Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) was employed at the Binet Institute in the 1920s, where his job was to develop French versions of questions on English intelligence tests.  He became intrigued with the reasons children gave for their wrong answers on the questions that required logical thinking.

Piaget was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development.  His contributions include a theory of cognitive child development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a series of simple but ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities.

Before Piaget’s work, the common assumption in psychology was that children are merely less competent thinkers than adults.  Piaget showed that young children think in strikingly different ways compared to adults.  According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent learning and knowledge is based.

o It is concerned with children, rather than all learners.

o It focuses on development, rather than learning per se, so it does not address learning of information or specific behaviors.

o It proposes discrete stages of development, marked by qualitative differences, rather than a gradual increase in number and complexity of behaviors, concepts, ideas, etc.

The goal of the theory is to explain the mechanisms and processes by which the infant, and then the child, develops into an individual who can reason and think using hypotheses. 

To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of maturation and experience.  Children construct an understanding of the world around them, then experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment.

There Are Three Basic Components To Piaget's Theory:

Schemas (building blocks of knowledge)

Processes that enable the transition from one stage to another (equilibrium, assimilation and  accommodation)


Stages of  Development:

sensorimotor,

preoperational,

concrete operational,

formal operational

Schemas

Piaget called the schema the basic building block of intelligent behavior – a way of organizing knowledge. Indeed, it is useful to think of schemas as “units” of knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world, including objects, actions and abstract (i.e. theoretical) concepts.

When a child's existing schemas are capable of explaining what it can perceive around it, it is said to be in a state of equilibrium, i.e. a state of cognitive (i.e. mental) balance.

Piaget emphasized the importance of schemas in cognitive development, and described how they were developed or acquired. A schema can be defined as a set of linked mental representations of the world, which we use both to understand and to respond to situations. The assumption is that we store these mental representations and apply them when needed.

For example, a person might have a schema about buying a meal in a restaurant. The schema is a stored form of the pattern of behavior which includes looking at a menu, ordering food, eating it and paying the bill. This is an example of a type of schema called a 'script'.

Whenever they are in a restaurant, they retrieve this schema from memory and apply it to the situation. The schemas Piaget described tend to be simpler than this - especially those used by infants. He described how - as a child gets older - his or her schemas become more numerous and elaborate.

The illustration (above) demonstrates a child developing a schema for a dog by assimilating information about the dog. The child then sees a cat, using accommodation compares existing knowledge of a dog to form a schema of a cat.  Animation created by Daurice Grossniklaus and Bob Rodes (03/2002).

Piaget believed that newborn babies have some schemas - even before they have had much opportunity to experience the world.  These neonatal schemas are the cognitive structures underlying innate reflexes. These reflexes are genetically programmed into us.

For example babies have a sucking reflex, which is triggered by something touching the baby's lips.  A baby will suck a nipple, a comforter (dummy), or a person's finger.  Piaget therefore assumed that the baby has a 'sucking schema'.  Similarly the grasping reflex which is elicited when something touches the palm of a baby's hand, or the rooting reflex, in which a baby will turn its head towards something which touches its cheek, were assumed to result from primitive schemas.

Assimilation and Accommodation

Jean Piaget viewed intellectual growth as a process of adaptation (adjustment) to the world. This happens through:

• Assimilation – which is using an existing schema to a new situation.
  
  
• Accommodation – happens when the existing schema (knowledge) needs to be changed to take in new information.
  
  
• Equilibration – is the force, which moves development along.  An unpleasant state of disequilibrium happens when new information cannot be fitted into existing schemas (assimilation).  Equilibration is the force which drives the learning process as we do not like to be frustrated and will seek to restore balance by mastering the new challenge (accommodation).  Once the new information is acquired the process of assimilation with the new schema will continue until the next time we need to make an adjustment to it.

Example of Assimilation

A 2 year old child sees a man who is bald on top of his head and has long frizzy hair on the sides. To his father’s horror, the toddler shouts “Clown, clown” (Sigler et al., 2003).

Example of Accommodation

In the “clown” incident, the boy’s father explained to his son that the man was not a clown and that even though his hair was like a clown’s, he wasn’t wearing a funny costume and wasn’t doing silly things to make people laugh

With this new knowledge, the boy was able to change his schema of “clown” and make this idea fit better to a standard concept of “clown”.

According to Piaget, teaching can support these developmental processes by

o Providing support for the "spontaneous research" of the child

o Using active methods that require rediscovering or reconstructing "truths"

o Using collaborative, as well as individual activities

o Devising situations that present useful problems, and create disequilibrium in the child

Stages of Development

A child's cognitive development is about a child developing or constructing a mental model of the world.

Imagine what it would be like if you did not have a mental model of your world.  It would mean that you would not be able to make so much use of information from your past experience, or to plan future actions.

Jean Piaget was interested both in how children learnt and in how they thought.

Piaget studied children from infancy to adolescence. He used the following research methods:

·         Naturalistic observation: Piaget made careful, detailed observations of children. These were mainly his own children and the children of friends. From these he wrote diary descriptions charting their development.

 ·         Clinical interviews and observations of older children who were able to understand questions and hold conversations.

Piaget believed that children think differently than adults and stated they go through 4 universal stages of cognitive development.  Development is therefore biologically based and changes as the child matures.  Cognition therefore develops in all children in the same sequence of stages.

Each child goes through the stages in the same order, and no stage can be missed out - although some individuals may never attain the later stages.  There are individual differences in the rate at which children progress through stages - Piaget did not claim that a particular stage was reached at a certain age - although descriptions of the stages often include an indication of the age at which the average child would reach each stage.  Piaget believed that these stages are universal - i.e. that the same sequence of development occurs in children all over the world, whatever their culture.

Evaluation of Piaget's Theory

Strengths

• The influence of Piaget’s ideas in developmental psychology has been enormous. He changed how people viewed the child’s world and their methods of studying children. He was an inspiration to many who came after and took up his ideas. Piaget's ideas have generated a huge amount of research which has increased our understanding of cognitive development.
  
  
• His ideas have been of practical use in understanding and communicating with children, particularly in the field of education (Discovery Learning).
  

Weaknesses

• Are the stages real? Vygotsky and Bruner would rather not talk about stages at all, preferring to see development as continuous.  Others have queried the age ranges of the stages.  Some studies have shown that progress to the formal operational stage is not guaranteed.
  
  
• Because Piaget concentrated on the universal stages of cognitive development and biological maturation, he failed to consider the effect that the social setting and culture may have on cognitive development (re: Vygotsky).
  
  
• Piaget’s methods (observation and clinical interviews) are more open to biased interpretation than other methods, i.e. subjective (Piaget observed alone).
  
  
• As several studies have shown Piaget underestimated the abilities of children because his tests were sometimes confusing or difficult to understand (e.g. Martin Hughes, 1975).
  
  
• The concept of schema is incompatible with the theories of Bruner and Vygotsky. Behaviorism would also refute Piaget’s schema theory.
  
  
• Piaget carried out his studies with a handful of participants – in the early studies he generally used his own children (small / biased sample).
  

Further Information

Piaget, J. (1932). The moral judgment of the child. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. .

Piaget, J. (1936). Origins of intelligence in the child. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

Piaget, J. (1945). Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. London: Heinemann.

Piaget, J. (1957). Construction of reality in the child. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Listen to a MIT Lecture on Cognitive Development: How Do Children Think?

Cognitive Development (Book Chapter)

Piaget: Cognitive Development (Undergraduate Notes)

How to cite this article: McLeod, S. A. (2009). Simply Psychology; . Retrieved from