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; 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.
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 where children move into new capabilities, him seeing those transitions taking place 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 developed while babies have simple ones like the sucking reflex. Assimilation is where new elements are added 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 pull rope or by adding new information to an existing schema. Accommodation is where a schema has been changed in order 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.
The first stage of Piaget’s theory is the sensorimotor stage, which is between 0-2 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 proposing 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 the ages of 8 months, the child begins to understand object permanence, which is the understanding that objects exist independently even if they are not being observed. In order to have 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. Children at approximately 8 months 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 then begins to look for the toy where they last saw it being hidden, showing a more complex object permanence.
The weaknesses of this study is 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 as lacking ‘human sense’, where critics have suggested that he underestimates the age at which children develop object permanence. Other studies such as the 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 infrared camera. They found that infants continued reaching for objects in the dark, suggesting that they realise they’re there.
Within the next stage, the pre- operational stage (2-7 years), children can use symbols, images and can recognise that one thing can stand for another however there are certain cognitive tasks that they are unable to do, these include animism, centration and egocentrism. Animism is the belief that inanimate objects have emotions nevertheless this is still questionable because it could be argued that they are making the best use of their limited powers of expression. Centration is where children in the pre-operational stage can only deal with one factor at a time, Piaget suggesting that children can only begin to de-centre at the age of 7.
Egocentrism is the inability for a child to take another point of view into consideration. The study that Piaget conducted for 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 mountain. 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 pick their own view, demonstrating egocentrism however by 7-8 years, when they were coming out of this stage; children were beginning to lose this egocentric trait and began selecting the dolls perspective.
Some weaknesses in this study is 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 that didn’t correctly complete the task may have felt a lack of interest in it because it was so irrelevant and unfamiliar to them compared to their daily lives. Other evidence provided from other studies, such as Hughes and Donaldson have suggested that children are able to de-centre from a much younger age, given a familiar situation. 90% of children aged between 3 and a half- 5 years were able to hide the boy from the two policemen in a hide and seek (cross model) situation successfully. This could be because the task was clearly understood and the child could understand the motives behind each of the characters because 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 remains the same. Piaget studied the age at which children could conserve volume by showing them 2 identical beakers with equal amounts of water within them 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, showing that the ability to conserve develops at the age of 7 as children older than this knew that the amounts were equal. One limitation of this study is that the children may have assumed that the experimenter was expecting a different answer as they saw them pour the water into a different beaker, so they may have just gone with the beaker that changed and not necessarily believed it. Also the language that is used in the experiment may have made it more difficult for the 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 years 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 are able to recognise the difference between general categories and sub categories. 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 even though they are being asked about two separate categories, the two classes are separate, they 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 answers that were given by the children, which is demonstrated in the study from McGarrigle and Donaldson.
Children about 6 years old were shown 3 black cows and a white cow that were laid 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 questions was answered correctly 25% of the time and the second 48% of the time. This shows how the wording of the question affects the responses because by giving more emphasis to the whole group through the adjective ‘sleeping’, this helped them give the right answer.
When a child reaches the age of 12 they enter the formal- operational stage, where they are now able to understand abstract concepts. This is where they can refer to things that are not tangible, examples are 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 with the pendulum problem. Children were asked to change variables such as the weight, length of string etc. in order to observe which affected the rate of the swing of the pendulum, 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 come to any conclusion however those that were in the stage changed one variable at a time and could correctly identify the factors that were affecting the rate of the swing.
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 that can be sed 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 initive suggestions such as on the hand.
There are many criticisms that can be used of the methods that Piaget used in order to carry out his work. The sample that he used was small and unrepresentative of the whole population because he used his own children and the children of his friends who all came from Switzerland. This is biased in the sense that it is a small sample and they all came from one cultural background instead of investigating the cognitive development of several cultures around the world. The reporting methods that Piaget used could also be greatly criticised because he often failed to record the number and ages of many of his participants, meaning that many participants from his studies may have not been included and if they were, then their results may have turned the conclusion out very differently.
Piaget also used the clinical interview technique, where he did not stick to normal scientific procedures of standards and control. 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 is 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 a large amount of others that have conducted studies based around Piaget’s work to see whether they are able to support his findings. However it was found that many studies actually refuted his work.
Another strength is that Piaget did conduct many experiments that did support his idea of there being a sequential set of stages that all children universally pass through at set ages and despite of what 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 societies that aren’t as industrialised, where they have less state education, reached the stages that Piaget proposed at a much later date, suggesting that environmental factors play a part in child cognitive development. This idea has been supported through cross cultural research and Piaget can also be praised on the fact that his experiments were innovative and creative that 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 that the formal- operational stage has received. Few adults demonstrate the thinking required for scientific reasoning even in industrialised societies. Martorano tested 12- 18 females on ten Piaget tests to do with 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 is that Piaget’s beliefs were that children went through a sequential set of cognitive development stages one at a time and were unable to recognise that sometimes these stages can overlap in which is 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 it is a harder conservation task. Nevertheless Piaget’s argument about an actual difference in qualitative thinking amongst these stages has appeared to have been supported.
