Piaget Theory of Children Cognitive Development Essay Example for Free

Piaget Theory of Children Cognitive Development EssayMuch of the research since the late mid-fifties on the development of role taking and lesson judgments has its roots in the research conducted by Piaget in the 1920s. One thrust of Piagets theorizing in his earliest belles-lettres dealt with the proposition that tykeren convey along from an egocentric to a perspectivistic state. He proposed that children younger than 6 or 7 years of age do not clearly class between self and others or between thoughts (the psychological) and external events. A consequence of the stroke to differentiate the self from others is that the child is unable to concord the perspective of other(prenominal) person. For instance, in communicating with others the child is unable to take into account the requirements of the listener. A consequence of the failure to differentiate thoughts from external events is that the child attributes an designive macrocosm to natural amiable events such as d reams. A major developmental transition was posited to occur when the child shifts from an egocentric state to one in which the self is secern from others and there is the ability to take anothers perspective. (Angela M. ODonnell, Alison King, 1999)However, the more or less extensive research in a affectionate domain undertaken by Piaget during this early period dealt with childrens moral judgments. Those were overly the unaccompanied studies on moral development to be done by Piaget. Three specific aspects of Piagets moral development theory had a substantial twine on later research. One was the char fleckerization of moral development as a process of differentiating moral from nonmoral judgments. The second was the proposed interrelations between general cognitive orientations and moral judgments.And the third was the proposed relations between changes in perspective-taking abilities and changes in moral judgments. (Jacques Montangero, Danielle Maurice-Naville, Angela Cornu- Wells, 1997). Piaget proposed that children progress through 2 moral judgment levels (following an early premoral phase), the first being denominate heteronomous (generally corresponding to ages 3 to 8 years) and the second labeled autonomous. In the heteronomous level, the child has unilateral revere for adults (regarded as authority) and morality is, therefore, based on conformity.The right or good is seen by the child as adherence to externally determined and fixed rules and commands. The young childs morality of conformity and unilateral respect becomes transformed into a morality of cooperation and mutual respect. The basis for the autonomous level is the emergence of concepts of reciprocity and equality. At this level, rules atomic number 18 viewed as products of mutual agreement, serving the aims of cooperation, and thus argon regarded as changeable. (Gwen Bredendieck Fischer, 1999).In formulating the levels of heteronomy and autonomy, Piaget studied childrens judgments active several specific issues, including rules, punishment, intentionality, lying, stealing, and distributive howeverice. A brief description of the levels can be provided by considering some of the studies of childrens thinking about rules and about intentionality in situations involving property damage, deceit, and theft. The definitions of the moral levels were derived, in part, from the way Piaget had framed childrens general cognitive capacities.Two presumed attributes regarding the increasing differentiations that occur with development were relevant. One proposed characteristic was the childs egocentricism, the failure to clearly distinguish the selfs perspective from that of others. A second relevant feature was the young childs failure to differentiate the physical world from social and mental phenomena young children confuse the contentednessive and objective aspects of their experience. (Richard I. Evans, Eleanor Duckworth, 1973)According to Piaget, one concrete man ifestation of young childrens inability to differentiate perspectives and to differentiate the physical from the social is their postures toward social rules. It was proposed that children at the heteronomous level view all social rules as absolute. The inability to take the perspective of others leads the child to assume that ein truthone adheres to the same rules. There is a failure to comprehend the possibility that rules may be relative to the social context or to an individuals perspective.In turn, there is an inability to clearly distinguish physical from social phenomena that leads to a confusion of social regularities with physical regularities, such that social rules are seen as fixed in much the same way as are physical regularities. For instance, Piaget maintained that children regard rules of games as unchangeable they believe it would be wrong to modify the rules of a game even if they were changed by general consensus. (Harry Morgan, 1997) other manifestation of the yo ung childs cognitive confusions is that judgments of right and wrong are based on the material consequences of carry outs, rather than the actors intentions or motives. Piaget examined the relative importance that children attribute to intentions and consequences in situations involving material damage, lying, and stealing. Younger children, it was found, attribute greater importance, in judging culpability, to amount of damage (e. g. , breaking the 15 cupfuls accidentally is worse than breaking one cup intentionally), whereas older children attribute more importance to the intentions of the actor.Similarly, younger children assess the wrongness of lying or stealing, not by the motives of the actor, but by their quantitative remainder from the truth or the amount stolen. In judgments