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Jean Piaget’s Theory on Cognitive Development
Michael Lynch
Thongsook College
Introduction
Jean Piaget's theory on intellectual development of children continues to dominate the field today. Piagetian theory and concepts transformed the twentieth century behaviorist ideologies developmental psychology field. Piaget's cognitive theory has its roots in his background and academic experiences. He was born in Switzerland in 1896, and showed much promise as a scientific scholar with a keen interest in biology. By the age of 22 years, he had already achieved a Ph.D. He then experienced a period of soul searching, directionless wandering around Europe. It was in his co-worker’s laboratory, where he was giving standardized tests to children, that Piaget began his lifelong quest to understand the thought processes and cognitive development of children.
The 'Methode Clinique' Method
Piaget was the first scientist to recognize that children and adults have different cognitive thought processes. (Miller 1993) states that “Piaget significantly changed the direction of psychology with his unique observations and questioning patterns so that once psychologists looked at development through Piaget's eyes, they never saw children in quite the same way." It is from this uniquely Piagetian mode of observing subjects in a 'father/experimenter' role in a semistructured interviewing approach that Piaget pioneered the 'methode clinique'. This significant contribution is still in use today, with most clinicians in this field utilizing variations in their research. For Piaget, it was important to probe the underlying understandings and knowledge bases in children's cognition, with repeated questionings and a focus on the reasoning behind their answers. Such novel insight was in contradiction to all previous understandings of this field. Flavell states that Piaget believed he could learn far more about child cognition "by noting and querying their incorrect answers than just by tallying their correct ones." It is from such 'clinical' intensity that provided the vast wealth of research data upon which Piaget based his cognition theory, much of which largely endures to the present day in some form. Piaget had the greenest thumb, in his rich empirical discoveries to reveal his model on the development of cognition. He "systematically ploughed his way through most of the principal modes of human experience and knowledge— space, time, number, and the rest" (Flavell, 1996).
Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development
The Sensorimotor Stage: During this stage, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects. It was his observations of his daughter and nephew that heavily influenced his conception of this stage. At this point in development, a child's intelligence consists of their basic motor and sensory explorations of the world. Piaget believed that developing object permanence or object constancy, the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, was an important element at this point of development. By learning that objects are separate and distinct entities and that they have an existence of their own outside of individual perception, children are then able to begin to attach names and words to objects.
The Preoperational Stage: At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the point of view of other people. They also often struggle with understanding the ideal of constancy. For example, a researcher might take a lump of clay, divide it into two equal pieces, and then give a child the choice between two pieces of clay to play with. One piece of clay is rolled into a compact ball while the other is smashed into a flat pancake shape. Since the flat shape looks larger, the preoperational child will likely choose that piece even though the two pieces are exactly the same size.
The Concrete Operational Stage: Kids at this point of development begin to think more logically, but their thinking can also be very rigid. They tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts. At this point, children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other people might think and feel. Kids in the concrete operational stage also begin to understand that their thoughts are unique to them and that not everyone else necessarily shares their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.
The Formal Operational Stage: The final stage of Piaget's theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas. At this point, people become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems and think more scientifically about the world around them.
Piaget's 'Methode Researche' and Theory Criticisms.
Much criticism has been aimed at the methodology and sampling on which Piaget based his empirical data and theoretical stances. He used his own children and those of his Genevian colleagues to develop his huge array of concepts about all childrens' cognition. This very small sample – of academic, high socio-economic status and cultural variables, make for the possiblity that his results/data may be unreliable and, at the very least, unrepresentative. Piaget generalized from a tiny sample base, ignored individual differences and prior learning. His experiments were difficult to replicate and artificial, considered too informal and unscientific.
As well, many have criticized Piaget's pessimistic questioning techniques and feel he tried to catch children out in his experiments; i.e. Donaldson in Sutherland, 1992. The use of more optimal language and help is required compared to the traditional teaching styles of Piaget's era. The same source states that he underestimated children's abilities whilst overestimating adult cognition. He is criticized by Hamlyn (1978) in Sutherland for ignoring the value of social learning – in the mother's arms or with teachers, but not as Piaget suggested, in a social vacuum.
Many critics have found fault with his notion of a lockstep progression through the various stages, commenting that more recent studies have discovered discrepancies in the cognitive abilities within any particular child, and between children. They would dispute Piaget's notion of cognitive 'homogeneity' (Sutherland, 1992).
Conclusion
The monumental work of Jean Piaget has influenced an array of academic fields – education, philosophy and, of course, psychology to this day. He left a mass of data and empirical material which continues to be the springboard for much of the scientific theorizing of contempoary psychologists. The 'clinical method' he pioneered continues to be utilized in some form by many. Others have evolved his theory beyond Formal operations, in adult intelligence theories.
References
Flavell, J.H. (1996). Piaget's legacy. Psychological Science, 7, 200-203.
Lefrancois, G. (1995). Theories of Human Learning (3rd Ed.). U.S.A.:Brookes /Cole.
Sutherland, P. (1992). Cognitive development today: Piaget and his critics. London: Paul Chapman.
Thomas, R.M. (1996). Comparing theories of child development (4th Ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brookes/Cole.