COGNITION AND THINKING
SPECIFICATION
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development: schemas, assimilation, accommodation, equilibration, stages of intellectual development. Characteristics of these stages, including object permanence, conservation, egocentrism and class inclusion.
Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development, including the zone of proximal development and scaffolding.
Baillargeon’s explanation of early infant abilities, including knowledge of the physical world, and violation of expectation research.
The development of social cognition: Selman’s levels of perspective-taking; theory of mind, including theory of mind as an explanation for autism; the Sally-Anne study. The role of the mirror neuron system in social cognition.
TOPIC OVERVIEW
Cognition is the term psychologists use to refer to mental activities. The study of cognitive development focuses on the development of mental abilities, including thinking, problem-solving, mathematical skills, and the way individuals think about right and wrong (moral development).
Although Piaget is one of the best-known theorists in this field, he is not the only psychologist to have studied the development of cognitive competency in children. Vygotsky and Bruner have also made important contributions in this area. However, many years before the work of these psychologists, the issue of how children learn and become competent adult thinkers was addressed by philosophers such as John Locke. Locke was particularly interested in whether humans are born equipped with knowledge or begin life with a blank slate (a tabula rasa) upon which knowledge gained through experience is imprinted. Locke argued that children learn through physical and social interactions with their immediate environment, an issue that remains central to discussions of cognitive development.
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is based on detailed observations of children, including his own, alongside their performance on a number of standardised tests conducted in the 1920s. At approximately the same time, Vygotsky was undertaking similar work in Russia, although his research became widely known only after translation into English in the 1960s and 1970s. The work of the American psychologist Bruner was initially influenced by Piagetian ideas and was later extended through engagement with Vygotsky’s theory.
Topic 1 focuses on the work of Piaget, Vygotsky and Bruner and considers how their theories have been applied within education. Kohlberg’s theory of moral understanding and Eisenberg’s theory of prosocial reasoning are examined in Topic 2. The final topic addresses the development of social cognition, exploring Baron-Cohen’s theory of mind and Selman’s work on perspective-taking, alongside the role of mirror neurons in social cognition. Connections are drawn to Piaget’s theory, particularly his work on perspective-taking, which preceded the formal conceptualisation of the theory of mind in human development.
Because the mental processes studied by psychologists in this field are largely invisible, researchers have been required to devise innovative tasks to assess the cognitive abilities of infants and young children. Readers are encouraged to consider each test procedure introduced throughout the chapter and evaluate whether it appears meaningful, child-friendly, reliable and valid. The chapter concludes with the opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of the various research methods used by Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Kohlberg, Eisenberg, Baron Cohen and Selman.
EXAM QUESTIONS
PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: SCHEMAS, ASSIMILATION, ACCOMMODATION, EQUILIBRATION, STAGES OF
1. Describe what Piaget meant by equilibration. [4 marks]
Leonard and Felix are primary school teachers. They discuss the methods they use in their classrooms. Leonard says, “Children need to experiment with the right sort of task. They learn well if they make mistakes until they get it right.” Felix says, “Children need various levels of guidance to achieve their potential. The more able children can really help the ones who are struggling.”
2. Use your knowledge of theories of cognitive development to explain the comments made by Leonard and Felix. [8 marks]
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. CHARACTERISTICS OF THESE STAGES, INCLUDING OBJECT PERMANENCE, CONSERVATION, EGOCENTRISM AND CLASS INCLUSION.
1. Write the letter of your chosen answer in your answer booklet.
A. The inability to understand abstract and hypothetical ideas.
B. The inability to understand that people still exist when out of sight.
C. The inability to understand that things are the same even if they look different.
D. The inability to understand things from different points of view. Read the item and then answer the questions that follow. [1 mark]
2. Which one of the following best describes Piaget’s concept of conservation? Write the correct letter in your answer book. [1 mark]
Understanding that things can be different even when they look the same.
Understanding that things are different when they look different.
Understanding that things are the same even though they look different.
Understanding that things are the same when they look the same.
3. Which ONE of the following best describes Piaget’s concept of conservation? Write the correct letter in your answer book. [1 mark]
4. Outline what Piaget meant by conservation. [2 marks]
5. Outline one strength and one limitation of Piaget’s research into conservation. [6 marks]
6. Briefly suggest TWO examples of a conservation task that the psychologist might have used in the study. [2 marks]
7. Outline what Piaget meant by conservation. [2 marks
8. Sketch a graph to show the most likely distribution curves for the egocentrism scores in this study. Label the axes of your graph and mark on it the positions of the mean, median and mode. [3 marks]
9. What sort of distribution does your graph show? [1 mark]
10. Explain one limitation of asking parents to rate their own children. [2 marks]
11. Outline ONE strength AND ONE limitation of Piaget’s research into conservation. [6 marks]
12. Discuss what psychological research has told us about children’s understanding of object permanence. Which one of the following statements describes one feature of what Piaget meant by ‘egocentrism’? (16 marks)
VYGOTSKY’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT, INCLUDING THE ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT AND SCAFFOLDING.
1. Use your knowledge of theories of cognitive development to explain the comments made by Leonard and Felix. [8 marks]
2. Describe and evaluate Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development. [16 marks]
3. Outline Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development. Explain one or more strength(s) of Vygotsky’s theory. [6 marks]
4. Outline Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development. [6 marks)
Leonard and Felix are primary school teachers. They discuss the methods they use in their classrooms. Leonard says, “Children need to experiment with the right sort of task. They learn well if they make mistakes until they get it right.” Felix says, “Children need various levels of guidance to achieve their potential. The more able children can really help the ones who are struggling.”
5. Use your knowledge of theories of cognitive development to explain the comments made by Leonard and Felix. [8 marks]
6. Explain ONE OR MORE strength(s) of Vygotsky’s theory. [8 marks)
7. Outline and evaluate Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development. [8 marks]
BAILLARGEON’S EXPLANATION OF EARLY INFANT ABILITIES, INCLUDING KNOWLEDGE OF THE PHYSICAL WORLD; VIOLATION OF EXPECTATION RESEARCH.
