Very briefly describe Piaget's stages of cognitive development and explain what he meant by saying that young children are egocentric. Use experimental evidence to consider this claim.

The Preoperational Period is the stage, which is mostly associated with egocentism in a child, although it appears in all of first three stages of cognitive development. Children aged two to seven years according to Piaget have learned “how to represent the world mentally”(Gleitman, et.al, 1999), yet have no ability to relate these findings in a logical manner. An aspect, which is important, is how children of preoperational stage have an inability to distinguish between quantities, highlighted clearly in the following experiment. Although there are many different ways of explaining what is known as failure of conservation. The experiment focuses on liquid quaintity, for a child around four years of age. The experimenter has two identical glasses of juice; both the glasses and the volumes within the glasses are the same.  The child is asked if they have the same amount to drink. Here the child’s response is yes that they do have the same amount to drink. Now the experimenter transfers the juice from one glass into one, which is smaller and stumpy. When the child is now asked do we have the same amount to drink a different response is given. The child points out that the taller thinner glass has more juice. When the experimenter asks for a reason the child explain that the juice in the taller glass comes up to a higher level. Piaget said the child made the mistake about the volumes because it can not comprehend the relevant factors at the same time. Children take what they see at this stage as reality. This is a reason why Piaget refers to young children being egocentric. Egocentism does not mean being selfish, in accordance with Piaget theories. He used this to describe a characteristic of preoperational thought. This is demonstrated well using whats known as the three-mountain test of egocentrism. This means a real life close understanding of a “point of view” is used. Two adults standing at opposite side of a room, both know the other adult sees a different wall from the other individual.  Piaget argues that Preoperational do not have this simple cognition. In the 3-D mountain test, a child is positioned at one side of a large 3-D model, a doll at different vantagepoints on the Model Mountain. The child was asked to complete the task what can the doll see from where it is standing? The experimenter used pictures of the different vantage pints the doll could have seen from. The response from children less than four years of age was that the question was not understood. Children experimented on over the age of four were able to give an answer. They chose the drawing that was of what they could see from their vantagepoint of the mountain scene.  “The child is asked to indicate what the doll sees. The results suggest that the child thinks the doll sees the scene just has she does, including the little house, which is of course obstructed from the dolls vantage point.” (After Piaget and Inhelder, 1967).  Overall Proportional children are fairly limited in what they understand, they only understand the world around themselves from their own perspective, and therefore Piaget defines them as egocentric.

During the third stage children can also be coined egocentric. This stage is known as the concrete operational stage, which is the age group seven to eleven years old.  Concrete Operations are often described “like a set of rules for interaction and examination of the world”. “Operations” are internal schemes. They include concepts such as reversibility, the ability do carry out simple mathematical calculations such as, addition, subtraction, and multiplication, the child also has the capacity to spot patterns, known as serial ordering.  Now, the concrete operational child can use deductive logic, like an adult.  Starts to use inductive logic at this point, alongside being able to put things into different categories and these are logically related by the child. The child can think concretely but can not think abstractly at this cognitive stage. An example is that of the number six being an even number a fact that most eight to nine year olds can grasp well, and equally they can understand that eight plus one is an odd number. What they can not understand at this age is that adding one on to any even number makes an odd number.  Here Piaget explains that this relationship is too complex and abstract and can only be talked when the child reaches the last stage in cognitive development.  In the stage of formal operations the person is now able to think hypothetically

In conclusion Piagets theory of cognitive development is backed up with the experimental evidence given from experiments run with infants and children. From birth to the stage of concrete operations the child is termed egocentric. What Piaget meant by calling young children egocentrics was that they are not selfish but have not yet attained the ability to see things from another perspective.

Bibilography

Gleitamn,H.,Fridlund, A.J.,& Reisburg, D. (1999) Psychology, (5th ed.). New York: W.W.Norton & Co.

Ginsburg,H.P.,Opper,S.(1988) Piagets Theory of intellectual development,(3rd ed.). London:Prentice Hall International (UK).

Glover, J.A.,et.al.(1949).Educational psychology Principles and Applications. Boston: Little Brown and Company.