. The false -belief task allows researchers to distinguish unambiguously between the child’s (true) belief and the child’s awareness of someone else’s different (false) belief (Dennett, 1978). Most researchers agree now that ToM emerges earlier than Piaget thought