1. Baillargeon studied early infant abilities by conducting violation of expectation studies. What is meant by ‘violation of expectation’? [1 mark]
2. Discuss research into the violation of expectations. [8 marks]
3. Discuss research into the violation of expectations. [8 marks]
4. Discuss what psychological research has told us about children’s understanding of object permanence. [16 marks]
SELMAN’S LEVELS OF PERSPECTIVE-TAKING
1. Discuss the theory of mind and Selman’s levels of perspective-taking in the development of social cognition. Describe what Piaget meant by equilibration. [4 marks]
2. Discuss Selman’s research on perspective-taking. Refer to the likely outcome of the student’s study in your answer. [8 marks]
3. Discuss Selman’s research on perspective-taking. Refer to the likely outcome of the student’s study in your answer. [8 marks]
4. Discuss the theory of mind AND Selman’s levels of perspective-taking in the development of social cognition. [16 marks]
LATER DEVELOPMENTS TO SELMAN’S THEORY
Selman later expanded his theory by suggesting that perspective-taking is only one part of a broader process of social development. He proposed that effective social functioning depends on three related abilities.
INTERPERSONAL UNDERSTANDING
This refers to the ability to understand another person’s thoughts, feelings and intentions. It involves recognising that other people may interpret situations differently and respond in ways influenced by their own beliefs and emotions.
INTERPERSONAL NEGOTIATION STRATEGIES
This refers to the social skills individuals use when interacting with others. These include asserting one’s position, negotiating differences, resolving disagreements, and managing conflicts constructively.
AWARENESS OF THE PERSONAL MEANING OF RELATIONSHIPS
This involves understanding how relationships operate and how behaviour should be regulated within them. Individuals become aware that relationships require cooperation, compromise, and consideration of others' needs and expectations.
THEORY OF MIND, INCLUDING THEORY OF MIND AS AN EXPLANATION FOR AUTISM; THE SALLY-ANNE STUDY.
Conrad and Leonard are brothers. Conrad has autism, whereas Leonard does not. One day, they are playing ball with their father in the garden. When their father goes inside to answer the telephone, Leonard hides the ball in a bucket. Leonard giggles and says to Conrad, “Where do you think Dad will look for the ball?”.
1. Use your knowledge of the theory of mind and the Sally-Anne study to explain Conrad’s likely response. [4 marks]
2. Outline and evaluate the theory of mind as an explanation for autism. [8 marks]
3. Conrad and Leonard are brothers. Conrad has autism, whereas Leonard does not. One day, they are playing ball with their father in the garden. When their father goes inside to answer the telephone, Leonard hides the ball in a bucket. Leonard giggles and says to Conrad, “Where do you think Dad will look for the ball?”
4. Use your knowledge of the theory of mind and the Sally-Anne study to explain Conrad’s likely response. [4 marks]
5. Outline and evaluate the theory of mind as an explanation for autism. [8 marks]
• In a study of perspective-taking, a psychology student used a group of 9-year-old children. Each child was shown two pictures.
• Picture 1 showed an older child being unkind to a little boy.
• Picture 2 showed an older child being kind to a little boy.
The student asked the children to judge how sad the little boy would feel in each picture on a scale of 1–10. The student decided to test for a significant difference between the judgments of the two pictures. He proposed using an unrelated t-test to analyse the data.
6. Suggest a more appropriate statistical test of difference for the student to use with this data. Explain TWO reasons for your choice based on the description of the study. [5 marks]
7. The student who carried out the study selected the two pictures. He decided for himself which picture showed unkind behaviour and which showed kind behaviour. Explain how the study could be improved by selecting the pictures another way. [2 marks]
THE ROLE OF THE MIRROR NEURON SYSTEM IN SOCIAL COGNITION
Discuss the role of the mirror neuron system in social cognition. [8 marks]
In a study of perspective taking, a psychology student used a group of 9-year-old children. Each child was shown two pictures:
Picture 1 – An older child being unkind to a little boy.
Picture 2 – An older child being kind to a little boy.
Children rated how sad the little boy would feel on a scale of 1 to 10. The student planned to test for a significant difference between the two sets of ratings and proposed using an unrelated t-test.
Suggest a more appropriate statistical test of difference.
Explain TWO reasons for your choice based on the description of the study.[5 marks]
The student selected the two pictures himself and decided which picture showed kind or unkind behaviour.
2. Explain how the study could be improved by selecting the pictures another way. [2 marks
ESSAY EXEMPLARS
DISCUSS PIAGET’S THEORY OF INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Piaget believed that children are not able to undertake certain tasks until they are psychologically mature enough to do so. These developments don’t happen entirely smoothly, and there are stages when children move into new capabilities, such as seeing those transitions at about 18 months, 7 years, and 11 or 12 years. Piaget believed that schemas (an evolving unit of knowledge which we use to understand situations) are key to cognitive development. Adults have complex schemas, while babies have simple ones, such as the sucking reflex. Assimilation is the process of adding new elements to existing schemas by applying a schema to a new situation, such as applying the pull-along schema to a wooden dog on wheels with a pull rope, or by adding new information to an existing schema. Accommodation is when a schema is changed to deal with a new situation; for example, the pull-along schema can’t be used for a wind-up tractor, so the wind-up schema needs to be developed to understand how the wind-up tractor works.
The first stage of Piaget’s theory is the sensorimotor stage, which lasts from 0 to 2 years. Piaget believes that each stage is invariant, where each child passes through the stages in the same order. Also, believing that the stages are universal, Piaget proposes that these sequential stages apply to all children regardless of their culture. At this stage, knowledge consists of simple motor reflexes such as grasping and sucking. The child’s cognition is limited to sensations and motor movements. At 8 months, the child begins to understand object permanence, the idea that objects exist independently, even when they are not being observed. To develop object permanence, a child needs the ability to hold simple mental representations of objects.
