Critique of Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development - Research Paper Example

Critique of Piaget’s theory of Cognitive Development Critique of Piaget’s theory of Cognitive Development Introduction Jean Piaget is recognized as being one of the most influential developmental psychology researchers of the 20th century (Doherty-Sneddon, 2003 p.82). In his research Piaget mainly focused on the biological influences that determine how we come to know and the various developmental stages that we go through as we gradually acquire this ability. Piaget’s research led him to develop the Piaget’s stage theory so as to describe the cognitive development of children. Piaget believed that children play a very active role in the growth of intelligence and learn from this growth. He regarded children as being philosophers whose perception of the world is solely determined by how they experience it. Based on this hypothesis, it is no surprise that Piaget’s inspiration intellectual and cognitive development essentially came from his observations of children. Piaget’s research saw him study and observe his very own three children as they underwent though each stage of their cognitive development (Coyne et al., 2010, p.38). Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is seen to primarily focus on a number of mental processes such as remembering, reasoning, believing and perceiving. Piaget studied reasoning so as to discover exactly how we come to know, while reasoning is the essence of intelligence. According to Piaget cognitive development is essentially cumulative meaning that the understanding of a new experience essentially grows out of a previous learning experience. Through is research, Piaget was able to show that children tend to think in a considerably different manner as compared to adults. However, this does not mean that children have lesser intelligence or tend to think at a slower pace, they just happen to think in a different manner as compared to adults. Piaget’s works also showed that at birth, children are born with what is a very basic genetically inherited mental structure that gradually evolves during the child’s development and it in effect forms the basic foundation for of the child’s subsequent knowledge and learning. Piaget saw cognitive development to be the progressive reorganization of a child’s mental processes resulting from the experiences that the child goes through and maturation. The four stages used by Piaget to explain cognitive development are seen to be. Sensory – Motor Stage which occurs from birth through to the age of two years Preoperational Stage which occurs from the age of two years through to seven years Stage of Concrete Operations that takes place between ages seven through to eleven Stage of Formal Operations that takes place from age eleven through to sixteen These four stages unfold over time, and all children eventually pass through so as to be able to finally achieve an adult level of intellectual functioning. The later stages of this development are seen to evolve from and are built from the earlier stages. These stages of development are unchangeable and fixed and it is not possible for a child to skip any of the stages. While all children proceed through these stages in the very same order, it can at times be seen children at times tend to proceed through these stages at different rates (Pressley & McCormick, 2006 p.61). Criticisms of Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development The Pagetian theory serves to provide a detailed structure through which we are able to understand the development of cognitive ability in children. There are a number of post-Piagetioan theorists that have attempted to try and introduce diversity in the field, however the Piagetian theory still remains largely influential. Piaget’s findings and theories have been wildly challenged; there have been suggestions by some psychologists that in forming his theory, Piaget underestimated the cognitive abilities of children (Grave & Blissett, 2003, p4). According to Meadows, (1993), the current thinking has moved from a right stage model and the current perception is that the movement between and within stages is actually more gradual and quite likely to take place over several years. In general it is felt that Piaget greatly overestimated the achievements of the later stages while underestimated the abilities of preoperational children. Another criticism that is commonly leveled at Piaget is seen to relate to his methodology. In conducting his experiments, Piaget used basic questions and answer techniques. However, the questions that he asked were not standardized and were actually tailored to the individual subjects. Additionally, in developing his results, he failed to use statistical analysis. This has made it quite difficult to be able to translate Piaget’s result and make proper comparisons between children. It has also been argued that not only were the questions that Piaget asked the children were perhaps quite difficult for them to understand but also, these questions could have been easily misunderstood. Piaget also asked the children the same question more than once and this has been supposed to have caused confusion among the children as they might have been led to assume that their initial answers were wrong. In research conducted by Samuel and Bryant (1984) and Rose and Blank (1974) where they attempted to try and recreate Piaget’s conversation experiments. The researchers asked only one question to the children. The results derived from these experiments were found to be quite different from those obtain by Piaget in that the children made very few errors (Oakley, 2004, p27-28). In Piaget’s original theory, Piaget perceived cognitive development as generally progressing through a series of discreet stages. However, contemporary psychology has widely disputed this view and Piaget himself eventually