IB Psychology
Mr. Detjen
Student Responses to Developmental Psychology Option LOs
General Learning Outcomes
LO1: Discuss to what extent biological, cognitive, and sociocultural factors influence human development
LO2: Evaluate psychological research (studies and/or theories) relevant to developmental psychology.
A, Cognitive Development
LO3: Evaluate theories of cognitive development.
***Explain and Evaluate Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development***
(Only Piaget)
Hannah
Developmental psychology focuses on the idea of development as a life-long process of change. Developmental psychologists aim to figure out how and why people change over time. It is commonly theorized that early experiences influence behaviors seen further ahead in life. Jean Piaget is one of the luminaries well known in the developmental psychological field. Piaget focused on the genetics behind epistemology – the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge.
Piaget made four key assumptions: intelligence is genetically based and develops in stages, children are not passive receivers of knowledge, children think qualitatively difference than adults, and individuals construct schemas to view the world. It was Piaget’s idea that individuals were born with innate schemas (i.e. sucking & grasping) that develop throughout the years. This is also referred to as adaptation which Piaget split into two subfields. One sub field is assimilation where a new experience that an infant goes through can fit into an existing schema. The other subfield is accommodation where new events do not fit into any existing schemas and thus the schemas may be modified or a new schema may form as a result.
Piaget believed that an individual will go through four stages in his or her lifetime. These four stages comprise Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. The four stages include: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The sensorimotor stage – believed to take place within zero to two years of life – is when the individual experiences the world through their senses and actions (i.e. looking, touching, mouthing, grasping). This stage is also characteristic of egocentrism – the individual knows nothing but himself – and a lack of object permanence – if they cannot see it, it does not exist. The second stage, preoperational, occurs between two to six or seven years of age. In this stage, individuals represent objects or situations with words and images bit lack logical reasoning. This stage is characterized by pretend play, complete egocentrism, language development, and centration – they can only focus on one thing at a time. Also in this stage, a lack of conservation has been observed; children think an object completely changes if merely its appearance is the only thing changed. The third stage, concrete operational, occurs from ages six or seven to eleven years. Individuals in this stage are able to think logically about concrete events, grasp concrete analogies, and perform arithmetical operations. The individuals also do not seem to lack conservation and can now identify an object as the same even though its appearance has changed. Lastly, the formal operational stage begins around age twelve and goes on from there. In this stage the individuals are able to partake in abstract reasoning, have potential for mature moral reasoning, and can logically think about “what if…” situations.
There are both positive and negative comments on Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. On one hand, Piaget produced the first comprehensive theory of cognitive development and linking biological maturation to cognitive development. It was also agreed with that children are not passive learners and instead take initiative, in their own way, to actively learn about themselves and their environment. However, it was believed that Piaget’s sample size was too small and potentially biased since he used his own children in a number of his studies. Also, the research failed to distinguish between competence and performance. Piaget was unable to explain in great detail why each stage occurred at the time it did. The role of social development was underestimated as well as cognitive abilities, but formal abilities were overestimated. It was even thought that the methods were too formal for children.
Megan
Jean Piaget was a constructionist psychologist. This means he believes that cognitive development is dependent upon how an individual interacts with the social and physical world. He developed the first comprehensive theory of childhood development. His theory consists of four stages, ranging from infancy to adulthood. Each stage has important developments that Piaget considered landmarks in a person’s development, such as the ability to think abstractly, a skill he believed was acquired in adulthood.
The first stage, Sensorimotor, spans from 02 years of age. During this stage, knowledge develop as a result of sensations and actions. Also, infants lack the concept of object permanence until they are about 8 months old, according to Piaget. Object permanence is the idea that objects continue to exist even when they can no longer be seen, like, peek a boo, for example. An infant who has yet to develop object permanence will believe that your face
disappears into thin air when you cover it with your hands and you can no longer see it.