One of Piaget’s key studies that investigates object permanence tested infants individually, where Piaget waited until the child was playing with an object and then removed the toy from its grasp and hid it beneath a blanket when the child looked on. If the child searched for it, this would suggest that the child could understand that the object continued to exist even when out of sight, indicating object permanence. Infants less than 8 months didn’t search for the toy, apparently forgetting that the toy existed out of sight. At approximately 8 months, children searched for the hidden toy; however, when Piaget moved it from the blanket to another place, the child looked for it where they last found it, not where they last saw it. This is the type A, not B, error, which indicates simple object permanence. At around 12 months, the infant begins to look for the toy in the place where they last saw it hidden, showing more complex object permanence.
The weaknesses of this study are that infants under 8 months didn’t search for the toy for other reasons, for example, they lacked the necessary motor skills to look for it, they simply weren’t interested or that the deliberate covering of the toy led them to believe that it was forbidden. The tests that Piaget conducted were accused of lacking ‘human sense’, where critics have suggested that he underestimates the age at which children develop object permanence. Other studies, such as those by Bower and Wishart, demonstrate that even children as young as 3 months may have object permanence. They turned out the lights and then observed the child with an infrared camera. They found that infants continued reaching for objects in the dark, suggesting that they realise they’re there.
In the next stage, the pre-operational stage (2-7 years), children can use symbols and images and recognise that one thing can stand for another; however, there are certain cognitive tasks they are unable to perform, such as animism, centration, and egocentrism. Animism is the belief that inanimate objects have emotions; nevertheless, this remains questionable, as they may be making the best use of their limited expressive powers. Centration is when children in the pre-operational stage can only attend to one factor at a time; Piaget suggests that children can begin to de-centre at the age of 7.
Egocentrism is the inability of a child to take another point of view into consideration. The study that Piaget conducted to support this idea is the 3-mountain experiment. Children were shown a 3D display of 3 mountains, and then a doll was placed in various positions around the mountains. Ten images of the model were shown to the child, and they were asked to select the perspective that the doll could see. Children at the middle of the stage tended to take their own view, demonstrating egocentrism; however, by 7-8 years, when they were coming out of this stage, children began to lose this egocentric trait and to select the doll's perspective.
EVALUATION A03
Some weaknesses in this study are that the children may have found it difficult to analyse the pictures and may indeed recognise that the doll is viewing the mountain from a different angle, but struggled to identify which view it was from the pictures given. The children who didn’t complete the task correctly may have felt little interest because it was so irrelevant and unfamiliar to them compared to their daily lives. Other evidence from studies, such as Hughes and Donaldson, suggests that children can de-centre at a much younger age, given a familiar situation. 90% of children aged between 3 and a half and 5 years successfully hid the boy from the two policemen in a hide-and-seek (cross-model) situation. This could be because the task was clearly understood, and the child could understand the motives behind each character, since, to them, it was a game of hide-and-seek.
Conservation is the understanding that even though the physical appearance of an object has changed, the volume, density and mass of the object remain the same. Piaget studied the age at which children could conserve volume by showing them 2 identical beakers containing equal amounts of water before asking which one contained more water. The water from one beaker was poured into a third, taller beaker, with the children being asked the same question. Most children under 7 stated that the 3rd beaker contained the most water, indicating that the ability to conserve develops at age 7, as children older than this knew the amounts were equal. One limitation of this study is that the children may have assumed the experimenter expected a different answer, as they saw the experimenter pour the water into a different beaker, so they may have just gone with the beaker that changed rather than necessarily believing it. Also, the language used in the experiment may have made it more difficult for younger children to conserve. When the experimenter used the word more, they wouldn’t have been taking it in the adult sense of volume but instead would have interpreted it as ‘higher’ or ‘fuller,’ thus affecting the results. A study that was conducted by McGarrigle and Donaldson shows that children can conserve numbers earlier than Piaget suggested because alterations in terms of counters were made both by the experimenter and the other condition was made to look accidental with the intervention from a ‘naughty teddy.’ 16% showed conservation when the experimenter made the alterations; however, 62% of the 4-6-year-olds conserved with the ‘accidental’ mistake.
From the age of 7, Piaget suggested that there is a cognitive shift where the child is now able to perform mental operations- an internal schema that enables logic such as ordering, multiplication, division, subtraction and addition. This is within the concrete operational stage. Another cognitive ability that children acquire at this stage is class inclusion, where they become aware of categories and the classification of objects. They can recognise the difference between general categories and subcategories. Piaget’s study that supports this idea is the experiment with the wooden beads, 20 of which 18 are brown, and 2 are white. The children are then asked 3 questions: 1) Are the beads all wooden? 2) Are there more brown or white beads? 3) Are there more brown beads or wooden beads? Children under the age of 7 usually answered the first 2 questions correctly because, although they are being asked about two separate categories, the two classes are distinct and do not overlap, unlike the third question, where the subclass of the brown beads overlaps with the superordinate class of all the wooden beads. One limitation of this study is that the wording of the questions may have affected the children's answers, as demonstrated by McGarrigle and Donaldson.
Children about 6 years old were shown 3 black cows and a white cow that were lying on their side in a sleeping position, with the children being asked: 1) Are there more black or white cows? And 2) Are there more black cows or sleeping cows? The first question was answered correctly 25% of the time, and the second 48% of the time. This shows how the wording of the question affects responses: emphasising the whole group with the adjective ‘sleeping’ helped them give the correct answer.
When a child reaches the age of 12, they enter the formal operational stage, at which point they can understand abstract concepts. This is where they can refer to intangible things, such as boredom and calm. Children at this stage know what these concepts mean, despite not being able to see or touch them, as they don’t physically exist.
