Compare_and_Contrast_Piaget’S_Staged_Cognitive_Development_Theory_of_Child_Development_with_Any_One_Other_Theory

Compare and contrast Piaget’s Staged Cognitive Development Theory of child development with any one other theory Cognition refers to processes occurring in the brain. Humans develop abilities to perform complex cognitive processes such as; thinking, problem solving and the ability to interpret symbols. There has been much debate as to what stages in a child’s life he/she becomes capable of such processes. Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980), with his Staged Development Theory of Child Development, had a huge influence on our understanding. He suggested that children went through a series of stages from birth, namely; the sensorimotor stage, pre-operational stage, concrete operational stage and finally, the formal operational stage. As a constructivist, Piaget believed that a child’s understanding is determined by both its innate capacities and information provided in its environment. Although he presents a strong argument, Piaget’s theories have been criticised and other key psychologists have their own theories about child development. One such psychologist is Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934) who emphasised the importance of culture and society in a child’s development. This essay will put forward the arguments and studies of both psychologists to compare and contrast their theories. Piaget used the phrase maturation to describe the physical growth that is genetically determined. He was also interested in the way a child develops mentally and thus, coined the term ‘schemas’ to describe the mental structures babies are born with to deal with the information taken in from its surroundings. When a child is born it has around fifty reflexes that it uses to make sense of its environment via the senses e.g. breathing, sucking. Piaget called these reflexes ‘Action schemas’. At around two years, when the child’s cognitive abilities become more advanced, he/she can make associations between objects and symbols. By the age of five, the child’s schemas have developed so that it can think more logically and solve problems on its own. These schemas are called ‘Operational Structures’. According to Piaget, the child must organise and adapt schemas for successful cognitive development. The child ‘assimilates’ by understanding newly acquired knowledge based on existing schemas. It also ‘accommodates’ by adapting existing schemas to incorporate new information. These processes occur at different stages in a child’s development. The Sensorimotor stage is the first in Piaget’s stages of development and occurs in the first two years of a baby’s life. The child explores the world through its senses, and attempts to interact using motor co-ordination (movements). The child is egocentric and therefore unaware of life existing outside itself. He/she is the centre of their world. Early in this stage, the child only acts to satisfy instinctual needs through its senses but at four or five months it may act in a way that stimulates it beyond instinctual needs e.g. waving hands in front of the face. A key feature of the sensorimotor stage is object permanence. Piaget suggested that by the age of eight months, the child becomes aware that an object may still be in existence even if not within sensory recognition. Before eight months, if a child can no longer sense an object, it presumes it has ceased to exist. Piaget (1963) conducted an experiment which aimed to test his theory of lacking object permanence: A toy duck was placed on a bed in front of eight month old Jacqueline to encourage her to attempt to grasp it. When the duck became out of sight, Piaget wanted to see whether the child would still attempt to reach for it. He found that, at first, Jacqueline would look at and attempt to grasp the duck but, when the duck slides down beside her and is hidden behind a fold in the sheet, she stops following it and gives up her pursuit. From these results Piaget concluded that since the object became invisible it ceased to exist and thus may support his theory of object permanence. However, Bower and Wishart (1972) criticised Piaget and found that the way the object disappears could have an influence on how the baby would react. Bower found that if the lights were turned off whilst the baby was looking for the object he/she would continue to reach for it up to one and a half minutes. This suggests that the baby was still aware of the object and Bower believed that Piaget’s results had more to do with the child’s inability to understand concepts of locomotion and movement than a lack of object permanence. After two years the child develops in to the next stage. Between the ages of two and seven years the child enters the pre-operational stage. At this stage, the child has a stronger sense of self awareness but its thinking is still pre conceptual and unrealistic. It thinks that since he/she has feelings, then everything else must have too, even objects. This is called animism. In this stage a child may look only at one aspect at a time when solving a problem. For example, an experiment was carried out to test the child’s ability to conserve, using different shaped beakers with the same amount of liquid in each. To begin, two similar beakers were filled equally with water. The water from one beaker was then poured into a taller, thinner beaker. The child thought that the taller beaker contained more water because he only realised the change in height and didn’t take the change in width into account. Rose and Blank (1974) criticised Piaget’s questioning in the experiment. They suggested that as the child was asked twice, he/she felt as though a different answer must be given. A variation of this experiment was carried out in which the experimenter notices a chip in the beaker and so changes it for a taller, thinner one. In this instance, the child realises that, when he/she is asked which contains the most liquid, it is not a trick question because the experimenter has a justified reason for changing the beaker so the child may focus more on the materials i.e. the liquid. In this experiment, the child was much more likely to be able to conserve. Another key feature of this stage is the child’s inability to decentre. The child is still egocentric and therefore cannot see from another person’s point of view. Piaget carried out an experiment to test this theory using a model of three mountains. He placed a doll at different points around the model and, using photographs, asked the child which view the doll could see at each point. He found that the child was usually unable to do this and instead chose the photo that represented the view that he/she could