about theft, for instance, children judging by consequences would say that stealing a larger amount to give to a very poor friend is worse than stealing a lesser amount for oneself. (R. Clarke Fowler , 1998). In contrast with the heteronomous level, at the autonomous level respect is no agelong unilateral, rules are not viewed as absolute or fixed, and judgments are based on intentions.Piaget proposed that these changes are stimulated by the increasing interactions with peers (such as in school) and the change magnitude orientation to relations with adult authority that usually occurs during late childhood. Relations with authorities (parents, teachers, etc. ), he maintained, are apparent to lead to conformity and an attitude of unilateral respect on the part of the young child. That is, the child feels that the authorities are superior and that their dictates are right by virtue of their superior status.In assign for the shift from a heteronomous to an autonomous orientation to occur the child must more clearly differentiate the self from others and, thereby, be able to take the perspective of others. Relations with adult authorities who impose external rules upon the child are likely to reinforce a heteronomous orientation, whereas relations with peers are more likely to stimulate attempts to take the perspectives of others. Therefore, through increasing interactions with those he or she can relate to on an equal footing, the child is stimulated to view his or her feature perspective as one among many different perspectives.In the process, mutual respect replaces unilateral respect for authority and the bases of a sense of justice reciprocity, equality, and cooperation emerge. Rules are then regarded as social constructions, based on agreement, that serve functions shared by the participants of social interactions. The increasing awareness of others perspectives and guinea pigive intentions leads to judgments that are based on intentionality rather than consequences. (John H. Flavell, 1963)In addition to the connections to general cognitive capacities, Piagets characterization of moral judgments was a global one in that development was defined as entailing a progressive differentiation of principles of justice (ought) from the habitual, customary, and conventional (is). In essence, the claim was that concepts of justice do not emerge until the autonomous stage. Thus, the heteronomous morality of constraint and unilateral respect is a morality of custom, convention and tradition, while autonomous morality of mutual respect and cooperation prevails over custom and convention.Prior to the development of concepts of justice, therefore, the child must progress through the simpler, conformity-based conventional orientation. In sum, Piaget proposed a model of development as the differentiation of domains of intimacy. Only at more advanced stages are moral judgments and knowledge of the social erect (or even morality and physical law) distinguished. It is precisely on this basis that Piaget thought it was methodologically valid to examine childrens concepts of rules of marble games as a means to understanding their moral reasonin g. (Christopher M.Kribs-Zaleta, DLynn Badshaw, 2003) Piagets professional career has been devoted to exploring the possibilities of a psychological theory of relativity. In this approach neither the subject, who knows, nor the object, which is known, have absolute status. severally is conditioned on the other within a continually changing framework. Change occurs through interchanges of actions and reactions. Actions of the subject are like probes equivalent to statements by which the subject says I think you, the object, are such and such. When acted upon, objects act back, revealing who and what they are. Morton Ann Gernsbacher, Sharon J. Derry, 1998) Piagets contribution to the study of knowledge has been to escape the philosophic traps of subjectivity and objectivity. The former makes knowledge a self satisfying concoction where, for the sake of consistency, the subject creates concepts of objects and reality. This position tends toward error through failure to come to grips wi th the facts of reality. It puts the subject in control of deciding what reality is and, in the extreme, allows distortion for the sake of maintaining the subjects version of how things ought to be.Objectivity errs at the other end and, in its extreme, denies self-initiated definition, making the subject only a valid recording machine of reality. Distortion can occur either through exposure to odd circumstances or through breakdowns in the subjects recording devices. The position of relativity seeks beginning to both problems. Its clearest expression is found when both subject and object are given defining powers in their interactions. There is double agency, with the object telling what it is just as forcibly as the subject reveals itself through its actions. (Hans G. Furth, 1987)With interactions as the basic reality, the context of knowledge is dynamic. It is also the means to knowledge insofar as subject and object are able to extract orderly relations from their interactions. These relations among actions and reactions color definitions of both agents. They are the medium for knowing and provide the terms by which subject and object attain their forms. This is why, for example, Piaget argues that space, number, and the like, remain open to redefinition throughout development. Numbers are not things to be grasped but are products from relations abstracted from subject-object interactions. veritable relations become expressed through numbering operations, which coordinate actions of the subject as well as reactions of objects. It appears that Piagets approach is unique among contemporary psychological theories by its