Psychology 235 Piaget’s Theory

Piaget Studied children from 1920s through early 1980s Most influential person in developmental psychology Studied children’s thinking genetic epistomologist

Began to Influence field Many developmental psychologists were in North America and the UK – writing in English Began to influence American developmental psychology in the 1960s with the publication of Flavell’s book “The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget” in 1963

Two Philosophical Issues Learning Theory influential at the time Active vs. Passive Qualitative vs. Quantitative

Active versus Passive Learning Theory = Passive The child soaks up information in the environment Piaget = Active The child actively constructs information from experiences

Qualitative versus Quantitative Learning Theory = Quantitative New Learning adds on old -- learning is incremental and gradual Piaget = Qualitative Change appears in stages that have a different quality

Schema Mental structure or pattern of behavior Concept Dog, cat, table, etc. or sensorimotor behavior like sucking, grasping

Adaptation Developmental change or learning Assimilation: Adding to pre-existing schemas Accommodation: Changing the schemas when something doesn’t fit

Overview of the Stages Sensorimotor (0-2): Thinking is sensory and motor Pre-operational (2-6ish) : Thinking is internal and uses language, but is not operational Concrete Operations (6 to 12ish):Thinking is operational (logical) but limited to the concrete Formal thought (12+) :Thinking goes beyond the concrete to formal logic

Sensorimotor period (0-2) Baby moves from complete egocentrism to being able to use language and use “mental combinations” (thoughts) to solve problems. Complete egocentrism: The complete inability to separate oneself from the world. Traverses six substages (see the handout and the book for the names and ages). Moves from a focus on the body, through a focus on the world, and eventually experimenting in the world. Three types of “circular reactions” CRs are activities that are stumbled on, and then repeated over and over again.

Three Circular Reactions All circular reactions are actions repeated over and over Primary Circular Reaction (1-4 months) Focuses on the infant’s own body Like sucking thumb or toes Secondary Circular Reaction (4-8 months) Focuses on “interesting sights and sounds in the world Like flicking light switch on and off Or kicking to make interesting sights move Tertiary Circular Reaction (12-18 months) Focuses on active experimentation

Transition to Preoperations Mental combinations (18- 24 months) Child can solve problems by thinking through the solutions Child now can also use language

Object Permanence or the Object Concept One of the main accomplishments of the sensorimotor period is gaining object permanence Piaget thought that in the early months infants did not know that objects existed outside of the infant’s perception of them By middle of first year, 4-5 months, infants begin to search for hidden objects http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuP53BbIY0A

Object permanence cont’d Somewhere around 8 – 12 months, they search for them fairly well, but may show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd9uPBUBhc8 The perseveration error: They look for the object where they last found it. Difficulty with invisible displacements. By 18-24 months, they have little trouble with finding hidden objects.

Preoperational period (2 – approx. 7 years) Two Sub-stages The preconceptual stage (2-4) The intuitive stage (4-7)

Preconceptual stage of preoperations Animistic thinking Adds qualities of living people or animals to things that aren’t alive The moon is following me My dolly needs a drink The rain wants me not to go out and play

Preconceptual stage of preoperations Egocentrism The child doesn’t have the ability to see his own viewpoint as one of many possible viewpoints Or see things from another’s perspective

Basic Egocentrism of Preoperational Child

Intuitive Stage of Preoperations Child can organize more than when 2-4 But doesn’t seem to know the reasons for the things they do, or the solutions they discover Also, they often have inconsistent, illogical, yet charming ideas You should note, though, that Piaget may have underestimated their logical ability Perhaps they just lack knowledge, and therefore seem to be illogical

Conservation The difference between preoperational thinking and the next stage (concrete operations) was often studied with conservation tasks Conservation: Recognize that an object does not change in amount when its appearance changes. Conserver: A child who understands conservation Non-conserver: A child who believes that objects change in amount when their appearance changes.

Types of conservation Number Mass Weight Volume

Some videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2PJrOrZPpo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChWBPYpV-pQ

Why a preoperational child can’t conserve Piaget thought that when a child thinks the taller glass now has more water That she failed to conserve the quantity in the presence of a transformation of its appearance Centration She “centers” on the height and ignores the width Whereas an older child can “decenter” Reversibility She fails to recognize that the water could be poured right back into the original glass – her thinking is “irreversible” Whereas an older child’s thinking is “reversible”

Concrete operational period (5, 6 or 7 to 12 or later) The concrete operational child has a coherent, integrated system of operations. Operation: Any cognitive act that is part of a system of related cognitive acts. Subtracting, multiplying, dividing, classifying, seriating, measuring, etc. The most important operation is reversibility.

Concrete Operations Thinking depends on the system of logical operations

Formal Thought (12 to 14 +) Real vs. the possible Hypothetico-deductive thinking Combinatorial thinking Propositional thinking (uses formal logic)

Real Versus Possible If one banana can eat two rocks, how many rocks can two bananas eat? The ability to use logical operations to think about things that aren’t real To recognize that there may be many different ways of being, or different ways to view the same event The starting point for the formal thinker is the possible, the world of ideas

Hypothetico-Deductive Reasoning Concrete child begins with testing things unsystematically, just to see what happens Formal child (adolescent) begins with a set of hypotheses Test them systematically While holding variables constant

Piaget’s Pendulum Task

Combinatorial Thinking Similar to hypothesis testing Used for tasks in which combinations must be exhausted to solve the task Concrete child tries the combinations unsystematically Formal child systematically exhausts the combinations

Piaget’s Combination of Liquids Task

One-way Two-way Three-way Four-way 1+g 2+g 3+g 4+g 1+2+g 1+3+g 1+4+g

Research on Formal Thought While some individuals appear to solve problems in this way, it is clear that not everyone does. Science and math training make it more likely that people will solve problems in this way. More likely to use in familiar domains.