One study that Piaget used in order to show systematic reasoning is the pendulum problem. Children were asked to change variables such as the weight and the length of the string to observe which affected the pendulum's swing rate, thus creating a cause-and-effect relationship. Children who were not in the final stage changed more than one variable at a time and couldn’t reach any conclusions; however, those who were in the final stage changed one variable at a time and correctly identified the factors affecting the swing's rate.
Another cognitive ability that is present in formal operational thinkers is hypothetical thinking- this is where thinking can be speculative, and they are able to imagine situations. One example is the third eye problem. Children were asked where they’d put a 3rd eye if they had one. Schaffer conducted this test and found that 9-year-olds made conventional suggestions, such as the forehead; however, 11-year-olds were capable of hypothetical thinking and made more innovative suggestions, such as on the hand.
There are many criticisms that can be made of the methods Piaget used to carry out his work. The sample he used was small and unrepresentative of the whole population because it included only his own children and the children of his friends, all of whom came from Switzerland. This is biased because it relies on a small sample and all of them come from a single cultural background, rather than investigating the cognitive development of several cultures worldwide. The reporting methods that Piaget used could also be strongly criticised because he often failed to record the number and ages of many of his participants, meaning that many participants from his studies may not have been included, and if they were, their results may have turned out very differently.
Piaget also used the clinical interview technique, in which he did not adhere to the normal scientific procedures of standards and controls. His interactions with the children were usually conversational in an informal sense, with each participant being treated slightly differently. He based all of his theory on the qualitative work that he collected; he never took data or correlations that could make his work in any way scientific. It has also been argued that because the reported answers were of a conversational tone rather than statistical evidence, Piaget may have selected particular examples to support his theory.
Strengths of his work are that it allowed for further research, and he was a key cognitive psychology pioneer. He made cognitive development an important sector of cognitive psychology. There have also been many studies based on Piaget’s work to determine whether they support his findings. However, many studies refuted his work.
Another strength is that Piaget conducted many experiments that supported his idea of a sequential set of stages that all children universally pass through at set ages, regardless of cultural background. His cross-cultural studies used samples of children from the USA, Britain, Africa and China, which supported Piaget’s idea behind universality. However, other research on other cultures doesn’t completely support Piaget’s age-related stages. Dasen found that children from less industrialised societies, with less state education, reached the stages that Piaget proposed at much later ages, suggesting that environmental factors play a role in children's cognitive development. This idea has been supported through cross-cultural research, and Piaget can also be praised for the fact that his experiments were innovative and creative, which may be deemed as entertaining for the children; nevertheless, his experiments could be said to be out of context and unfamiliar to the children, which may have affected their responses greatly if they became confused.
One limitation of Piaget’s theory is the criticism it has received of the formal-operational stage. Few adults demonstrate the thinking required for scientific reasoning, even in industrialised societies. Martorano tested 12-18 females on 10 Piaget tests related to formal operational science problems, including the pendulum problem. Only 2 of the 20 women succeeded on all the problems, and the success rate for 18-year-olds varied from 15% to 95%.
Further limitations are that Piaget believed children went through a sequential set of cognitive development stages, one at a time, and was unable to recognise that these stages can sometimes overlap, a phenomenon called horizontal decalage. A child could show signs of more than one stage at a time. For example, a child may be able to conserve correctly depending on the task; they might be able to conserve numbers but not volume, as volume conservation is a harder task. Nevertheless, Piaget’s argument about an actual difference in qualitative thinking amongst these stages appears to have been supported.
Moreover, another strength of Piaget’s work is that the findings that Piaget has had, as well as the entire theory itself, have had an enormous impact on modern-day educational systems and the school curriculum. His theory that children cannot perform certain cognitive tasks until they reach a certain age has been applied in classroom settings, where teachers now base the complexity of their instruction on Piaget’s theory.
DISCUSS PIAGET’S EXPLANATION OF THE PROCESSES INVOLVED IN SCHEMA DEVELOPMENT
REFER TO EXAMPLES OF SCHEMA DEVELOPMENT IN YOUR ANSWER.
Piaget examined children’s schemas as part of their cognitive development. Schemas are packages of information and mental representations of the world around us. These start off very basic in newborns, as the first few schemas are innate. However, they become richer and more complex as children grow, develop and confront new situations. Ultimately, individuals develop schemas for a wide range of things, including objects such as chairs or tables and higher-level concepts such as morality or love.
AO2 EXAMPLE: THE “ME SCHEMA”
An example of a child’s schema is the “me schema”, which represents knowledge about themselves. Piaget also examined how schemas change as children learn.
ASSIMILATION
Assimilation occurs when a child encounters a new situation and integrates it into an existing schema.
AO2 EXAMPLE: DOG BREEDS AND THE DOG SCHEMA
For example, when a child first sees different breeds of dog, such as a Labrador or Poodle, these may be assimilated into an existing dog schema.
ACCOMMODATION
Accommodation occurs when a child must create a new schema because the new experience cannot fit into an existing one.
AO2 EXAMPLE: CREATING A NEW CAT SCHEMA
For example, if a child initially mistakes a cat for a dog, they may later create a new schema specifically for cats.
EQUILIBRIUM AND DISEQUILIBRIUM
Piaget also highlighted the motivation behind learning and the creation of new schemas. When a child’s existing schemas cannot adequately explain a new experience, they experience disequilibrium. This is an uncomfortable cognitive state that motivates learning. The child then restores equilibrium through assimilation or accommodation.
EVALUATION
APPLICATION TO EDUCATION
Piaget’s work on schemas has valuable applications, particularly in education. His ideas influenced teaching methods by emphasising active learning rather than passive instruction. Previously, young children often sat in classrooms repeating facts from the blackboard. However, Piaget’s theory encouraged interactive and discovery-based learning.
AO2 EXAMPLE: LEARNING THROUGH CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
For example, children may assimilate new shapes such as triangles and squares into existing shape schemas. They may also be accommodated by creating new schemas when encountering unfamiliar activities, such as playing musical instruments or experimenting with sand.
