Although the validity of “stages” has been accepted by some researchers, it has been suggested that there are cultural differences in the rates of development in various cognitive domains. It is thought that Piaget excluded other people’s involvement to children’s cognitive development, seeing children mainly self-determining and secluded in their construction of knowledge of the physical world (Meadows 1995).
Piaget believed that children in the sensorimotor stage (approximately birth to two years) experience the world generally through corporeal activity and immediate perceptions, without thought, as adults know it. He alleged that until approximately eight months of age, a child has no concept of object permanence. During this time, a baby would adopt and “out of sight, out of mind” approach, and would not attempt to search for a previously visible object that was placed out of sight as they watched. A lot of contemporary research into infant cognition gives evidence to show that Piaget underestimated some of the cognitive abilities of babies. Bower (1981) challenged some of Piaget’s assumptions by performing a series of experiments on babies as young as four to six weeks and showed that they possessed some ability to appreciate the existence of objects that vanish from sight. Bower would present a baby with a moving object that would disappear behind a screen and then reappear at the other side; many babies moved their eyes to follow the anticipated movement of the object. Nevertheless, later experiments appeared to suggest that babies under five months perceive the same object moved to different locations as a series of different objects. Bower came to the conclusion that a baby does not understand that place and movement are linked until they are about five months old.
Piaget described limitations to a child’s thinking during the pre-operational stage (approximately two to seven years). He proposed that with the development of language, a child is now capable of symbolic thought, but their intellectual capabilities are still chiefly dominated by their perceptions, rather than theoretical grasp of situations and events. Piaget perceived children as egocentric because they are unable to see the world from anything but their own viewpoint. An illustration of this is a young boy telling you he has a brother, but persistently denying that his brother has a brother. There has been various attempts to disprove Piaget’s assumption that children are egocentric, including Gelman (1979) who said that an entirely egocentric four year old child would not attempt to use simpler forms of speech when talking to a two year old child, yet this is what they do. Also, Marvin (1975) said that an egocentric child would be expected to buy a toy that they like for their mother’s birthday, however, most four year old children choose presents that are appropriate for their mother.
One of Piaget’s methods of illustrating that children are egocentric is his “Swiss Mountain task” which involves a papier-mâché model of three different mountains, one with snow on the top, one with a red cross on top and one with a house on top, then giving the child time to look at it from different perspectives, then sitting the child down and placing a doll in a different location and showing the child ten pictures and asking them which represents what the doll would see. Many people have criticised this method saying that it is an uncommonly complex method of presenting a problem to a young child. Margaret Donaldson (1978) showed that presenting a task with a meaningful context enables a child as young as three and a half to appreciate another person’s perception of the world. She did this by conducting the “boy and policeman” task, which was similar to Piaget’s “Swiss Mountain task” but great care was taken to ensure that the children understood the task, especially the meaning of “to hide”, she claimed that this task, unlike Piaget’s “Swiss mountain task” made sense to children and its realism and significance value captured the child’s imagination.
Piaget thought that pre-operational children do not understand that any quantity (number, liquid quantity, length) remains the same despite of change to its physical arrangement. He illustrated that a child will focus on one dimension (usually height) by having two similar beakers containing the same amount of liquid, then pouring one beaker of liquid into a different shape beaker (e.g. a taller, narrower beaker) and asking the child if both beakers still contained the same amount. He proposed that a child fails to consider that “getting taller” and “getting narrower” compensate for each other and thinks that a tall, narrow beaker contains more than a short fat one. Many psychologists have contested Piaget’s claim that children in the pre-operational stage are unable to conserve, it has been pointed out that children use and interpret words differently than adults, and that failure in conservation tasks, can, in some cases, be accounted for in terms of children not understanding exactly what they are being asked. Also, Donaldson argued that children assume that something has changed because the experimenter, who the child sees as an “important” adult has rearranged it, this suggests that children are being led to think something, they do not necessarily believe to be so.
Piaget made some very valuable contributions and presented some useful research, which despite criticism continues to attract much interest. Many researchers have used Piaget’s theory and expanded it. Although it is becoming clear that Piaget did underestimate what children understand about the physical world, he made some very significant observations, which people continue to research and improve. If it wasn’t for Piaget’s original thoughts and assumptions, then it is possible that we may not have advanced as quickly as we have done. Although Piaget appears to have underestimated children’s understanding, it would be wrong to say that there is evidence that his theory is wrong, he has provided a starting point for other researchers, and if he was still alive today, it is likely that he would have continued his research and made necessary alterations to his original ideas.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that Piaget did miscalculate what children understand about the physical world. Many people have made efforts to enhance our knowledge of cognitive development based on Piaget’s theory.
References
Tony Malim and Ann Birch (1998) Introductory Psychology London: MacMillan Press Ltd
Richard Gross and Rob McIlveen (1998) Psychology: A new Introduction London: Hodder and Stoughton
Child development, 1976, 47. 812-819
Sex Differences: A study of the eye of the beholder John Condry and Sandra Condry
Child development, 1985, 56. 225-233
Sex and Aggression: The influence of Gender Label on the perception of Aggression in Children