The second stage is the Preoperational which is from ages 27. This is when the child learns to speak and there is an increase in the use of symbolic thought and selfawareness, but dominated, however, by the visual appearance of things. The child’s understanding is based on egocentricism;the child can only see the world from his or her own viewpoint. The child also lacks the concept of conservation: the ability to understand that physical properties remain the same even if the object’s appearance has changed.
The concrete operational stage comes next and lasts from age 7 to age 12. Here logical reasoning based on real objects that can be manipulated develops and an understanding of conservation emerges. The fourth and final stage is the formal operational stage which extends from age 12 onto adulthood. This is when the ability to use abstract reasoning and logic matures.
Some strengths of his theory are: it was the first comprehensive theory for childhood development, it has helped reform education and the idea of a child, many of his concepts have been tested empirically, so his theory is not entirely historical, and he suggested inventive research. His theory is limited, however, in that he underestimated the role of social learning, and a child’s cognitive capabilites, cultural bias exists in his work, and his sample size was too small, which made it difficult to generalize his findings.
Jolie
Jean Piaget, a Swiss developmental psychologist, believed that children develop their cognitive skills in stages and through schemas. As a child develops mentally, his/her schemas also develop. Sometimes new events, objects, or people can be fitted into already existing schemas (assimilation), but other times schemas are needed to be modified or created in order to accommodate new events the child encounters.
According to Piaget, there are four stages during cognitive development as a result of maturation and the environment. Children from 0-2 years old are in their first stage of development (sensory motor), in which they have no formal schemas and only know the world through their senses and motors. Egocentricism is found in this stage as the children all think of themselves as the center of the world. They also believe that if they cannot see an object, that means the object no longer exist. In the pre-operational stage (2-7 years old), children cannot depend on internal mental rules, focus only on one object or one aspect at a time (centration), and classifies objects into the same group based on shape or color (classification limitation). They also begin to have imaginary friends. When children reach concrete operational stage (7-11 years old), they start to develop rules or schemas about real objects in real world and learn the idea that object tend to stay the same even if its shape changes. In the formal operational stage (11 and older), they can think abstractly and manipulate ideas and solve problems without the need of physical objects.
Piaget’s theory of how cognition develops in children contributes significantly to our understanding of mental development. Over the years, Piaget also modifies his theory in response to criticism and is the first to investigate whether maturation is based on biological factors. However, in his studies, his sample size is rather small, making it hard to generalize to the wider population and other culture, and his methods are deemed too formal for children. Piaget is also criticized for failing to distinguish between competence and performance in his research and for underestimating the role of language and social development in his theory.
Unlike Piaget, Vygotsky focused his cognitive development more on social environment and language. He believes that children can gain knowledge through their culture and through the interaction they have with other people. Observation of their own culture can teach them the social norms in their society. Children also acquire knowledge through imitation, instructions, and collaborative learning. In addition, language is also the medium for adults to transmit knowledge to children, and it develops in 3 stages. Pre-intellectual or social speech takes place when children are from 0 – 3 years old, in which their thoughts are not constructed with language and they use speech to make certain changes. From age 3 – 7, children experience egocentric speech, in which language controls behavior when it is spoken out loud. Children older than 7 years old is in the final stage known as inner speech, in which they use language silently to think and publicly to communicate out loud. Zone of proximal development is the concept that refers to the difference between what children can do on their own and what they can do with outside help, and scaffolding is the idea that children would accomplish more if they have assistance from others than if they were to do it by themselves. Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development in children is criticized for being rather vague about social influence and for being too focused on social interaction. It nonetheless is a useful concept in teaching and in predicting a child’s ability in class.
Imani
Jean Piaget used a viewpoint of biology and philosophy and looked at development through a genetic and biological context. He had four assumptions: intelligence is genetically and biologically based, children are curious and motivated to seek out their own information and that they are not passive in learning, children think qualitatively different than adults, and lastly that individuals construct their own view of the world through their own schemas. In his experiment to test his assumptions and theories Paiget used his own children, which gave him the advantage of first hand experience but the disadvantage of lacking scientific validity. In Paiget’s theory he also had two adaptations to the statement that all knowledge develops through schemas. The first being assimilation; a process that occurs when new events can be fitted into existing events, meaning the consolidation of schemas and those schemas being supported and reinforced. The second adaptation is accommodation; the process when new events do not fit into existing schemas, so then new schemas are created.