modified his theory and stated that as opposed to cognitive development occurring in a series of discreet stages, it was perhaps more similar to a spiral change process (Bukatko & Daehler, 2011 p.25). Research by Meadows found a number of inconsistencies in the performance of children within their expected individual developmental stages. These findings showed that cognitive development did not essentially occur at the very same ages predicted by Piaget and may develop at different speeds. Most modern psychologists are of the belief that the development stages frequently overlap and are therefore of a more continuous than discrete nature (Meadows, 1993, p.62). According to Piaget’s theory, failure of object permanence is seen to primarily be a characteristic of the sensorimotor stage which is normally observed in a child until the age of eighteen months (Chen & Weng, 2004, p.35-36). However, a number of experiments have been conducted whose results are seen to dispute this aspect of Piaget’s theory. In an experiment conducted by Baillargeon (1987), four and half-month-old babies were shown a box that had been placed on stage model. A flat screen was initially placed flat in front o the box so that the box could be viewed clearly. The screen was then raised upwards to hide the box behind it as the experimenter proceeded to secretly remove this box. When the screen was eventually moved backwards and made to pass through the space that had originally contained the box, the infants showed expressions of surprise. Baillargeon argued that if the children did not have the concept of object permanence, they would not have registered a surprise response (Beckett, 2002 p.86). The idea of egocentrism as proposed by Piaget has also faced sharp criticism (Lourenco & Machado, 1996, p.148). It has been argued that the egocentrism experiments conducted by Piaget such as the three mountain scene greatly confused the children in the experiment as it was not quite clear to them exactly what was being asked. In the experiment, children aged four years were shown a mountain scene with three mountains and then tested to establish if they could be able to correctly describe it form different viewpoints. The children failed to do this and would often tend to describe it from their own viewpoint. Six year old children were found to be more aware of the viewpoints but would however still tend to choose the wrong one (Matusov & Hayes, 2000 p.4). In an experiment designed by Hughes to establish if children aged between 3.5 0-5 years could be able to de-centrate and overcome their egocentrism, the task was made easier and more similar to their world when these children had to try hide a boy doll from two policemen dolls. This task required that they be able to take into account the perspectives o the policemen so as to hide the doll correctly. In this experiment, it was found that the children could be able to hid the doll correctly an estimated 90% of the time (Hill, 2001, p.140). Strengths of Piaget’s theory of Cognitive Development Piaget’s influence in the field of developmental psychology is seen to be quite enormous as it greatly changed the manner in which people tend to view the world of children as well as the methods used in the studying of children. There are a number of instructional strategies such as the utilization of social interactions, the provision of a supportive environment and peer teaching that have been derived from Piaget’s work. Using these strategies, teachers are able to use the cognitive development stages designed by Piaget to better teach the children as they understand in exactly which stage of development the child is at. Knowing the developmental level of the children allows teachers to develop age-appropriate educational curriculums helpful to the children as the children are able to learn at their level. Conclusion Despite the large number of objections seen to be leveled at Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, it should be realized that he was the first psychologist to attempt examining how children see the world, it is because of Piaget that psychologists have conducted a vast amount of further studies in this area. Of note is that that most of the criticisms leveled at Piaget focus on his underestimations of childhood abilities and none of these challenges opposes that these changes do in fact occur. In light of this, it stands that Piaget’s work is still as significant in childhood development today as it was when it was initially proposed by Piaget. References Beckett, C. (2002). Human growth and development. London [u.a.] : Sage. Bukatko, D. & Daehler, M. (2011). Child Development: A Thematic Approach. Cengage Learning. Chen, Y., & Weng, J. (2004). Developmental Learning: A Case Study in Understanding “Object Permanence”. Retrieved from http://cogprints.org/4057/1/chen.pdf. Coyne, I., et al. (2010). Clinical skills in childrens nursing. Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press. Doherty-Sneddon, G. (2003). Childrens unspoken language. Philadelphia, PA : Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Hill, G. (2001). A Level psychology through diagrams. Oxford : Oxford University Press. J. Grave & J. Blissett. (2003).Is cognitive behavior therapy developmentally appropriate for young children? A critical review of the evidence. Clinical Psychology Review 24, (2004) 399–420. Lourenço, O., & Machado, A. (1996). In defense of Piagets theory: A reply to 10 common criticisms. Psychological Review, 103(1), 143. Matusov, E., & Hayes, R. (2000). Sociocultural critique of Piaget and Vygotsky. New Ideas in Psychology, 18(2), 215-239. Meadows, S. (1993). The child as thinker: The development and acquisition of cognition in childhood. London: Routledge. Oakley, L. (2004). Cognitive Development. Routledge. Pressley, M. & McCormick, C. (2006). Child and adolescent development for educators. New York : Guilford Press. Read More