Moreover, another strength of Piaget’s work is that the finding that Piaget has had, as well as the entire theory itself, has had an enormous impact on modern day educational systems and the school curriculum. His theory of children not being able to perform certain cognitive tasks until they hit a certain age has been applied to classroom situations where teachers are now basing the complexity of their teaching around Piaget’s theory.
DISCUSS PIAGET’S EXPLANATION OF THE PROCESSES INVOLVED IN SCHEMA DEVELOPMENT
REFER TO EXAMPLES OF SCHEMA DEVELOPMENT IN YOUR ANSWER.
Piaget looked at 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 as very basic in newborns (our first few schemas are innate) however become more rich and complex as children grow, develop and confront new and different situations. Ultimately developing a schema for everything including objects i.e. Chair/table and higher concepts such as morality or love. An example of a child’s schema is the ‘me schema’ about themselves. Piaget also looked at how schemas change as children learn. Assimilation is when they are confronted with a new situation that they need to integrate into an existing schema i.e. when first seeing a Labrador or Poodle a child would assimilate these into their dog schema. Accommodation is when children need to create a new schema for a situation which they have never encountered before i.e. creating a new schema for cats after first seeing them and thinking they were dogs. Piaget also highlighted the motivation for learning and creating new schemas. When a child’s schema cannot quite make sense of a new encounter or situation they are in a state of disequilibrium. This is an uncomfortable feeling and provides motivation to learn in order to stop this and reach equilibrium through assimilation and accommodation.
To evaluate, Piaget’s work on schema has had valuable application, having practical uses in education and so proving to be highly useful. Previously, teaching of even young children usually just involved them sitting in their chair all day and taking notes or repeating facts from the blackboard. Now thanks to Piaget, teachers know that it is important for children to form their individual schemas of the world and so interactive and activity based teaching and time for discovery is used. For example, young children may assimilate their schema for shapes by learning about new ones such as triangles, squares, and accommodate by creating new schemas for new experiences such as playing musical instruments or with sand.
Piaget’s theory can also be supported, making his ideas more convincing here. For example, Fantz found that infants even as young as 4 days old preferred a face with the correct features (schematic) rather than one in which they were incorrect and confused i.e. the eyes, nose etc. were in the wrong place and upside down, or there were no features at all. This supports what Piaget said about schemas, that we are born with a selection of innate schemas for some simple objects or situations, these are biologically determined.
Piaget can also be supported with other research, showing his theory to be grounded and evidence backed. Howe et al. put children aged 9-12 in groups of 4 and let them investigate how different shapes slid down a slope, assessing what they knew about this before and after the activity. It was found that all of the children gained more knowledge and understanding form the activity, and that the information the children gave afterwards varied between them. This provides powerful support not only for Piaget’s idea that children learn through interacting with the world and adding to their schema, but also that this is an individual process.
Piaget can be criticised however. He emphasized that motivation was key in how children learn and develop their schemas, with the unpleasant disequilibrium meaning that children had a strong motivation to do this. He may have overestimated this though, as in reality not all children are so keen to learn and develop their understanding. Indeed, in much of Piaget’s original research, he was testing intelligent middle-class children from the nursery attached to his university, it is unlikely that this sample represents children as a whole and how motivated they are to create new schemas. Some children for example may encounter a novel situation i.e. seeing a horse for the first time, but not be motivated enough to accommodate and create a new schema for this. Piaget’s ideas about equilibrium and children’s motivation to develop their schemas and learn may not be as universal as thought.
In addition, it has been suggested that Piaget described rather than explained the processes in schema development. We are still not actually sure about the cognitive processes or underlying mechanisms that are involved and so some have claimed that this makes his explanation somewhat incomplete. For example, when a child assimilates something i.e. adds a willow to their tree schema, we do not know exactly how this happens. Piaget’s explanation of schema development would be more comprehensive if we knew this.
Linked to his lack of proper explanation and their hypothetical nature, many of the concepts Piaget brought forward in schema development are rather vague and so are difficult to operationalize and test. They remain quite speculative i.e. we do not know precisely what assimilation or equilibrium are so it is difficult to measure and falsify them. This means we cannot really disprove nor properly support many of Piaget’s concepts, casting doubt on his work here.
