Many of his initial ideas were formed by asking his own children questions that were designed to ‘catch them out’, and using any wrong answers as evidence of their primitive way of thinking. He believed that a wrong answer can reveal more information than a correct answer, as if the wrong answers a looked at it may be possible to work out which mental structures or process generate them.
Piaget identified 4 stages of development at these approximate ages – sensorimotor (0-2 years), Pre-operational (2-7 years), Concrete Operational (7-11 years) and Formal Operational (11 years onwards).
The sensorimotor stage is the most primitive, with limited thought processes. Children at this age learn about the environment through both their senses and their actions. At this stage they are unable to differentiate between themselves and the rest of the world – profound egocentrism. It is during this stage that an infant acquires object permanence, or memory towards the end of this stage. Prior to this, if an object is removed from the child’s view, for example by covering it with a cloth, the infant will not look for it and will seemingly forget it was there.
During the preoperational stage profound egocentrism is still a key feature. Children are unable to see that there are different ways of thinking from their own, and reasoning is very limited. An example of the way a child thinks at this stage is when they are presented with 2 equal flasks of water. They can see that the volume of water is the same in both flasks. When the water is poured from one of the flasks into a thinner, taller flask they would say that that flask contains more water (despite the fact they have watched the process) as that is their perception of this. Logical reasoning does not take precedence over their perception, and therefore their way of thinking tends to be quite illogical. At this stage there is no understanding of conservation of quantity. A further characteristic of this stage is centration, the tendency of a child at this stage to focus all attention on one aspect of a situation and ignore or exclude any other aspects. The concepts formed are irreversible, it is not possible at this point to change something that they believe they know to be the truth.
Logical reasoning becomes possible during the concrete operational stage, and perception becomes less dominant in the way that children think. This is however confined to real-life situations and more abstract thinking is impossible. Giving a child at each stage the same task can highlight the difference between this and the pre-operational stage by looking at the difference in the choices they make. For example the conservation tasks that Piaget gave to subjects. An example of a conservation task is showing a child 2 rows of sweets each containing the same number, but one row’s sweets are very close together and the other row containing large spaces between the sweets. Whilst the child watches, one extra sweet is added to the row whose sweets are very close together. The child is then asked which row they would prefer to have. A pre-operational child will choose the row that looks the longest, even though it has fewer sweets. They will focus on one aspect of the situation (in this case the length) and ignore other aspects (i.e. the addition of an extra sweet to the more compact row). A Concrete Operational child will know that the shorter row in fact contains more sweets, and so choose that one.
In the formal operational stage abstract thinking becomes possible, in that they become able to reason in a way that’s linked to the form of the logic, rather than the content of a hypothetical situation (they can think about things that they have not encountered themselves). In this theory of development, the child will encounter a situation that is incompatible with their way of thinking, and be forced to adapt the way they think in order to accommodate reality. This would be moving to a higher stage of thought. His theory was such that children cannot skip a stage, it must be done in a sequential order although some children may pass through the stage at a faster rate than others.
Piaget’s theory was groundbreaking in that child development had not previously been considered in such a way. It is obvious from the observation of any two children of different ages, for example five and ten years old that the way in which they think or reply to questions is different, but Piaget was perhaps the first psychologist to ask why this is the case. In 1972 Piaget revised his earlier theory in that the formal operational stage may not necessarily occur, and it is the next stage which people have the potential to reach.
Bibace and Walsh in 1981 wanted to test hypotheses relating to Piaget’s stages of development by asking children about their concept of illness. They found that children will not understand the questions unless speech is adjusted according to the childs stage of development. This is a key criticism of Piaget, as critics have said that by using confusing or overly difficult language the results were obscured due to the fact the children didn’t understand fully what was expected of them. The experiment of McGarrigle and Donaldson in 1974 used more simple language with their subjects and found many of the things that Piaget found children could not do, did not apply. This could however be due to the task being easier, or another variable.
Wheldall and Proborca criticised the experiment with flasks and liquid mentioned earlier by saying children could not understand the question. A further criticism of Piaget is that children do not always consistently perform as would be expected according to the stages - failing some tasks that they would be expected to pass and pass on others that they would not be expected to be able to do.
Freud also believe that child development occurs in stages: he identified 3 stages – the oral (0-1 year), anal (1-3 years) and phallic (3-6 years). Each stage is connected with a source of pleasure, for example in the oral stage the greatest pleasure is derived from putting things in the mouth and sucking them. He formed these stages after treating neurotic or disturbed women whom he decided must have over or underindulged in one of these stages. Freud claimed that the majority of motivating forces are unconscious and therefore it is hard to test his beliefs. Today, although respected as a psychologist, his views are no seen as outdated and not considered very accurate.
The information-processing approach arose to child development partly out of the disagreements of other psychologists with the conclusions Piaget had drawn. This approach is similar to Piaget in that they believe there are mental structures explaining human behaviour that are separate and unaffected by social relationships and social aspects of the environment. It is based on the analogy of a computer, and uses ‘task analysis’ to study children’s mental development. Many psychologists have found that children acquire more effective strategies for remembering information with age, as well as the ability to apply them to a greater number of problems. With an increase in age, the flexibility of these strategies also increases. Older children are also capable of using a number of different strategies for a problem, in the event of the first attempt to solve the problem being unsuccessful (Bee,2000; Pine 1999).
The behaviourist viewpoint is that knowledge, competence and understanding do not progress in stages. The children develop because of environment stress – the environment shapes their development. Behaviourists believe that the intellectual growth of a child is influenced by a didactic relationship with more advanced individuals (as argued by Vygotsky). At any one point in time, Vygotsky believed there was a temporary maximum level of understanding – the ‘zone of proximal development’, which includes any concept slightly too difficult for the child to grasp. Vygotsky believed that other than the ‘zone of proximal development’ there was virtually no limit to how far the child can progress in time (unlike Piaget who believed that intellectual development is limited by the cognitive stage one is in) cognitively providing there is enough stimuli. Vygotsky did not believe there were stages of cognitive development.
In conclusion cognitive development is more gradual than the concept of development in stages. Piaget had a tendency to underestimate the cognitive ability of children. Piaget used a small number of subjects, which was perhaps not large enough to be able to form assumptions about the human race as a whole. The behaviourist view that the environment shapes development seems to be more favourable but it is impossible to conclude strongly either in favour or not of favour of his theory. Criticisms such as McGarrigle and Donaldson in 1974 can undermine but not disprove Piaget’s theory.
