Summary of Piaget's Theory

This video gives a summary of who Piaget was and what he focused his studies on. His theory of cognitive development is explained briefly and some examples of each stage of development are provided, and this helps to show what a child is capable of doing at each stage.

Stage 3- Logical Reasoning

Between the ages of 7-12, children gain the ability to classify objects in a logical order. This stage shows a child's ability to find similarities between objects based on the characteristics is has, rather than focusing on color. During previous stages, children organize objects into groups based on obvious things, such as color, but during this stage they are able to organize objects based on other similarities. Children at this stage have had enough experiences in life to help them group objects together based on similarities they have noticed in the past, but they still cannot think abstractly.

Inductive reasoning is the type of reasoning that children are able to use during this stage. This means that they can go from a specific experience to a general principle. An example of this is a child organizing a group of animals based on what they have seen in the past, like being able to differentiate between a dog and a cat. In the past, if a child saw an animal walking on all fours they might have considered it the same, but through experiences and learning, the child is able to apply his or her knowledge and differentiate between the two. Deductive reasoning has not yet developed in this stage. This type of reasoning is more abstract than inductive, and it deals with being able to determine the outcome of an event.

Language Development

http://www.adders.org/info105.htm

This is the basic sequence in which language develops in a child. It was taken from a website about ADD. This website is showing the regular development of language and how it differs in children with ADD/ADHD. This is only one of the many disabilities that will affect a child's language development. Parents may use this guide to see if their child's language development is normal and if not, they may want to consider early intervention of speech therapy.

Through my experience working at a daycare for almost 3 years I have seen children who have had speech impediments. It is fascinating to see how much quicker a child's language improves when he/she has therapy at a very young age vs. if they wait until the child is 4 or 5 years old. When a two-year-old's language is not developing properly, speech therapy is not as intense and is more effective. I have seen children who had been incomprehensible become easily understood in very short periods of time, if it is taken care of early enough. This is because at this stage of development the brain is most capable of learning language and this ability slowly fades away as the child grows older. This is the reason why it is very difficult for a person to relearn to speak after a stroke or brain injury.

Moral Development

Piaget does a good job beginning to explain how we gain basic understanding of how the world works, but he doesn't do a good job accounting for moral development. After studying Piaget, we are left asking ourselves what makes someone a "good person"? Where do we get our ideas on moral issues from?
Kohlberg goes more into depth about an individual's moral development. He says that moral development continues throughout an individual's lifetime. He breaks it up into 6 stages.

Stage 1- Obedience and Punishment: This is when a child sees rules as absolute and unable to be changed. They do what they need to in order to avoid punishment.
An example of this would be a child knows that he is not allowed to hit his brother so he refrains from doing it to avoid punishment. He does not keep his hands to himself because he cares about his brother's feelings, but instead because he knows that if he hits him, he will get in trouble.

Stage 2- Individualism and Exchange: This is when judgment is based on individual needs. A child may be hungry and see his brother eating, so he goes and snatches the food out of his hand. He knows that he needs it and has not yet developed the moral understandings that he should be considerate of his brother and not only care about himself.

Stage 3- Interpersonal Relationships: This is a stage where the child begins to care about being a "good boy" or being nice to others. He does things that will reward him with praise and benefit other people. An example of this is when a child begins to share toys, although he would probably rather keep it all for himself, he decides to be nice and share with his brother.

Stage 4- Maintaining Social Order: This is a later stage where people begin to take into consideration society as a whole. They follow law and order and respect authority. An example of this would be someone who doesn't speed because it is a against the law and could harm other innocent people.

Stage 5- Social Contract and Individual Rights: At this stage, people begin to account for different values, opinions and beliefs of others. Rules are important to the individual but they should be generally agreed upon. An example of this is someone protesting against the death penalty. They recognize that people are going to have differing opinions on the subject, but they also don't think that it is a just law and the laws should be agreed upon by the citizens of their country.

Stage 6- Universal principles- The final stage is one where people take into consideration universal ethical principles and abstract reasoning. People follow internationalized principles of justice, even if they conflict with law and order. I would say that an example of this is environmental protests. People protest against pollution laws in order to save the environment. They go against law and order for a greater good and benefit of the entire world.

