1. Jean Piaget  1896-1980  Swiss  Published first paper at the age of ten  Begins as a biologist, but then moves to psych: IQ tests: How do children think?

2.  “Children are not empty vessels to be filled with knowledge”  “Children don’t think like grownups”

3. Intelligence: Adaptation and Organization  ORGANIZATION: The ability to categorize and prioritize  ADAPTATION: How we adapt to allow for new experiences and information; Our developing flexibility and creativity  Assimilation  Accommodation

4. How do we learn?  In Assimilation, what is perceived in the outside world is incorporated into the internal world without changing the structure of that internal world, but potentially at the cost of "squeezing" the external perceptions to fit — hence pigeon-holing and stereotyping. If you are familiar with databases, you can think of it this way: your mind has its database already built, with its fields and categories already defined. If it comes across new information which fits into those fields, it can assimilate it without any trouble

5. So we just add to what we already know

6. Accommodation  In Accommodation, the internal world has to accommodate itself to the evidence with which it is confronted and thus adapt to it, which can be a more difficult and painful process. In the database analogy, it is like what happens when you try to put in information which does not fit the pre-existent fields and categories. You have to develop new ones to accommodate the new information.

7. So we change our understanding

8. How does this happen?  Piaget was a stage theorist  Believed a child must be ready to really learn new things: MATURATION  Ex. you can drag a baby around, but he still won’t walk until his legs are developed  Ex. Development of pincer grasp

9. Schema and Equilibrium  Mental constructs that help us understand the world  As we mature, we have experiences that challenge our schema and we either change our view or insist we are correct depending on our readiness

10. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: Stages and maturation  This also applies to COGNITIVE function  Children must be mature enough to learn new things. If they are not, then they will reject the new information or parrot it without understanding

11. Equilibrium/disequilibrium: Are we ready?  Willy and The Forbidden Planet  The American Question

12. Stage One: Sensori-motor Birth to two years  Characteristics: Infant uses senses to explore; begins with reflexes and ends with complex coordinations  Skills: Object permanence, mental representation

13. Break down of sensorimotor to examine development

14. What are they missing?  Children ORGANIZE their experiences when they are ready!  To push for “better” babies is “the “American Question”

15. Stage two: Preoperational Ages two-six years  Characteristics: Symbolic thinking; egocentric  Skills: Gradual de- centering, imagination flourishes; by the end reading and other cognitive learning tasks; can anticipate;can share

16. Pretending : trying on roles

17. Preoperational Play  Involves pretending and imagination  Slowly expands our understanding of ourselves and others as we involve ourselves more and more in group play  House: “you be the mommy and I’ll be the daddy…”  More exploration of the physical world: climbing, jumping, swinging…

18. Egocentrism: The inability to picture something from another person’s perspective

19. Aim: Piaget and Inhelder (1956) wanted to find out at what age children decenter - i.e. become no longer egocentric. Method: The child sits at a table, presented in front are three mountains. The mountains were different, with snow on top of one, a hut on another and a red cross on top of the other. The child was allowed to walk round the model, to look at it, then sit down at one side. A doll is then placed at various positions of the table. The child is then shown photographs of the mountains taken from different positions, and asked to indicate which showed the dolls view. Piaget assumed that if the child correctly picked out the card showing the doll's view, s/he was not egocentric. Egocentrism would be shown by the child who picked out the card showing the view s/he saw

20. Stage Three: Concrete Operational ages six to eleven  Characteristics: Child understands and applies logical operations; principles to interpret and evaluate experiences  Skills: conservation, classification, math skills, decentered…

21. Concrete Operational Play  Involves more rules; winning, losing  Rules are often negotiated first or argued over later  Trading: understanding of value

22. Stage Four: Formal Operational ages twelve and up  Characteristics: can think in abstractions and hypotheticals; Can lead people to be either very idealistic or think they know everything  Skills: To process multiple possibilities/answers, interest in ethics, problem-solving, social action

23. “If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other side” E J 2 7 Which cards do I need to turn over to tell if this rule is actually true?

24. Role of adults in child development  Don’t be fooled. The emphasis on maturation does not mean that adults are not vital.  Adults need to provide wonderful, rich, exciting opportunities for children to play and explore and grow and learn. But they should be age appropriate!  If we push children to do activities that are beyond their maturity, not only is it a waste of time, but they will miss the fun, beauty, excitement of all the activities that are appropriate for their natural growth

27. Statistics from Valdosta State University Website  Piaget believed that biological development drives the movement from one cognitive stage to the next. Data from cross-sectional studies of children in a variety of western cultures seem to support this assertion for the stages of sensorimotor, preoperational, and concrete operations ( Renner, Stafford, Lawson, McKinnon, Friot & Kellogg, 1976).

28.  Data from similar cross-sectional studies of adolescents do not support the assertion that all individuals will automatically move to the next cognitive stage as they biologically mature.  Data from adolescent populations indicates only 30 to 35% of high school seniors attain the cognitive development stage of formal operations (Kuhn, Langer, Kohlberg & Haan, 1977).  For formal operations, it appears that maturation establishes the basis, but a special environment is required for most adolescents and adults to attain this stage.

29. Critique of Piaget  Used his own and friends’ children as subjects  They were white, European, upper-middle class  Quasi-experiments: no control groups or random samples  Piaget posited that the stages were solid, and didn’t discuss the possibility of maturation in one area and not immediately in another or that some children might much more slowly or quickly than he believed…

30.  However, Piaget DID forever change the way we understand children. They are cognitively different from adults and his theories have had a profound influence on educators, parents and other explorations in the field of child psychology.