1. Psychology 235
Piaget’s Theory

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

3. 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

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

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

6. 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

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

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

9. 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

10. 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.

11. 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

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

13. 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

14. Object permanence cont’d
Somewhere around 8 – 12 months, they search for them fairly well, but may show
The perseveration error: They look for the object where they last found it.
Difficulty with invisible displacements.
By months, they have little trouble with finding hidden objects.

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

16. 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

17. 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

18. Basic
Egocentrism
of Preoperational
Child

19. 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

20. 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.

21. Types of conservation
Number
Mass
Weight
Volume

23. Some videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2PJrOrZPpo

24. 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”

25. 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.

26. Concrete Operations
Thinking depends on the system of logical operations

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

28. 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

29. 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

30. Piaget’s Pendulum Task

31. 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

32. Piaget’s Combination of Liquids Task

33. 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

34. 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.