Psychology 361-- Chapter 8: What to study

p. 317: Define Cognition; p. 318: notice Piaget's importance derives from his influence on research. He's not as important as he once was, but the questions he asked are extremely influential. Note that he started his scientific career a bit early.

p. 318: What did Piaget notice about the errors children were making on Binet's IQ test? (The phrase 'age-related ways of thinking and understanding the world' is part of the answer.) How did Piaget study children's thinking?

p. 318-319: Why was Piaget not influential until early 1960s? It's an interesting commentary on the sociology of science: You can be right but you need a good publicist like John Flavell  and the right historical moment (the decline of behaviorism and the rise of cognitive psychology). Piaget saw the human mind as 'special' -- radically different ways of thinking at different ages. This contrasts with behaviorists who thought humans and animals were all basically learning machines. Why do you think Piaget's theory is called a 'genuine developmental theory'? (Again, the implicit contrast is with behaviorism which is not a genuine developmental theory.) 

p. 319: Note the main heading: Piaget saw the child as an active seeker of knowledge. No one would dispute that now.  What is the constructivist view?

pp. 319-320: Know definition of schema, organization, and operations. What schemata do newborn infants have? How do operations differ from schemata based on overt physical activities?

p. 322-323: Know definitions of adaptation, assimilation, accommodation. What three innate 'principles' (= mechanisms) of development does Piaget stress? (Ans., actively seek knowledge, organize the knowledge (organization), and adapt it to fulfill needs (adaptation)). The point is that Piaget did not think of the child as a blank slate but as needing certain mental abilities in order to make sense of the world. Without innate structure, the baby would not be able to make sense of the world. As the text notes, we can see the influence of evolutionary thinking in his work.

p. 323: Notice that a stage is a completely different way of approaching the world. Characteristics of stages: They are qualitatively different from other stages. There are some minor differences in when children reach stages, but all children go through the stages, and no stages are skipped.

It's good to check Table 8-1 for thumbnail sketches of the stages.

p. 324: Define Sensorimotor stage and object permanence. pp. 325-327: Stage 1: note the role of innate reflexes and SELF-STIMULATION--the child as ACTIVE creator of stimulation; Stage 2: babies repeat and modify actions THEY FIND PLEASURABLE; Stage 3: repeatedly engage in behaviors that PLEASE HIM. Stage 4: Children act more INTENTIONALLY; they ENGAGE IN DELIBERATE PLANS TO ATTAIN A GOAL. Stage 5: FASCINATED BY PROPERTIES OF FALLING OBJECTS.

The point of the preceding is that all of the capitalized phrases emphasize how Piaget sees the child as active creator his own development.

p. 327: Stage 6: Pay close attention to Stage 6, especially the bold-faced terms. What is the major accomplishment of this stage? What is deferred imitation and how does it illustrate the central accomplishment of this stage? Notice that the word 'mentally' is italicized for emphasis because of the contrast between this accomplishment and the abilities of the preceding substages.

Scan Table 8-2 but don't try to memorize it. The main point is that we see a sequence in which the infant does not attain full fledged search behavior until late in the second year.  p. 328: Describe the results of Baillargeon (1986, 1993); see Fig. 8-1. What did Baillargeon conclude about Piaget's theory of object permanence?

p. 332: Define preoperational stage; Note the importance of symbolic function, imaginative play, deferred imitation, and language development as central. We discussed the development of the symbolic function and deferred imitation in connection with Stage 6 of the Sensorimotor Stage (p. 327).
Note that the Preoperational Period is divided into two stages: Preconceptual substage (age 2-4) and Intuitive Substage (age 4-7) Define Animistic thinking, a characteristic of the reconceptual substage;

p. 333, 1st full para.: note that, as usual, Piaget may have underestimated the extent to which young children attribute animate characteristics to familiar objects.
Define egocentrism. How did Piaget test children's egocentrism? What happened when researchers replaced the figures Piaget used with familiar objects? This is more evidence that Piaget may have underestimated young children's abilities.

p. 334: Define Intuitive stage. Children in this stage fail the class-inclusion problem and seriation tasks. What happened when researchers asked simpler questions that still addressed the part-whole relationship?


p. 337: Define conservation. Know the example of conserving liquid discussed on p. 335.
p. 337: Three weaknesses of pre-operational children reversibility, focus on ends rather than means, and centration. Define reversibility and understand these concepts. How does centration relate to the conservation of liquid example on p. 335?

Figure 8-6 presents a variety of conservation in the approximate order than kids can solve them in Western societies. Note that it is not important to Piaget's theory that all children attain a particular stage at exactly a certain age. However, the stages must be attained in order--you can't skip stages and you can't go backwards. But the order of when the various conservation tasks is achieved varies in different cultures.

p. 338: What is horizontal decalage? How does Piaget explain horizontal decalage?

p. 338: Describe Gelman's experiment. How does it cast doubt on Piaget's claims on the abilities of preoperational children? Notice that once again researchers got different results by simplifying the tasks. Piaget used a fairly difficult task and recorded at what age children could do it. Later researchers use a variety of tasks of greater or lesser difficulty and find a gradual improvement in children's abilities. This is one reason why the stage idea is losing popularity.

p. 339: Define concrete operations (CO). Focus on the first paragraph of the section for a basic description of concrete operations. Notice the difficulty CO children have dealing with an abstract version of a simple sequence in height. But notice  that there may be another reason besides their cognitive stage that makes such a problem hard for CO children. What is the other possible reason and what data support this theory (Bryant & Trabasso, 1971)?

p. 342, Box 8-1: Left column, second para.: What cultural differences were found in attaining Piagetian tasks? How does Dasen explain these findings? The findings are illustrated in Figure 8-7.

p. 340: Define Formal Operations (FO). p. 340: What does the 'blue people live in red houses' example show? Describe the results of Inhelder and Piaget (1958): How do CO and FO children differ on the floating bodies task? Notice that many adolescents and adults do not reach FO. According to the text, what is the reason for this?

p. 346: What is theory of mind? What is the false-belief task and how do 3-year olds respond on it? p. 347: Note the results for children with autism.

p. 348: Note the 4 ideas that Piaget introduced to the field; many developmentalists would agree with these ideas.
In the section 'Did Piaget judge the Child's Abilities Accurately?': What is the bottom line on this question? This section basically summarizes the results from previous sections of the chapter.


p. 348-349: What does Siegler think about the stage issue and what is his reason? This relates to the comment above: Piaget used a fairly difficult task and recorded at what age children could do it. Later researchers use a variety of tasks of greater or lesser difficulty and find a gradual improvement in children's abilities. This is one reason why the stage idea is losing popularity. When you look at close intervals and use tasks that get gradually more difficult, development seems more gradual and less stage-like. Also, there is more cross-cultural variation than Piaget thought and active intervention can speed progress through the stages (but only up to a point; no intervention could make 4-year-old into a formal operational reasoner).
Overall assessment: His theory stimulated an enormous amount of research.