see. Martin Hughes criticised Piaget and suggested that the children were not explained to clearly enough and that the concept of mountains may have been alien to them. He conducted a different experiment which the child could relate to more easily. It involved a boy doll that had to hide from a policeman doll on a cross shaped model. Hughes would ask questions like “Can the policeman see the child if we put him here'” He found that 90% of the time, the child hid the doll successfully, possibly because the child could easily relate to a game of “hide and seek” and he/she was clear on the instructions. As the child’s mind develops further, he/she is able to work things out mentally. At the age of seven up until eleven, the child enters into the concrete operational stage, so called because of the child’s ability to work things out mentally with the aid of concrete objects. However the child still has difficulty relating to abstract concepts without relating them to object. To illustrate this, a child would be able to add up using sweets as it already has a schema for sweets but without a visual representation it would have great difficulty adding up in its head. The concrete operational child is able to decentre as he/she becomes less egocentric and is able to appreciate that an object can belong to more than one class e.g. both tall and thin (something that perhaps the pre-operational child cannot do). As the child matures, he/she enters into the final stage of Piaget’s cognitive stages of development. From the age eleven and upwards, most children enter into what Piaget calls the formal operational stage. This is the stage at which the child is capable of dealing with abstract concepts. They can answer hypothetical questions and reason using symbols. Formal operational thinkers are much less egocentric than in previous stages. A study was carried out to demonstrate formal operational thinking. Older children were given five containers of clear liquid. Four of them contained test chemicals and one acted as an indicator. The children had to discover which combination of chemicals was needed in order to turn the indicator yellow (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). Pre-operational and concrete operational children generally failed at this task but formal operational thinkers were much more successful, using more systematic methods to work out all possible combinations. However, Piaget was criticised for overestimating the children’s ability as some people don’t reach this stage even into adulthood. In fact, Piaget criticised his own theory of stages for being too formal. He is also criticised for the small samples of children he used in his studies. He did, however, build a strong foundation by putting forward theories of child development which many psychologists have built on since. One psychologist with a slightly different approach was Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934). Whilst Vygotsky agreed that children actively organised their own knowledge through development, he disagreed with Piaget in his approach. Piaget, according to the Vygotsky approach, put too much influence on the biological influence (natural line) and not enough emphasis on the social influence (cultural line). Cognitive development involves internalising thought processes such as problem solving which initially takes place between the child and another human. The child need not learn from scratch but learns from other humans who have already acquired knowledge and the more interaction and socialising, the more self sufficient a child becomes. Wersch et. al. (1980) aimed to support Vygotsky’s view that learning initially emerges in a social context. Mothers and their children (ages two-four) were asked to build a truck based on a model they could refer to so that the mother’s social influence on the children could be observed. When the mothers of the younger children looked at the model, the children would also look at the model 90% of the time. On the other hand, the older children seemed to be far less influenced by the actions of their mothers. Wertsch concluded that as children grow older; their behaviour is much less influenced by their mothers Piaget saw the child as a scientist discovering the world on its own, whilst Vygotsky, who opposed the idea of egocentricism, saw the child as an apprentice who learns from fellow humans in society. To illustrate this with an example, a child may point to something in an attempt to grasp something out of reach then the mother sees that the child wants the object and comes to its aid. Eventually the child learns that this pointing action results in getting what it wants and so uses it again. However, in future the action is aimed towards the mother instead of the object. Children learn through reconstruction. They may encounter a similar situation several times but are able to deal with them at a higher level each time. For example, a teacher may have to show a pupil how to solve a particular problem several times but each time the child needs less help. The child eventually learns to solve the problem without the aid of the teacher and becomes self sufficient. Vygotsky called this type of gradual teaching scaffolding. Vygotsky emphasised the importance of signs in a child’s learning e.g. psychological tools such as speech, writing and numbers. According to Vygotsky, human thinking is impossible without signs. Whilst Piaget suggested that language reflects thought, Vygotsky believed that thought and language is separate and come together later. Another of Vygotskys key ideas was the zone of proximal development (ZPD). This is the name for the gap between what a child is capable of on its own and what a child is able to achieve under guidance. The ZPD represents the child’s potential for cognitive growth. Although valuable, Vygotskys approach was criticised for being too vague in terms of what type of social interaction would be most beneficial to the child. He also ignored the idea of the child’s own desire to learn. However, his early death may be to blame for his incomplete theory. Both Piaget and Vygotsky presented very strong arguments with their theories of child development. Piaget has had a great influence in education and his theory of the stages has urged other psychologists to test his ideas but has been criticised for his methods of experimentation and small samples used. Vygotsky and Piaget had similar ideas such as the child’s use of mental structures (signs, schemas) but also varied greatly as Vygotsky highlighted the importance of cultural influence in development. However both have contributed greatly to our understanding of the development of children and this contribution is still relevant to this day.