Critically evaluate Piaget's notion that play is a central component of psychological intellectual development.

Critically evaluate Piaget’s notion that play is a central component of psychological intellectual development.

Piaget regarded intelligence as a process, something that evolves over time; it is also a fundamental means by which human beings adapt to their environment. The process essentially involves the individual trying to construct an understanding of reality through interacting with it. It consists “neither of a simple copy of external objects nor of a mere unfolding of structures performed inside the subject, but rather a set of structures progressively constructed by continuous interaction between the subject and the external world. (Piaget 1970)

These structures develop in a predictable fashion and can be summarised as four stages that all children pass through in sequence. Piaget had four stages of cognitive development. His first stage was the Sensorimotor stage. This is from 0-2 years of age. Intelligence at this stage is practical and there is a lack of object permanence, i.e. if a child cannot hear, see or touch an object it is not there. This child is egocentric; it only sees the world from its own point of view and no one else’s. His second stage is the Pre-operational stage. This is from 2-7 years of age. Things are exactly how they seem and the child lacks logical thought. The child cannot deal with seriasation and can only concentrate on one thing at a time. A child could complete a task but only by trial and error. Language develops at this point. His third stage is the Concrete operational stage. At this age (7-11) a child cannot sort out mental problems. The child can deal with reversibility and can conserve. His last stage was the Formal operational stage and spans the 11-15-age range. The child can now sort out mental problems and can think hypothetically. The child can ask questions about itself and can experiment and search systematically and methodically to solve problems. These four stages were split further into two pre-operational sub-stages, the Preconceptual sub-stage and the Intuitive sub-stage. Piaget conducted many experiments and from these experiments he came up with the above four stages of cognitive development.

Underlying these changes are certain functional variants, i.e. fundamental aspects of the development process that remain the same and work in the same way through all four stages. In particular, Assimilation, Accommodation and Equilibrium. Assimilation is the process whereby the world is fit into existing schemas. A schema is the basic unit or building block of intelligent behaviour. It is a way in which the world can be organised into a more predictable, knowledgeable way. Accommodation is the changing of existing schemas to fit into the world and Equilibrium is when a certain schema is accepted and is ...

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As mentioned earlier Piaget said that children in the Pre-operational stage lack object permanence. He claimed that out of sight out of mind occurred in babies and infants under two. Bower and Wishart (72) said that Piaget might have misjudged this. They conducted an experiment whereby they put a child in a room with a toy and then turned the lights out. They found that the child still looked for the toy up to 1 ½ minutes later. They used infra red light to see the child.

Piaget observed speech in children in a kinder-garten class and this reinforced his view on Egocentrism. He found that children are literally self-centred and only see the world from their own point of view. He also found that children use collective monologue, have one sided conversations and talk about themselves. Piaget used three mountains to demonstrate egocentrism. The three mountains were of different colours and one had snow on the top, one had a house and the other a cross. The children walked around the mountain and then sat down. A doll was placed somewhere in the mountains and the children were shown ten views of the mountains and asked to choose the one that represented how the doll saw it. Only seven to eight year olds got it correct. Piaget stated that children below this age are Egocentric. Many have disputed Piaget’s conclusion. Bourke (75) put the mountain on a turntable and use a doll from Sesame Street. She found that even three and four year olds could solve the task. Hughes (84) also copied Piaget’s experiment. He criticised Piaget saying that if the task had been more practical the children could have completed it. He asked the children to hide the doll in the mountains where no one else could see it. He found that 90% of children hid the doll in Piaget’s mountain successfully. This requires the ability to see from others point of view and again criticises Piaget’s view.

Piaget conducted many conservation experiments. His liquid quantity experiment involved using three beakers.

A B C

Beakers A and B both contained the same amount of water. The child agreed that beakers A and B were the same. The experimenter poured the liquid from B to C and it filled container C. The child said that C now contained more than A. Piaget claimed that this is an example of centration. The child only takes one dimension into account, width or height. In contrast decentration is the ability to take more than one dimension into account.

Piaget also tested number conservation. He placed six counters in a line and then placed six more underneath. The bottom row of counters was placed closer together than the first row.

∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙

The child will say there is more in the first row because the line is longer even though the child can count both lines and agrees that they have equal numbers of counters.

Donaldson (78) said that the experimenter unwillingly forced the child to give the wrong answer by asking questions twice. The child could think that because the question was asked twice that they should give a different answer. Rose and Blank (74) dropped the question before the change and only asked after and found that six year olds did very well under these conditions compared to Piaget’s way of questioning. Piaget was criticised for asking twice and also for because he used the same tests for all ages. He influenced the answers and only went to the age of fifteen. Cognitive development does not just end there.

Piaget claimed that when a child reached the formal operations stage a child could think logically about potential or abstract ideas. This is disputed, as even adults are not all able to this. Adults are still able to be egocentric. Not all cultures require logic and not every one is able to use logic.

In conclusion Piaget’s theory attempted to explain how children move from being irrational and illogical to rational and logical. Much of the evidence that Piaget used is flawed. He used the clinical method, which involved discussing the task with the child in an unstandardised and unscientific way. A problem with this method is that it makes demands on a child’s ability to communicate and as a result Piaget underestimated the cognitive abilities of children. He also kept no figures of his experiments and there is no record of the number of children used, their ages or there gender. Piaget’s stages imply a degree of consistency and thought across a range of different areas but some inconsistency is to be expected. The rate of progress through the stages will vary from child to child due to differences in environmental stimulation. Piaget provided a detailed description of the changes in cognitive development. He described how children think but did not explain why or how. Brainerd (78) said, “This is nothing more than an elaborate description of what we already know”. However Piaget’s concepts are used in all schools today and his approach has given rise to much research and he is one of the most significant theorists on cognitive development.