Jean Piaget(1896-1980)

Started out as a biologist but specialized in psychology. He was interested in the nature of knowledge and how the child acquires knowledge. Piaget

saw empirical studies of children and adolescents as the most important source of information about the nature of knowledge. He made a valuable

contribution to understanding how thinking develops, and he inspired many child psychologist all over the world.

Piaget’s Method

Piaget based his theory on observations and open-ended interviews. This clinical method enabled Piaget to gain insight into the children’s judgment and explanations of events. He presented children with a number of tasks designed to discover the level of logical reasoning underpinning their thinking. He was interested in the way they arrived at their conclusions. His method was critized for:

Using a small and non-representative sample

Lack of scientific rigour

Asking questions that are too complex for children

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

According to Piaget, there are qualitative differences between the way adults and children think. Action and self-directed problem solving are at the heart of learning and cognitive development in children. Formal logic is seen as the highest and last stage in intellectual development.

The child is seen as an active “scientist”: He or she actively constructs knowledge about the social and physical world as he or she interacts with it. Each child builds his or her own mental representation of the world (schemas) used to interpret and interact with objects, people, and events. Piaget used the word “operation” to describe physical of symbolic manipulations of (thinking) of things.

Stages theory: Children’s cognitive development progresses thorough stages over time. According to Piaget, the content and sequence of stages in a cognitive development is the same for all humans (universal theory). Children cannot learn or be taught how to function at higher levels of cognition before they have passed through the lower levels.

Key Concept Schema

Knowledge is seen as cognitve structures or mental representations (squemas) that change over time. The baby uses an innate genetically based repertoire of schemas uses an innate genetically based repertoire of schemas (suking, grasping) to explore the world.

Knowledge comes from the baby’s actions upon objects in the environment. At later stages, action is replaced by "thinking", which Piaget sees as a kind of action.

Schemas are integrated and modified as a result of experience (adaptation) and new schemas emerge when existing schemas are inadequate.

Adaptation (learning) can take to forms:

Assimilation: New information is integrated into existing cognitive schemas, for example "dog" is categorized as "animal" knowledge is consolidated.

Accommodation: Existing schemas are modified to fit new information or new schemas are created New knowledge is created.

Piaget’s stages of cognitive development

Sensorimotor (0-2 years) Baby goes from reflexive instinctual action (sucking, grasping) to constructing knowledge via coordination of sensory experiences with physical actions.

Preoperational (2-7 years) Thinking is intuitive and dominated by the appearance of things and focusing on one dimension at a time. Shows egocentrism (difficulty seeing things from the perspective of others) and lack of conservation (cannot see that things remain constant in spite of change in the visible appearance). Not able to use formal logic.

Concrete operational (7-11) Can carry out mental operations but needs to see the objects being concretely manipulated (e.g. understanding what happens in the conservation test and why objects remain the same in spite of changing form).

Formal operational (11-15) Ability to use abstract reasoning and logic. Can deal with hypothetical problems and mentally manipulate ideas, numbers and concepts. Can use deductive reasoning.

Homework

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnArvcWaH6I

For homework:

Read pages 186 to 190 from Crane, J. Psychology course companion.

Find and define key concepts: (8 marks)

Constructionist approach

Adaptation

Assimilation

Accommodation

On page 190 you’ll find Evaluation of Piaget’s theory, after reading, it state two strengths and two limitations of Piaget’s theory. (4 marks)