Piaget claims that: ‘. . .babies lack object constancy; that is they do not realise that objects have an existence independent of their actions on the object’. (as cited in Brown, G. & Desforges, C. 1979 p. 49) Piaget & Inhelder (1979) carried out research into cognitive development at the sensorimotor stage. To be able to understand a child’s development they claim that: ‘. . . it is necessary to examine the evolution of his perceptions in the light of the role of the sensori-motor structures’. (Piaget & Inhelder 1979 p. 29).
In these studies, a child is shown an object, the child tries to reach for this object and then the object is covered with a blanket. Once the object was covered, the child would quickly lose interest in it. (Smith, Cowie & Blades 2004). Piaget’s view is that it is only toward the end of the sensori-motor stage that a child develops object permanence.
This view was challenged by Tom Bower in the late 1970’s. Bower (1971) carried out a series of studies on infants less than 8 months old. Infants were given an object to observe, and then a moving screen was passed in front of the object. The child’s heartbeat was monitored to assess the level of interest. For half of the subjects, the object remained there when the screen passed across. For the other half the object was removed during the passing of the screen and was thus missing when the infant could view the object again. (Smith, Cowie & Blades 2004)
Bower (1971) claimed that if the children did not have object permanence, they should demonstrate no surprise when the object disappeared. Bower found the heart rate of the child reached the highest level when the object was removed, demonstrating that they had some idea of what was missing. Bower‘s study found that infants as young as 5 months had some grasp of object permanence. Bower’s findings do not refute the concept of object permanence, it is still an important milestone in child development, he just argues that it happens earlier than 8 months.
With Bower’s results of the object permanence task in mind, the very nature of the stage theory can be criticized. The stages could be inaccurate or even wrong. A child could recognize that objects continue to exist, and still fail at Piaget’s task as they do not yet have the intellectual ability to remove the blanket and retrieve the toy. Also, the performance of the child could be improved by setting it in a familiar context or surrounding.
Later research by Piaget was at the preoperational stage. Children’s thinking in this stage is characterized by what Piaget called moral realism (Sylva & Lunt, 1990). Piaget conducted various conservation tasks. Conservation requires the awareness that an object remains the same even though its appearance changes. Conservation can be relevant to concepts such as length, number, substance, liquid and area. In the usual test for conservation of number a child sees two identical rows of coins. The experimenter asks the child if the two rows have the same or different amounts of coins. The experimenter then makes one row look longer by expanding the space between the coins. The child is then asked again if the two rows have the same amount of coins or one has more or less than the other.
Children in the preoperational stage will typically state that the longest-looking line has the most coins. It is not until the age of 6 or 7 that children will grasp that each row, regardless of its appearance, still has the same number of coins. Piaget & Inhelder (1979) believed that children failed to conserve, because they were not able to concurrently hold in their minds the properties of the objects (the number of coins), and the appearance of the objects (how the coins are spaced). The belief is that children at this age fail to conserve, as they are unable to mentally reverse an action: unable to realise that what has been done can be undone.
McGarrigle and Donaldson (1974) performed a modified version of the conservation of number test with a Naughty Teddy and a row of beads. In this experiment they introduced the naughty teddy who made the line of beads seem longer. Their results showed more children between the ages of 4 and 6 conserved. In this study, the children knew that both rows had the same amount and gave the explanation that the Naughty teddy made the expanded row seem as though it had more beads. This task made more sense to the average child. When considering Piaget’s research into conservation, how do we know that a child understands the word ‘more’ in the same way that adults do?
Brown & Desforges (1979) argue, with reference to Bower’s (1974) research on object constancy that: ‘. . . with more sensitive response measures, babies do appear to exhibit behaviour which implies object constancy.’ (p. 50) Adults tend to force their way of thinking on to the child being tested and therefore the child is expected to arrive at the correct answer. Meadow’s (1988) argues (as cited in Richardson & Sheldon, 1988) that cognitive progression does not necessarily occur at exactly the time as Piaget predicted and that training produces performance enhancement which can be quite notable and long lasting. An example of this would be if a 4 year old child attends nursery school and another child of 6 years old has not attended any school, the child that attends school will more than likely have advanced in ways which the non-school child has not. This would suggest that a child of 4 years old, in the supposed preoperational stage could have actually reached the concrete operational stage, whereas the 6 year old would still be in the preoperational stage.
In conclusion, most children do not learn or understand problems and ideals at the same rate. Children react differently to their surroundings and can perform better at certain tasks if that particular task involves something they can relate to, for example, the naughty teddy. This is a major disadvantage when using age as a marker for development as the child may be expected to act a certain way or produce different results than expected. Many of the criticisms of Piaget surround his underestimation of childhood capabilities and also the age at which the cognitive developments are said to take place.
There are obviously many advantages to using the age as a marker for development, with reference to Piaget’s stage theory. Many developmental psychologists use related age boundaries to discern the developing periods in a child’s life. Also, many schools have revised their teaching approach and are now using Piagetian principles in the classroom. (Driscoll 1994). While possibly not wholly precise, Piaget's stage theory nonetheless provides a thorough explanation of the order in which Western children seem to develop and can be used by carers and teachers alike to aid their child’s development throughout the different ages of its life.
References
Bower, T.G.R. (1971). The object in the world of the infant. Scientific American, 225, 4,
30–38.
Brown, G., & Desforges, C. (1979). Piaget’s Theory; A Psychological Critique. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd (p.49, p.50).
Driscoll, M.P. (2000). Psychology of learning for instruction (2nd edn). Needham
Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon
Elkind, D. (1981). Children and Adolescents: Interpretive Essays on Jean Piaget
(3rdedn). Oxford: Oxford University Press. (p.23).
McGarrigle, J., & Donaldson, M. (1974). Conservation accidents. Cognition, 3, 341–350.
Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1979). The Psychology of the Child. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul Ltd. (p.29). (Original work published in French in 1966)
Richardson, K. & Sheldon, S. (eds.) (1988). Cognitive Development to Adolescence.
Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum
Smith, P.K., Cowie, H., & Blades, M. (2004) Understanding Children’s Development
(4th edn). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. (pp.320 – 337).
Sylva, K., & Lunt, I. (1990) Child Development: A First Course. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
(Original work published in 1982)