SUPPORTING RESEARCH: FANTZ
Piaget’s ideas can also be supported by research evidence. Fantz found that infants as young as 4 days old preferred looking at faces with correctly arranged features to faces with incorrectly positioned features. This suggests that infants possess some innate schematic frameworks for recognising faces.
SUPPORTING RESEARCH: HOWE ET AL.
Further support comes from research by Howe et al., who placed children aged nine to twelve into groups of four and asked them to investigate how different shapes slid down a slope. Their knowledge was assessed before and after the activity. The results showed that children gained new knowledge and that their explanations differed between individuals. This supports Piaget’s claim that children actively construct knowledge through interaction with the environment and that schema development is an individual process.
LIMITATION: MOTIVATION MAY BE OVERSTATED
However, Piaget’s theory has also been criticised. He argued that disequilibrium provides a strong motivation for learning. This may overestimate children’s intrinsic motivation. In Piaget’s early studies, he often used intelligent middle-class children from the nursery attached to his university. Such a sample may not represent the full range of children’s motivation to learn. Some children may encounter a new situation, such as seeing a horse for the first time, but may not feel sufficiently motivated to create a new schema.
LIMITATION: DESCRIPTION RATHER THAN EXPLANATION
Another criticism is that Piaget described schema development rather than fully explaining it. His theory outlines what happens when children learn but does not clearly explain the underlying cognitive mechanisms. For example, when a child assimilates a new tree, such as a willow, into an existing tree schema, the exact cognitive processes involved remain unclear.
LIMITATION: DIFFICULT TO TEST SCIENTIFICALLY
Closely related to this issue is the difficulty of testing Piaget’s concepts scientifically. Terms such as assimilation and equilibrium are abstract and difficult to operationalise. Because these processes cannot be measured directly, they are difficult to falsify, which weakens the theory's scientific status.
COMPARISON WITH VYGOTSKY
Finally, Piaget has been criticised for underestimating the importance of social interaction in cognitive development. Although he acknowledged that adults can provide information and support discovery, he primarily viewed learning as an individual process. In contrast, Vygotsky argued that learning is fundamentally social. Through scaffolding provided by adults or more knowledgeable peers, children can achieve more advanced learning within their zone of proximal development.
CONCLUSION
Despite these criticisms, Piaget’s theory remains highly influential. His work fundamentally changed the understanding of childhood by demonstrating that children think differently from adults, rather than simply knowing less. His theory of schema development helped explain how children actively construct knowledge and interpret the world around them.
Lev Vygotsky and social mediation
Jean Piaget’s theory depicted the cognitive growth of a child as largely the result of maturation. The Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, challenged this notion. Instead, Vygotsky, as did George Mead, asserted that mental processes have social origins (Feinman, 1991; Wertsch & Tulviste, 1992). According to Vygotsky’s theory of cultural development:
Neither caregivers nor children behave in fixed ways without regard to the other’s behaviour. Their interactions are mutually regulated in a dynamic and adaptable system.
Loving, mutually responsive early care is essential for the child to develop into an emotionally secure and confident individual. If the infant is treated with love and kindness, he or she feels worthy of love and becomes capable of feeling and expressing love and kindness towards others.
“Any function in the child’s cultural development appears twice, or on two planes.
First, it appears on the social plane, and then on the psychological plane.
First, it appears between people as an interpsychological category, and then within the child as an intrapsychological category. This is equally true with regard to voluntary attention, logical memory, the formation of concepts, and the development of volition...It goes without saying that internalisation transforms the process itself, changing its structure and functions. Social relations or relationships among people genetically underlie all higher functions and their relationships” .
In this view, an individual’s functioning derives from the internalisation and mastery of social processes, that is, from the internalisation of what occurs between people. With respect to young children, Vygotsky argued that there exists a “zone of proximal development”, a potential level of cognitive functioning, which the child can achieve with the guidance and collaboration of a more experienced, perceptive and responsive adult.
This idea has much in common with Werner & Kaplan’s theory of symbol formation (1963), in which the child acquires complex concepts on the basis of the “primordial sharing situation”. This sharing situation is a meeting point between the child’s developing capacities and the symbolic medium provided by a caregiver. The caregiver mediates the child’s experience of the world by structuring it and giving it cultural meaning. The adult points out and explains objects and events. In this way, the adult simplifies and personalises the child’s experience so that it takes a form the child, at her current level of development, can use.
1 Genetically means developmentally in this context.
Interactions between caregivers and children that are sensitive to the child’s cognitive functioning – complementing and extending the child’s capacity – are essential for the child’s cognitive development and acquisition of cultural meaning (Rogoff & Wertsch, 1984). When caregivers successfully instruct young children, they do so by providing a scaffold consisting of linguistic and situational props, contingent on the child’s efforts and errors. The caregiver might move an object closer, point to something, or name an action to assist the child in overcoming an obstacle in the way of achieving a particular goal.
Developmental psycholinguistics
Enormous advances were made in developmental psycholinguistics when knowledge about the pragmatics of communication, how people try to influence others with words and communicative gestures, was applied to pre-speech communication between infants and their caregivers (Austin, 1962). By this view of communication,
The infant’s growing use of language requires first that the infant become competent at influencing their caregivers through the communication of their emotional and motivational states (Bruner, 1975).
Caregiver-child interaction during the first few months of the child’s life – the reciprocal and turn- taking interchange of looks, expressions and vocalisations – is a proto-dialogue or preverbal conversation (Bretherton & Bates, 1979; Stern, 1977). Caregiver and child alternate “utterances”, vocalisations, gestures and facial expressions in what are called proto-conversations (Stevenson et al., 1986). Caregivers attribute meaning to the utterances, gestures and actions of infants and respond according to inferred meanings and the baby’s intentions. The caregiver might ask if the baby is tired when she observes the child becoming fretful, and she might try to settle the child to sleep. This early interaction predisposes the child to language acquisition by sensitising the infant to the sound system, the referential requirements of speech (what is being talked about), and communication objectives such as getting the other person to understand what one wants (Bruner & Sherwood, 1983). Prelinguistic communication first fulfils these functions in the interactions between caregivers and infants. According to Halliday (1975), in these interactions, the child learns how to convey meanings to others long before she speaks. Although the precursors to language are extremely complex, in these ways, early social interactions play a central role in language development (Bruner, 1983; Nelson, 1973).