Paigets main theory of development is with cognitive development. In his main theory Paiget says that development happens through stages; development is like a staircase being that you have to finish and complete one step (or stage) before advancing to the next. The first stage is the sensorimotor stage that happens from newborns to two years old. In this stage babies experience the world through their senses and actions, here the babies have no real sense of self apart from world and they lack the idea of object permanence, which as the baby grows then becomes a key development. The second stage is the preoperational stage, which happens from two years of age to about six or seven; the child learns of words and images but lack object and reasoning. A key development in the second stage is the children began to have pretend play, egocentrism and language development, what children here lack is a classification limitation though. The third stage is the concrete operational stage, which happens from six or seven to about eleven years of age. In this stage the child begins to think logically about concrete events, can grasp concrete analogies and perform arithmetical operations, key developments in this stage is conservation and mathematical transformations. The last stage of Paigets theory is the formal operational stage from eleven on; this is where the person develops abstract thinking and the key development is abstract logic and potential for moral reasoning.
Evaluation of Paigets theory and experiment is that he is the first person to had created a comprehensive theory of child development, but there was still much criticism. It was said that Paiget’s whole theory had a negative connotation, he focused on what the children could not do instead of what they could do and that his experiments were to formal and unfamiliar. For example in the Paiget and Inhelder 1956 study he asked children to identify with unfamiliar surrounds such as mountains and then asked what they saw through a doll on the opposite side of the mountains perspective, the results were that the children were confused on what the doll saw. But in Hughe’s 1975 study results showed that the children easily hid the boy doll behind buildings from the police dolls, showing that they could view the police doll’s perspective in now being able to view the boy doll. More criticism of the theory is that it used such a small sample so it was a degree of hazardous to generalize all the information. Paiget also underestimated language, underestimated social development, underestimated cognitive abilities in certain ages and it was too vivid, not flexible enough and did not have enough details for each stage.
Karl
Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who believed that maturation as well as the social environment is important in cognitive development. He thought that interaction with the environment changes people, and cognitive development is dependent on how the individual child interacts with the social and physical world. People know this as the constructionist approach. Piaget began his studies by observing his own children and developed a clinical interview to provide insight into the child’s own judgements.
Piaget said that knowledge consists of cognitive structures known as schemas which are mental representations of how to deal with the world. He suggested that children actively construct knowledge and their schemas are modified through what Piaget called adaptation. He stated that adaptation has two forms: assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is when new information is integrated into existing schemas while accommodation is when existing cognitive schemas are altered to match new experiences.
Children’s intelligence progresses through a series of cognitive stages, with different qualities at each stage according to Piaget. He called the stages sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The sensorimotor stage is from birth to age 2 in which the child learns through movements and sensations. At around eight months the child can develop object permanence which is the idea that objects continue to exist even when they can no longer be seen; this explains the game “peek-a-boo”. The pre-operational stage is from age 2-7 where the child learns to speak but cannot transfer knowledge from one situation to another. The child can only view the world from his or her own viewpoint, which is the idea of egocentrism, according to Piaget. In the concrete operational stage which occurs from age 7 to 12, many children begin problem solving and dealing with concrete tasks. And the final stage is the formal operational stage, starting after age 12. By the end of this stage, adults and adolescents can use abstract and formal logic. They are able to manipulate ideas and concepts, and can also think hypothetically.
Kaliice
Developmental psychology is the study of how people change over time. Within this topic many psychologist have come up with theories on how people develop either cognitively or biologically.
Jean Piaget developed a theory as to how people develop on a cognitive level. Cognitive development is how cognitive processes change over time; why and how they change. Piaget focused on the genetic context and had for main factors that he focused on; intelligences are under genetic control, children are not passive in reserves of knowledge, children not only think different than adults but they do on a quantitative level, and individuals create their own view of the world through schemas.