I believe these stages are pretty accurate and Kohlberg does a good job explaining how are morals develop but there are a couple of problems.
One of the problems I've noticed is that he doesn't account for differences in moral development of different genders. I think this would be very interesting to do a study on. I also noticed that he talks a lot about justice but he doesn't consider personal relationships. A person's morals may be affected differently if the conflict included their child or close friend, as opposed to a stranger. The final problem I noticed is that he talks about what people think is right in a situation but not actual application. It would be interesting to see if the people put in a situation would act the way they said was just.

The 6 stages and definitions are from: W.C. Crain. (1985) Theories of Development. Prentice-Hall. p. 118-136.

I think . . .

I think this topic is so interesting. Especially the part where the first few years of a child's life can determine how they will turn out to be in the future is discussed. It amazes me how the mind works.

As children develop, the first few years of life is when they learn to put two and two together. It is the time when they learn to think and analyze. Thinking and analyzing are the basic steps to doing everything else. To me it is like computer programming. First, one must learn the basics of programming. Once you learn that, then you can slowly add new ideas to what you have learned. Without the basics you can never proceed. I see how important it is for children to be brought up in a timely manner with love and affection. There are many other necessities that play a role in their mental stability for them to have a "good head on their shoulders."

More about Piaget's theory.

Piaget's Key Ideas

Adaptation
What it says: adapting to the world through assimilation and accommodation

Assimilation
The process by which a person takes material into their mind from the environment, which may mean changing the evidence of their senses to make it fit.

Accommodation
The difference made to one's mind or concepts by the process of assimilation.

Note that assimilation and accommodation go together: you can't have one without the other.

Classification
The ability to group objects together on the basis of common features.

Class Inclusion
The understanding, more advanced than simple classification, that some classes or sets of objects are also sub-sets of a larger class. (E.g. there is a class of objects called dogs. There is also a class called animals. But all dogs are also animals, so the class of animals includes that of dogs)

Conservation
The realisation that objects or sets of objects stay the same even when they are changed about or made to look different.

Decentration

The ability to move away from one system of classification to another one as appropriate.

Egocentrism
The belief that you are the centre of the universe and everything revolves around you: the corresponding inability to see the world as someone else does and adapt to it. Not moral "selfishness", just an early stage of psychological development.

Operation
The process of working something out in your head. Young children (in the sensorimotor and pre-operational stages) have to act, and try things out in the real world, to work things out (like count on fingers): older children and adults can do more in their heads.

Schema (or scheme)
The representation in the mind of a set of perceptions, ideas, and/or actions, which go together.

Stage
A period in a child's development in which he or she is capable of understanding some things but not others

Nature Vs. Nurture

For centuries, there has been a debate on whether a person's innate qualities (nature) or personal experiences (nurture) determine his or her development. Recent research shows that both genetics and environment play a part in determining an individual's behavior, intelligence, and personality.

There have been some interesting cases that show that nurture plays an important role in the development of an individual. One of these cases is that of a boy who was raised by wolves who developed the characteristics of a wolf himself. Some of the abnormal behaviors he exhibited include violent behavior, inability to stand upright, and the inability to learn to speak. He even had extra sharp teeth and claw-like hands and feet.

Those who are neglected by others or not taught how to act in social situations never fully develop.

One of the most interesting cases that show nature plays a larger role is of twins who were separated at birth. This video is very interesting because even though these twins were separated at birth, they have a significant amount of similarities in their personalities and interests.



Homosexuality is something that people look to nature v. nurture to explain. Is homosexuality genetic or do you become homosexual due to experiences in your life?

This is a question yet to be answered. There have been cases that would make us think that it has to do with nature, such as twins raised the same way and one is homosexual while the other is straight. There is also evidence that homosexuality runs in families. The diverse evidence shows that it cannot be completely genetics. This video shows both of these cases and other possible explanations such as hormones, nurture before birth, and if one has older brothers.


We now know that nature and nurture are both very important in the development of a child.

Object Permanence

Object permanence:is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched.

It seems that when a baby hears a sudden sound they will look at the direction of the object. In this case the baby turned her attention to the rattling sound, once the object was covered with a cloth the object was "invisible". I have recently read that once an object "disappears" and can not be found, a child will give up trying and turn it's attention to something else, exactly how the baby in the video did.