The preceding three strains of theory and research (object relations, social mediation, and psycholinguistics) indicate the importance of early interactions to emotional, social, cognitive and language development. In each theoretical area, the mechanisms are assumed to be universal, although their specific manifestations may vary across cultural and situational contexts. What follows is an outline of findings since the 1970s regarding the development of infants and young children in interaction with their intimate caregivers.
Long before the child is able to speak, the caregiver attributes meaning to the infant's utterances, gestures, and actions and responds accordingly.
The caregiver simplifies and personalises the child’s experience so that it is presented in a form the child, at her current level of development, can use. The caregiver complements and extends the child’s capacity.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CAREGIVER–CHILD INTERACTIONS FOR THE SURVIVAL AND HEALTHY DEVELOPMENT OF YOUNG CHILDREN
SENSE OF SELF
DESCRIPTION/OUTLINE OF EXPLANATION OR RESEARCH
AO1 MARK SCHEME
The development of the child’s sense of self concerns the gradual emergence of their sense of having a separate identity to other people.
This section of the Specification also refers to Theory of Mind (ToM), and the two most likely approaches are (a) a chronology of the child’s developing sense of ‘separateness’, and (b) the development of ToM.
There is no generally agreed detailed chronology, but the sequence of developmental stages could be accurately described for marks in the top band eg using the ‘red spot test’ (Lewis and Brooks-Gunn) self-awareness is not seen before the age of about 15 months, and develops fully between 18 and 24 months; alternatively candidates may describe a sequence such as eye-to-eye contact, then shared attention (eye gaze cueing), protoimperative pointing, pretend play, full self-awareness.
There is a wide range of material available for candidates. It is possible to see the development of the sense of self extending to adolescence, while others may focus on the development of self-esteem.
Although unlikely, aspects of Selman’s theory of perspective-taking could be relevant to this question.
THEORY A01
Our ability to monitor, predict and interpret the behaviour and mental state of others first begins with our ability to distinguish our sense of self from others. Aspects such as sensations, warmth and fullness are all present from birth, but it is only at two months that children have a sense of personal agency and recognise they are in control of their own limbs. Bahrick and Watson (1985) demonstrated that five-month-old children were aware of their own legs, as evidenced by their responses to a real-time video of their leg movements. Children were able to synchronise their leg movements with the video, showing they were aware of being in control of their limbs. Leggerstee et al. (1998) also demonstrated that 5-8-month-old children looked longer at pictures of other children than at pictures of themselves, again showing subjective self-awareness. Lewis (1991) argued that this subjective self-awareness demonstrated the children’s ability to perceive themselves as distinct from others.
Objective self-awareness is when a child learns to reflect on themselves, and it develops from 15 months onwards. One test for this is the rouge test created by Amsterdam et al. (1970), which marks children on their noses and then observes how they respond to this in front of a mirror. If children possess self-awareness, they will be seen touching their noses, recognising their own reflection. Amsterdam’s study (1972) found babies from the age of 15 months onwards began to show increasing levels of self-awareness and used more personal pronouns such as “me” and “mine” by 24 months (Lewis et al 2000). Young children still lack a psychological concept of who they are however and often describe themselves using physical features such as the color of their hair (I have black hair) or what they can do (I can ride a bike) (Damon and Hart 1988) however they do begin to show signs of a their psychological self around the age of 4 describing personal preferences they have and signs of self-esteem also begin to appear at this age.
Theory of mind (TOM) was originally coined by Premack and Woodruff (1978), who defined it as the ability to attribute mental states, knowledge, wishes, feelings, and beliefs to oneself and others. An important aspect of understanding the mind is the ability to recognise that other people have feelings, desires, beliefs and their own mind which may differ from your own. Research suggests TOM is not present at birth but develops over time in children. Newborns can distinguish between objects and humans, demonstrating knowledge of others (Legerstee 1992), and by age 2, they display some understanding of others' mental states. For example, Dunn (1991) reported that children can comfort others or use deceit, which requires some level of perspective-taking in another’s mind and a basic grasp of TOM. Infants with TOM can know how others experience the world rather than just understanding their own internal state. To test whether a child has TOM, false-belief tasks are used, such as the Sally-Anne Test, in which children observe “Sally” place a ball in a basket and then leave the room. The ball is then taken out of the basket and placed in a box, and on Sally’s return, the children are asked where Sally will look for the ball. If they recognise that Sally would look in the basket rather than the box, they have TOM, as they understand that Sally has not seen the ball removed and will incorrectly look for it to still be in the basket. Children unable to grasp TOM will see things from their own perspective only and believe Sally will look in the box. TOM typically appears around the ages of 3 to 4 years, and children will begin to use words such as “think” or “know” when referring to others, demonstrating an understanding of TOM.
EVALUATION AO3 MARK SCHEME
There are a large number of studies of infant development, and the findings of these studies should provide the main source of AO3:
Methodological evaluation of studies, perhaps incorporating the general problems of experimental work with infants and children, is also a critical issue in this area. However, the implications of such evaluation for theories must be explicit for marks to be earned.
Studies of ToM, in particular, are the subject of much controversy, e.g., over the role of language understanding in interpreting findings.
Additional routes to AO3 credit might include an analysis of the influence of parents and peers on, e.g., the development of self-esteem, individual differences such as gender, and the application of findings, e.g., to conditions such as autism.
Indicative issues/debates/approaches in the context of the development of the child’s sense of self: approaches – cognitive and cognitive-developmental, biological: gender and cultural issues; ethics; nature/nurture. Such material must be used effectively to move into the top band.
