Piaget's Stage Theory & the Development of Intelligence (AQA GCSE Psychology): Flashcards

Accommodation is where a child drastically changes an existing schema, or creates a new one, to take in new information and restore equilibrium.

It is supported by many research studies, such as Samuel & Bryant (1984) and McGarrigle & Donaldson (1974). Discovery learning is also widely used in education, giving the theory good validity.

He originally developed it by observing his own children at home — a tiny sample plus his own bias. It is also very difficult to measure schema, so it is hard to know at what age they develop.

The sensorimotor stage spans from birth to around 2 years old.

What their senses tell them — ‘this is my hand’ — to what they can do — ‘I can use my hand to grab this teddy’.

Object permanence is understanding that something or someone still exists even when it can no longer be seen.

Around 8 months, and it is tested using the ‘A-not-B’ task.

A toy is hidden under location A several times in a row, then hidden under location B. If the child keeps looking under A, they have failed — they have not acquired object permanence.

The pre-operational stage spans the ages of 2 to 7 years old.

Egocentrism — lacking the ability to see the world from another person’s perspective — and a lack of conservation — not appreciating that objects stay the same when their appearance changes.

Children achieve the most marked developmental milestones in it, they are easier to test as they have more cognitive skills, and they still do not think like adults, which makes findings informative.

Pass tests of egocentrism and conservation, and classify and categorise objects more accurately — ‘these are daffodils and these are tulips: both are flowers’.

False.

They have an inability to think in completely abstract ways, preferring more concrete ideas and solutions.

Basic mathematics — but they lack a systematic approach to problem-solving.

Increasingly systematic and sophisticated mental operations, the ability to engage in abstract thought and scientific reasoning, and the ability to debate and manipulate ideas and principles.

It has great application to education — setting benchmarks for assessing progress, helping to flag developmental delays, and enabling children to receive intervention.

Piaget introduced standardised tests for each of his four stages. These are replicable, which increases their reliability.

Children do not develop skills at exactly the same time, and the theory does not account for special educational needs — some children are highly advanced, others need more support.

False.

Piaget did not consider the role of the environment — parents, neighbourhood, peers or education.

Cultural bias: his stages were based on a small sample of European, mainly Swiss, children, yet he assumed that all children develop the same way at the same ages.

False.

The order of the stages holds, but the timing varies — so Piaget’s age norms may not generalise to other cultures.

Conservation is the ability to understand that the properties of a material — particularly its quantity — have not changed simply because it looks different from how it first appeared.

Liquid for conservation of volume, clay for conservation of mass, and coins for conservation of number.

The child is shown the material in the same quantity side by side — two identical lumps of clay — and asked whether one has more, the other has more, or they are the same.

One item is transformed while the child watches — liquid poured into a different-sized container, or a lump of clay flattened — and the child is asked the same question again.

False.

They have passed. A child fails by saying that one of the materials now has more or less.

Because it focuses on appearance at the expense of logic.

They felt the transformation being done by an adult may have triggered a demand characteristic — the child reasoning that ‘this grown-up must be changing it somehow’.

McGarrigle & Donaldson (1974) used a sample of 80 children from Edinburgh.

4 years 10 months to 5 years 10 months old.

A control condition using the classic Piaget-type task, and an experimental condition in which a glove puppet — ‘naughty teddy’ — ‘escaped’ from his box and messed around with the material, so the change looked accidental.

62% of children in the ‘naughty teddy’ condition passed the conservation task, compared with only 16% in the control condition.

That Piaget underestimated the cognitive abilities of children in the pre-operational stage.

He suggested the children were distracted by the teddy and did not notice that the transformation had taken place.

They are easy to replicate, so can be tested for reliability. The fun element of the teddy also increases validity over the rather abstract nature of Piaget’s original.

Egocentrism is the inability to see or understand that other people may have a different viewpoint from your own.

Physical: ‘I can see the cat from here, so you must be able to see it too.’ Psychological: ‘I want the cat to be my pet — why won’t you let me take it home?’

Decentring is being able to appreciate that not everyone will see, feel, think or want the same as you.

Piaget & Inhelder (1956).

A child is shown a 3-D model of a landscape with three mountains. A doll is placed opposite, ‘looking’ from a different perspective. The child selects the picture showing what the doll sees.

Four-year-olds almost always chose the picture showing what they themselves could see, showing they were egocentric. Only at seven or eight did children consistently choose the doll’s viewpoint.

He thought most children are not used to looking at mountain views, so the original probably confused them — Piaget was Swiss. He wanted a test that would be more understandable.

Hughes (1975) used a sample of 30 children from Edinburgh, aged 3.5 to 5 years.

A model with two intersecting walls in the shape of a cross. A policeman doll was placed at the end of one wall, so it could see two sections of the cross.

A second policeman doll was added in another location, and the child was asked to place the boy doll where neither policeman could see it.

In Hughes’ (1975) study, 90% of children successfully hid the boy doll from both policemen.

That the children were able to decentre and are not egocentric, because the task made sense to them — so Piaget underestimated pre-operational children.

It has high mundane realism, using a familiar scenario — playing with dolls, like hide and seek — which gives it more validity than Piaget’s original 3 Mountains task.

False.

They were all from Edinburgh, so the results cannot be generalised. Children from other cities or non-Western cultures may not decentre to the same extent.

Children achieve milestones on an internal ‘timetable’, so they cannot be expected to achieve tasks beyond their current level — it is futile to push them beyond their readiness.

Discovery learning is Piaget’s term for a child’s exploration and experimentation of their environment.

By setting up tasks that stimulate a child’s imagination and intellectual curiosity, challenging them to discover even more and to ask questions.

Sensory-based activities involving the five senses — toys that rattle or can be struck to make a noise, and blocks to encourage fine motor skills such as grasping, stacking and gripping.

The child should be allowed to explore the learning environment freely — sand pits, water trays and plasticine, anything they can experiment with.

Practical skills such as cooking and woodwork, plus counters or an abacus to help them translate the concrete to the abstract.

Scientific apparatus, mental maths, and discussing abstract and hypothetical concepts.

True.

Children learn via action and reflection, then build on these blocks to construct schemas which help them negotiate their world.

The theory has been hugely influential, and helped pave the way for ‘child-centred’ learning.

Castronova (2002) found that children learn information better when they are having fun and feeling engaged via discovery learning.

Not all children fit neatly into Piaget’s stages — for example children with special educational needs, or highly gifted children.

Children also need some guidance and structure from adults, particularly as they get older and become able to take on higher-level cognitive tasks.