It has been suggested that Piaget under emphasised the role that other people have in the schema development of children, and so his theory may be somewhat incomplete here. He did recognise how others i.e. adults can provide information and facilitate discovery for children however saw learning primarily as taking part in the mind of the individual. Vygotsky however proposed that other people are central to learning, with it being a social process. He highlighted how if an adult or peer supports a child then they can accomplish much more learning (developing their scema) than by themselves i.e. with scaffolding.
Despite the criticisms, Piaget can still be praised though as his work on schema development highlighted how children make sense of the world around them and learn. Before him, established belief was that children thought just like mini-adults but just knew less than them, Piaget challenged this and brought the focus on to their cognitive development, and schemas were an important part of this.
Lev Vygotsky and social mediation
Jean Piaget’s theory depicted the cognitive growth of a child as occurring largely as a result of the child’s maturation. The Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, challenged this notion. Instead, Vygotsky asserted, as did George Mead, 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 the internalisation transforms the process itself and changes 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 a lot in common with Werner & Kaplan’s theory of symbol formation (1963), whereby the child is able to acquire 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 person- alizes the child’s experi- ence so that it occurs in a form that the child, at her current level of development, is able to 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 to overcome 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 communi-cation 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 his or her 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 vocalizations – is a proto-dialogue or preverbal conversation (Bretherton & Bates, 1979; Stern, 1977). Caregiver and child alternate “utterances”, vocalizations, 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 sensitizing the infant to a sound system, to the referential requirements of speech or what is being talked about, and to 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 specific manifestations may vary with different cultural and situational circumstances. 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 utterances, gestures and actions of the infant, and responds accordingly.
The caregiver simplifies and personalizes the child’s experience so that it occurs in a form that the child, at her current level of development, is able to 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 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 made 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 do children have a sense of personal agency and recognise they are in control of their own limbs. Bahrick and Watson (1985) were able to demonstrate how five-month old children had an awareness of their own legs through them responding differently to a video taken in real time of their leg movements. Children were able to synchronise their leg movements with the video showing they had an awareness of themselves being in control of their own limbs. Leggerstee et al (1998) also demonstrated how 5-8 month old children looked at pictures of other children longer than pictures of themselves again showing a subjective self-awareness. Lewis (1991) argued 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 upon oneself and this begins to develop from 15 months onwards in children. One test for this is the rouge test created by Amsterdam et al (1970) which see’s children marked on their nose and then observed to see how they respond to this in front of a mirror. If children possess self-awareness they will be seen to touch their own nose 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) and they 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 are able to distinguish between objects and humans which demonstrates a knowledge of others (Legerstee 1992) and by the age of 2yrs they display some understanding of the mental state of others. For example Dunn (1991) reported on children being able to comfort others or use deceit which requires some level of perspective taking on another’s mind and a basic grasp of TOM. Infants with TOM are able to know how others experience the world rather than just understanding their internal state. To test whether a child has TOM false belief tasks are used such as the Sally-Anne Test where children observe “Sally” place a ball in a basket and then leave the room. The ball is then taken out 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 and not the box they have TOM as they are able to understand that Sally will not have seen the ball removed and she 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 begins to appear around the age of 3 to 4 years old 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 eg over the role of language understanding in the interpretation of findings.
Additional routes to AO3 credit might include an analysis of the influence of parents and peers on eg the development of self-esteem, individual differences such as gender, and the application of findings eg 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. Due to this 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 or not.
As we can’t reliably question children in any meaningful way it is difficult to know for certain from 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 infants at birth have no sense of separateness from their mother and individuation is something that 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 ones self 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 when it comes to the development of selfrecognition. 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 in with cultural differences as western cultures value an individualistic and 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 suggested culture and nurture may play an overriding role in the development of 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 a universal development.
The development of the psychological self has also been found to be linked to the style of attachment 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 selfesteem 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 differences in socialisation and it is commonly accepted that girls tend to mature faster than boys which suggests a child’s development is likely to be different 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 that have 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 the independent existence of objects. 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 it saw the object 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 used a skill that 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 would be 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 that has come to be 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 of which is a variation on 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, the drawbridge appeared to pass through the box and ended up lying flat, the box apparently having 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 they knew that one solid object cannot just 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 the infants looked significantly longer at this impossible event and concluded that they knew that the box still existed despite being behind the screen and that it should have blocked the path of the truck. 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 having experiences of interacting with objects that the child gradually realizes that things have an independent existence of their own, that they occupy space and 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 from experiences where its primitive ideas are challenged, which is in agreement 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 There are many studies that 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 that object the 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 because 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 why infants might prefer looking 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 actually many differences between the two stimuli, any of which might be the reason 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 overly extrapolating the results of her studies on infants' knowledge regarding object permanence.[10] They believe that the violation of expectation paradigm merely signifies that infants notice a difference between the stimuli, such as more movement or different colors, as opposed to 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