EVALUATION AO3
One of the major criticisms of studies using infants is the methodological problems faced by researchers due to their inability to fully understand what the children are thinking or feeling. As a result, they are required to interpret the children's behaviour, which may lead to incorrect conclusions. For example, the rouge test or other tests of self-recognition may show learned responses rather than actual self-recognition in any form. In addition, children may misunderstand questions in tests such as the Sally-Anne test, for example, when they are asked where Sally will look for the doll, they may interpret it as “where is the doll?”. This may not be a good indicator of whether they have TOM.
As we can’t reliably question children in any meaningful way, it is difficult to know for certain that such experiments and findings, as well as conclusions, may lack validity.
In addition, the view that children are born with a subjective sense of self or an ability to distinguish themselves from others is rejected by Freudians such as Mahler et al (1973). They argue that infants at birth have no sense of separateness from their mother, and that individuation develops over the early months of life.
One of the consequences of achieving objective self-awareness is the ability to display a greater variety of emotions. Children grasp the basic emotions such as pleasure, sadness and fear, but gaining a conscious awareness of oneself leads to the development of self-conscious emotions such as empathy, jealousy and embarrassment. Therefore, objective self-awareness appears to aid in the development of a greater emotional range.
Individual differences have also been found in children regarding the development of self-recognition. Securely attached infants, as well as those encouraged to be independent, have been found to display a faster rate of self-recognition (Pipp et al 1992). This links to cultural differences, as Western cultures value an individualistic, independent approach to rearing, while non-Western cultures promote a collectivist approach. Van Den Heuvel et al (1992) found that when comparing Dutch, Turkish and Moroccan children aged 10-11years, Western individualistic cultures did appear to show a faster rate of self-recognition. This suggests culture and nurture may play an overriding role in the development of the self rather than it being a biological innate process and “nature”. However, research by Liu et al (2004) compared over 300 Chinese and North American children to assess whether they had TOM and found a similar sequence of development, but the timing differed by up to two years. This supports the role of biological factors in the development of a child’s sense of self, ultimately, as it appears to be universal.
The development of the psychological self has also been linked to the attachment style children experience. Verschueren et al (1999) found securely attached children were more likely to rate themselves favourably, and this was stable over time, suggesting early attachment experiences affect the development of a child’s sense of self. Other factors must also play a role in the development of self-esteem, such as parents and peer interaction, and individual differences are likely due to innate temperament too. Gender differences may also be a factor due to socialisation, and it is commonly accepted that girls tend to mature faster than boys, suggesting that a child’s development is likely to differ and not always follow an exact chronological order.
BAILLARGEON’S EXPLANATION OF EARLY INFANT ABILITIES
Piaget’s account of object permanence: Piaget (1954) claims that infants do not conceive of objects as having an independent existence, separate from themselves. In the infant’s world, objects pop in and out of existence as they impinge on the child’s senses or cease to do so. Before about eight or nine months, an infant will not search for a toy that is hidden under a cloth in front of it. Piaget took the child’s failure to search to mean that once the object was out of sight, it was also out of the child’s mind, since the child did not understand that the toy continued to exist whilst hidden. Around nine months, the child will begin to search for the hidden object. However, it does not have a full understanding of objects' independent existence. If a toy is hidden in one place, and then immediately moved in the child’s view to another hiding place, the child will still search for it in the first location where the object was hidden (this is called the ‘A not B error’). Piaget thought that this represented a transitional phase in the child’s understanding. The child has a notion that the object still exists whilst hidden, but believes that it is it’s own actions that determine the place where the toy will be uncovered, as if the act of searching ‘calls the object back into existence’. The child’s belief that its own perceptions and actions are the centre of everything is a manifestation of what Piaget called egocentrism. It is not until the child is about eighteen months old that it reliably searches for an object in the correct location.
Challenges to Piaget’s account A number of researchers have pointed out that Piaget’s search tasks may not be a valid test of infants’ object permanence. The problem is that failure to search might indicate a number of things besides the lack of an object concept: that the child has been distracted, lost interest, or can’t coordinate its muscular movements to carry out the search. Piaget assumed that an infant’s failure to perform (carry out the search) indicates a lack of competence (an understanding of object permanence). This may have led him to underestimate children’s abilities. By analogy, if you were introduced to a five year-old child and the child did not talk (i.e. did not perform speech) you probably would not immediately assume that the child was unable to talk (i.e. lacked the competence to speak). More likely, you would assume that something was preventing the child from displaying its competence at speaking (shyness, for example). But Piaget seems to be making just such an error: when the child does not search, Piaget concludes that it lacks the underlying capacity to do so. If it is true that Piaget’s search task does not measure an infant’s competence, it follows that a task more in tune with what an infant can do well might be able to detect signs of object permanence at a younger age than the eight or nine months claimed by Piaget.
Bower et al. (1971) designed a task that assessed a skill infants acquire much younger than eight months: the ability to direct where they look. Infants can follow (track) a moving object with their eyes. In Bower et al’s study, four-month-old infants were shown a train moving along a track. The train went behind a screen that blocked the infant’s view. A researcher carefully observed where the infants looked. According to Piaget, as soon as the train was no longer visible, the infants should lose interest and look elsewhere, since for them the train no longer exists. Bower et al. found, however, that the infants would direct their gaze to the other side of the screen, where the train was expected to emerge. This implies an understanding that the train still exists even though the infant cannot see it. In follow-up studies, things were arranged so that instead of the train, a different object emerged from the other side of the screen. When this happened, some of the infants showed signs of surprise, suggesting again that they expected the train to emerge. All this was recorded with four-month-old children, suggesting that Piaget did indeed underestimate the age at which children develop object permanence.
