Developmental Psychology

- Two main areas of criticism:

1) Experimental concerns: three montains task, conservation tasks - issues with with tasks that Piaget was using.

2) Theoretical concerns: socio-cultural concerns (e.g. Vygotsky, Bruner)

Did Piaget underestimate children's abilities?

- Underestimated the age at which children began to be able to do things e.g. age at which they can conserve numbers.

Toy-turtles study - children as young as three could pass this test of conservation, whereas Piaget thought they had to be 8.

Perceptual seduction is Bruner's reason why children failed Piaget's test.

Others thought that children will be better at these tests if you ask them to predict the final outcome. Supports Bruner's theory.

Potentially problematic in Piaget's conservation studies:

- Issue of language difficulties and question order (e.g. Donaldson, 1978; Rose and Blank, 1974)

Rose and Blank: Said that by re-asking the question, it could unintentionally encourage the children to change their answer, which then means they get the answer wrong.

Donaldson: the tasks with the use of the more 'more' is quite abstract, and that children under the age of 5 can have difficulties understanding this concept.

Also appearance - reality tasks (Sapp et al, 2000) - testing about children's understanding that things could look like another.

Class inclusion - alter terms used then chldren can do better than Piaget originally suggested and at a younger age than he thought. Researchers suggested that if makes the terms for salient then they can do better, make sure they understand the terminology used.

If you give reason for the task, changes general and unintentional, children do better.

Social situation of conservation tasks: "naughty teddy" (Mcgarrigle and Donaldson, 1974) - providing social situation meant that children better able to conserve.

Light, Buckingham and Robins (1979)

Object permanence - method of removal is important (Bower ad Wishart, 1972)

   - Piaget suggested that children under the age of 9 months fail to acknolwdge that objects exist if they cannot see it.

   - Found that children under the age of 9 months continued to reach for objects that are in the dark, which suggests that the objects still existed even when they can't see it.

Other reasons children may fail:

- Memory

   - Children might not pass it because they simply forget where the object is hidden.

   - Found that by 9 months of age, children could wait for 5 seconds before searching and still finding objects. 12-month-old children could wait 10 seconds before searching and finding the object, memory improves with age.

- Perservation

   - Motor perservation: repeat a previously successful movements rather than adapting it.

   - Capture error: use a once successful solution - repeat a previously successful solution.

Three mountains task:

  - Testing children's ability to take on the perspective of another person

  - Newcombe and Huttenlocher (1992) - re-did the experiment with toys. This simplified the tasks which made it more concrete and familiar, and even children as young as 3 were correctly able to answer from the different viewpoints.

Concerns about the difficulty of the three mountains task

Three mountains task re-done as policeman/boy experiment:

   - Young children are able to do it

   - 90% of children aged between 3 and a half and 4 years old could pass the task

Gradual development

Pendulum task (Shayer et al, 1976)

Varying success on formal operational tasks (Martorona, 1997) - have 10 tasks to girls of 12-18 and tested on formal operational thought. Identified that success ranged from 15 to 95%. Only 2 participants passed all 10 of Piaget's tasks.

Strengths:

- Inspirational insights into cognitive development

Weaknesses:

- Lack of detail about participants or success rates

- Fails to explain why transition occurs

- Overlooks cultural factors involved in change

Vygotsky

Bruner

- Challenged Piaget's ideas about cognitive development

- Opposed developmental 'stage' theories

Psychologist in post-revolutionary Soviet Union - Marxist influence

1936 worked banned

Published in West 1 1962: "Thought and language"

Ideas controversial because they were going agaisnt the norms.

Work overshadowed by Piaget

Both saw the child as being active in shaping and influencing their own development

Key aspect of theory: personal and social experience cannot be separated - culture crucial

Discovering the interplay between biological and social influence in development

Development driven by social interaction - the vast majoirty of their learning was driven by significant people in the child's life.

Saw children as more like apprentices who worked with others to develop and progress,

Thought children's development was more flexible, and was not a supporters of Piaget's fixed stages of development.

Child's world shaped by those in it

- e.g. caregivers, culture, teachers, peers etc - these people provided a framework about knowledge and their development, so people who grew up in different cultures will experience development differently.

Like Piaget - children learn when they play

Language crucial - interaction with others - our language reflects the culture in which we grow up.

Learning via:

 - Cooperation with others in social settings

- 'Symbolic representatives' of the child's culture - art, music.

However, failed to provide a logical explanation for how children develop cognitively with age.

Difference between what a child can do alone and what they can do with help

- Zone of proximal development (ZPD):

   - "The distance between the actual developmental level as determined through problem solving and the level of potential development through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers."

Instruction was at the heart of development.

Sociocultural aspects of development

Luria (1979):

- Schooling makes a difference in compariable peasant groups in Uzbekistan

- Luria compared two groups: one group schooling and another who recieved no schooling. Gave logic puzzles to both groups. Found that the school group were able to develop the theoretical reasoning to solve the puzzles. In contrast, the other group tended to rely on their everyday experiences that wer enotthe right kind to solve the puzzles.

Cole et al (1971) studied tribal groups in Liberia:

- Some tasks better than USA, some work

- Those better more relevant for culture

American - NYU

Developed and extensively tested Vygotsky's ideas

Role of scaffolding/child-centred learning = a metaphor

Scaffolding in pratice (Wood et al, 1976)

Can only be built within certain developments, has a limit depending on the child's capability.

1)Recruitment - about encouraging children's interacts and task completion

2) Reduction of degrees of freedom - reducing the number of activities to help the child come to a solution

3) Direction maintence - motivating a child

4) Marking crucial features - identifying errors or discrepancies in what the child's done and what is correct

5) Demonstration - modelling, helping children with the jigsaw by showing them how its done with an example.

Piaget:  Children can only learn when ready, at the right stage of cognitive development; child learns alone.

Vygotsky and Bruner:  Scaffolding to assist in learning (ZPD); nurturing; joint construction of knowledge - 'collaborative learning'; importance of language.