3

Jean Piaget CDEV 65 Class #7

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)  Swiss Psychologist

 Published his first research study at age 11!

 Although he studied children, and wrote about them, he never developed a program

 Original research on children was seen as flawed

 Small sample size – only three children

 They were his children!

 Piaget’s experiments have been replicated over and over – the results are consistent (either he was incredibly smart, or incredibly lucky!)

Piaget’s Four Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor birth-2 years

Preoperational 2-7 years

Concrete Operational 7-11 years

Formal Operational 11 years 

Sensorimotor (0-2 years)  Absorbing information through the senses

 Becoming mobile

 Object permanence emerges – usually in the 7-9 month range

 Object permanence means being able to form a mental image of something (or someone) even when that thing isn’t present

 Before a child has object permanence, he will not notice when a particular toy is out of his space, as he cannot form a mental image of it if he cannot see it. This is a great example of the phrase “out of sight, out of mind”.

 Once a child has developed object permanence he might notice when something is missing. For example, if his favorite toy isn’t in his space, he might go looking for it (assuming he has some mobility). If mom leaves the room, the child might get upset about her not being there.

 When the child is upset by the departure of his “person”, this is called separation anxiety

 Not all children develop separation anxiety

Preoperational (2-7 years)  Language abilities are exploding!

 Child is very egocentric – has a hard time seeing or recognizing others’ point of view

 Child lacks conservation

 Conservation is the ability to understand that something (volume/mass, number, weight, etc.) remains the same even if the appearance changes

 There are videos on Canvas to demonstrate this concept

 Fun fact: if you ask a 4 year old to “summarize” their favorite movie, it will take nearly as long as the actual movie for them to give you the summary!

Piaget used a number of tasks, including the ones shown here, to test children’s ability to judge whether certain characteristics of an object, such as its mass, change when the appearance of the object is changed through a simple transformation.

Piaget had an interesting way of studying egocentric thinking in young children using the three mountain task. The young child is shown a model display of three mountains on a table. A doll sits on the opposite side of the display, as shown in this figure. The child is then shown a series of drawings and is asked to choose the one that shows what she is looking at. Most children have difficulty doing this. The child is then asked to choose the drawing that illustrates what the doll is looking at. Many children will choose the drawing that they themselves are looking at, which illustrates how young children consider what they see to be what others see.

Concrete Operational (7-11 years)  Child understands conservation

 Can solve problems in a logical fashion (figures things out in his head)

 Still very literal

 Not quite ready for abstract thought

Formal Operational (11 years )  Child develops the ability to think abstractly

 Ready for algebra!

 Although adults are capable of Formal Operations, we use Concrete Operations most of the time!

Schemata, Assimilation, and Accommodation Schema (plural is schemata)

 An idea of what something is

 A child’s schema for cat might be: four legs, fur, and a tail

Assimilation

 An existing schema is used to process new information

 When a child sees something with four legs, fur, and a tail, their schema tells them it is a cat

Accommodation

 When a child sees a dog, and it doesn’t exactly fit the schema for cat, an accommodation must be made

 The accommodation results in the formation of a new schema

Equilibration  Humans don’t like to be unbalanced; we like equilibrium (being balanced)

 If new information doesn’t fit into an existing schema, we are faced with disequilibrium

 We then make an accommodation (formation of the new schema) to regain a sense of equilibrium

Piaget believed…  In providing a Responsive Environment

 Environment is a teacher

 A responsive environment asks questions of the children instead of always providing answers

 Activities that get children wondering are a great way to create a responsive environment

 For example, a pail of water and paint brushes. The children can “paint” the outside walls, fences, and ground. As the “paint” fades, they’ll wonder what happened.

 Development is predictable and sequential

 All children will go through the four stages of cognitive development in the same order, but not necessarily at the same speed

 A good program is based on an understanding of child development