Sensorimotor Stage 0-2

This video proves that object permanence is not the only task during this stage that infants have to solve. After watching this video, I have slowly started to observe a baby's reaction when they play "peek a boo" with an adult. I did not give it much thought before but it is intriguing to see how a baby will believe that the adult is in fact "invisible" even if they can see their hands, hair and clothing.

In the video it is said that, "Everything has a life of it's own even if it is out of sight." I recently tested this idea with my one-year-old cousin. I placed a toy air plane in front of him then hid it behind my back. When I asked him where the plane went he said, "It flew away into the sky!" This is an example of an inanimate object having a life of it's own even if it is nowhere in sight.

Piaget's Concrete Operations Stage. Stage 3

Piaget's third stage of cognitive development is referred to as the concrete operations stage. This generally occurs between the ages of 7-12 years, however each individual reaches this stage and completes it at different rates. At this stage, the child is able to understand the cause and effect of his/her actions, but he/she can still not think abstractly. The child, at this stage, is able to manipulate the environment internally.

Children at this stage are fairly good at thinking logically about concrete events, and they use inductive logic. Inductive logic is when you use a specific experience and relate it to a general principle. However, children have difficulties using deductive logic, which uses a general principle to determine an outcome of an event. Children also begin to understand the concept of reversibility, or that things are the same even if you say it backwards. An example of this is saying that she is my sister, I am her sister, we are family, and the child at this stage is able to understand that these three sentences mean the same thing.

This video shows the girl understanding the concept of reversibility because she can understand that the liquid was poured from one glass into another, but it is still the same amount of liquid even though the glass shape is different. In the stages before this, children think that the taller glass has more liquid in it, even when they saw the experimenter pour it from one glass to another, based on it being taller so it looks like it has more in it.

This video also shows reversibility because the two kids are able to understand what the experimenter means when she says, "If you hit a glass with a hammer, the glass will break. Dawn hit a glass with a hammer. What happened to the glass?" The child responded, "It broke," because he was able to understand how to draw a conclusion based on cause and effect.

When children are learning during this stage, the teachers are encouraged to give them the opportunity to ask a lot of questions and to have the children explain things back. This way, they understand and can mentally manipulate the information.

Piaget's Preoperational Stage

According to Piaget, the preoperational stage lasts from 2-7 years of age. This is now believed to be incorrect; we now believe it is over by the age of 6 in most children. This stages are not concrete however and a child is usually in more than one stage at a time, as this image illustrates. This chart is from the IEApedia online education oriented encyclopedia, the chart is from 1977. Since then we have come to realize that children develop faster than is shown in the chart. Although the time may be a little bit off, this chart does a great job illustrating how children are typically in more than one stage at a time, and the stages are not concrete.


During the preoperational stage children start to use symbols to represent the world, and understand the principals of conservation.This is a video that shows a study that illustrates how children in the beginning of the preoperational stage do not understand the principals of conservation.


The example with the coins really caught my attention. I thought it was really interesting that the child counted the coins the first time around to see if they were the same, but when they were spread out she didn't bother to count. She was very sure that there were more in the line where they were spread apart.

Another thing I found interesting about this video on youtube is that some of the comments on it are people saying that this kids are stupid. The children are in fact not stupid; they just do not yet understand the principles of conservation. To adults this seems so obvious that some people may look at these children and think they are unintelligent, because we can't imagine how someone could not have these basic understandings. It is sometimes hard to wrap our heads around this concept.


Piaget also said that children in this age group are egocentric and have trouble seeing things through other people's view points. He says that at this age children do not understand that other people have feelings too and they believe the world revolves around them. Through my own experience working at a daycare, I do not believe this is true:
One day I was working in one of the toddler rooms and a little girl was crying because she wanted her mommy. A boy who was only a little older than 2 made a bracelet out of the toys to make this little girl feel better. This shows that even toddlers understand that other people have feelings and care about their friend’s happiness.
Another example of this from my daycare experience is when I was working in a daycare room with 3 and 4 year olds and I overheard one of the boys asking his friend "Are you curious?" This seems like a funny question but it shows that he is starting to understand that other people have thoughts and things on their minds as well as him. This same boy also asked me later on that day if I ever miss my mommy. He was missing his mommy and he was becoming aware that other people could relate to this and he was not the only one who had these types of thoughts.