Baillargeon’s violation of expectation studies. A further challenge to Piaget’s claims comes from a series of studies designed by Renee Baillargeon. She used a technique known as the violation-of-expectation (VOE) paradigm. It exploits the fact that infants tend to look for longer at things they have not encountered before. In a VOE experiment, an infant is first introduced to a novel situation. They are repeatedly shown this stimulus until they indicate, by looking away, that it is no longer new to them. In Baillargeon et al’s (1985) study, the habituation stimulus was a ‘drawbridge’ that moved through 180 degrees. The infants are then shown two new stimuli, each a variation of the habituation stimulus. In Baillargeon’s experiments, one of these test stimuli is a possible event (i.e. one which could physically happen), and the other is an impossible event (i.e. one that could not physically happen in the way it appears). In the ‘drawbridge’ study, a coloured box was placed in the path of the drawbridge. In the possible event, the drawbridge stopped at the point where its path would be blocked by the box. In the impossible event that the drawbridge appeared to pass through the box and ended up lying flat, the box apparently had disappeared. Baillargeon found that infants spent much longer looking at the impossible event. She concluded that this indicated surprise on the infants’ part and that the infants were surprised because they had expectations about the behaviour of physical objects that the impossible event had violated. In other words, the infants knew that the box still existed behind the drawbridge and, furthermore, that one solid object cannot pass through another. The infants in this study were five months old, an age at which Piaget would say that such knowledge is quite beyond them.
In a similar study, Baillargeon (1987) habituated 3-month-old infants to a truck rolling down a track and behind a screen. The screen was removed. A box was introduced and placed either beside the track where the truck would roll past it or on the track where it should block the truck’s path. The screen was then replaced, and the truck sent down the track as before. In both events, the truck passed behind the screen unimpeded. This would be impossible where the box had been placed so as to block the track. Baillargeon found, once again, that infants looked significantly longer at this impossible event and concluded that they knew the box still existed despite being behind the screen and that it should have blocked the truck's path. Her studies therefore seem to indicate that three-month-old infants have an understanding of objects that Piaget says does not appear until nine to twelve months.
The ‘core knowledge’ theory In Piaget’s theory, infants acquire their knowledge of objects by interacting with the world around them. It is through interacting with objects that the child gradually realises that things have an independent existence of their own, that they occupy space, and that they persist in time. This takes time for the child to work out, which is why object permanence is only present after about nine months. But Baillargeon’s results seem to show that object knowledge is present from a much earlier age, one at which infants have very limited experience of interacting with objects. So where does their knowledge of objects come from?
Baillargeon (1987) suggested two possibilities. Either infants are born with the capacity to acquire object knowledge very easily (innate fast learning), or they are born with an understanding of the properties of objects (innate object knowledge). The latter hypothesis was developed by Spelke et al (1992), who argue that infants are born with what they call core knowledge. This core knowledge includes a basic understanding of the physical world, including the properties of objects such as: • Solidity of objects: each object occupies space; objects cannot pass through each other. • Continuity of motion: objects move in paths through space; an object can only get from A to B by moving on a continuous path that starts at A and ends at B. At birth, these rules are rather primitive. As the child develops, they become more sophisticated and interconnected. Baillargeon (2002) suggests that the child’s understanding develops through experiences in which its primitive ideas are challenged, which is consistent with Piaget. However, her and Spelke’s theory that infants are born with some understanding of the world conflicts fundamentally with Piaget’s theory that the child’s understanding comes entirely from its own experiences.
EVALUATION
Whilst Piaget takes an empiricist or interactionist position, Baillargeon and Spelke are nativists. Criticisms of Baillargeon’s research. Many studies have used Baillargeon’s methodology, and they consistently produce similar results. As a consequence, the core knowledge theory is widely accepted amongst developmental psychologists. However, there are those who object to Baillargeon’s and Spelke’s interpretation of the VOE findings. Their criticism is that Baillargeon has gone far beyond what the data actually show. She says that when infants look for longer at the impossible events, this is because they are surprised, as their expectations have been violated. Schoner and Thelen (2004) point out that all the VOE studies definitely show is that the infants notice a difference between the two events they have been shown. Everything else is an extrapolation from this. Schoner and Thelen argue that there are many reasons infants might prefer to look at the ‘impossible’ events. For example, in the ‘drawbridge’ study, the ‘impossible’ event involves more movement than the ‘possible’ event. They conclude that Baillargeon has mistakenly assumed that the only difference between her stimuli is that one is ‘possible and the other is ‘impossible’. However, there are many differences between the two stimuli, any of which might explain why infants look more at one than the other. What Baillargeon and Spelke claim is evidence of innate knowledge of the physical world, Schoner and Thelen say, is no more than the effect of confounding variables.
Criticisms
Baillargeon's research on object permanence met criticism from Gregor Schoner and Esther Thelen. Schoner and Thelen argued that Baillargeon was overextending the results of her studies on infants' knowledge of object permanence.[10] They believe that the violation-of-expectation paradigm merely indicates that infants notice a difference between stimuli, such as more movement or different colours, rather than showing surprise at the sight of a seemingly impossible event.[10] Despite these criticisms, Baillargeon's work continues to be influential in developmental psychology.
References
Baillargeon, R. (1987). Object Permanence in 3 ½ and 4 ½ Month Old Infants. Developmental Psychology, 23, 655-664. Baillargeon, R. (2002). The Acquisition of Physical Knowledge in Infancy: A Summary in Eight Lessons. In U.Goswami (Ed.) “Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive Development”. Oxford, Blackwell. Baillargeon, R., Spelke, E.S. & Wasserman, S. (1985). Object Permanence in Five-Month-Old Infants. Cognition, 20, 191-208. Piaget, J. (1954). The Construction of Reality in the Child. New York, NY, Basic Books. Schöner, G. & Thelen, E. (2006). Using Dynamic Field Theory to Rethink Infant Habituation. Psychological Review, 113, 273-299. Spelke, E.S., Breinlinger, K., Macomber, J. & Jacobson, K. (1992). Origins of Knowledge. Psychological Review, 99, 605-632. Research