treatment of relations as the topic of knowledge. Relations are primary, with subject and object being their products. For other theorists, these terms are reversed subject and object are posited and relations come secondarily. In Piagets scheme, neither subject nor object ever gets to know one another with certainty. Together they can work o nly toward relations that are reliable.Validity is always a relative matter, depending on current relations, which remain open to further redefinition. (Arthur J. Baroody, Alexis Benson, 2001) This point no doubt has stymied most attempts to bring Piagets work into the mainstream of psychological theories. It is like the essential key without which notes may sound similar but actually render a different song. The stumbling jam is evident, for example, in the many ways phenomena maestroly generated by Piagets position have undergone alteration when considered from the view of more familiar theories.Conservation provides the most telling illustration. Few, if any, of these alternate explanations deal with or care to deal with the phenomenon as a conservation of a subject-object relation. The more common explanation states that number or amount is conceived as constant through physical changes in the object. Within Piagets framework, the physical changes are said to remain constant they are understood as but 2 versions of a single relation. The relation is between number- or amount-making actions, with their products made ostensible in the reactions of cubes, chips, or clay. Leslie Smith, Julie Dockrell, Peter Tomlinson, 1997) There is a tendency among contemporary theorists to creed Piaget with having shown that children are cognitively active and control rather than being controlled by external objects or other persons. This emphasis has clouded the fact that objects and persons are not benign, simply waiting for children to transform them into this or that conception. In order to put relations in clear relief, it is helpful to give these things their proper due in knowledge.It helps even to anthropomorphize their role. Objects are as active as children. They move, change shape, enlarge in size, fall off tables, roll, and otherwise respond when they are contacted. individually reaction is reciprocal to something children do. In the case of conservation, t o use an example often cited by Piaget, the child who plays with pebbles in his or her back yard may come to understand number making operations because the stones react as they do to his or her manipulations.That which remains constant in making a row, then a circle, then a tower, and next two columns is only the relation among these actions from the child and the several reactions of the pebbles. (Leonora M. Cohen, Younghee M. Kim, 1999). It is now practical to outline the meaning of relations in the social domain where knowledge is based on interactions between the child and other persons.The following sketch highlights the general points of the theory. (a) Children enter the world as actors, seeking order and regularity. This search describes their inherent motivation for knowledge. b) Children look for order first in their own actions by attempting to find that which is repeatable and reliable in execution of actions. (c) so far as actions make contact with other things, or p ersons, effects of actions are not solely under the control of the child. These things react in reciprocity to the actions exerted upon them and in concert the action and reaction produce effects that differ from those that would result from either alone. (d) This fact of double agency naturally widens childrens focus from action to interaction.Because other agents act in reciprocity to childrens actions, children are forced to seek explanations for change and order in the interplay between actors. The foregoing points can be summarized as follows. Suppose the child intends that an action have a particular outcome or effect. The child then executes the act in accordance with this intention. Suppose also that the act engages another person who adds to the original act with a reaction. The coupling of these actions may have an effect that is different from the childs intention or anticipation in performing the original act.It would be futile to seek order either in the childs or the o ther persons parts, alone. This is why for Piaget, the child is led to seek a solution in the coupling and arrives at the conclusion that the actions of persons are reciprocally related. This is also why Piaget contends that naive egocentrism ends most probably during the childs first year. To maintain an egocentric posture, a child would have to deny the facts of reciprocity made evident through the thousands of interactions experienced in everyday dealings with other persons. Joy A. Palmer, Liora Bresler, David E. Cooper, 2001) (e) Thereafter, the childs search for order turns to identifying the forms of reciprocal relations that occur in interpersonal interactions.(f) Piaget suggests that there are two such forms. One is a direct and symmetrical reciprocity where ones action is free to match or counter the others action. The second is a reciprocity of complement where ones action must conform to the dictates set down by the others action. g) These two forms describe the basic rel ations in which people order themselves as actors with respect to other persons, who are also actors. They provide the epistemic unit from which self and other achieve definition. (h) For Piaget, development proceeds as these relations are structured and restructured. They give rise to social and moral conceptions that pertain to the self, other persons, possible relations among persons, and principles of societal functioning, both practical as well as ideal. (Gavin Nobes, Chris Pawson, 2003)