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Development of thinking
Piaget
Background and
introduction
Piaget is a towering
figure in psychology and widely respected by all, including those who have
criticised or adopted his theories. Contrary to popular belief Piaget
was not French (despite being called Jean), he was in fact Swiss. Nor was
he a psychologist (not at the outset anyway) but a zoologist (which should
really be spelt zooologist surely!). He had his first publication on
molluscs when he was still at High School!
Whilst working with
Binet (who
was
French) and an early pioneer of IQ tests, he became fascinated by child
development and spent the next 50 some years of his life studying the
subject. As a result Piaget was a true expert in his field, which as
we shall see later, also covered moral development.
Piaget’s theory is
sometimes described as ‘genetic epistemology.’ ‘Genetic’ because he
believed that the stages we progress through and the structures and
processes we use, are inbuilt and true for all of us regardless of
culture. ‘Epistemology’ (not a word to be uttered when in the state
suggested by the word) actually means the study of knowledge. Basically
Piaget believed that the way in which we learn about and adapt to our
World is constant across all cultures and races, and proceeds as a set
sequence in all.
Central to Piaget's
theory is how the child adapts to an ever-changing World. Piaget noticed
that even the youngest of children are inquisitive and actively explore
their world. Piaget is most famous for his stages but any description of
his theory must also include a discussion of the structures that underlie
these stages. It is tempting in an essay on Piaget to write exclusively
about his stages, since you will know them backwards in great detail by
the time the exam comes round. However, it is essential that the other
aspects of his theory are covered too. His processes (or ‘functional
invariants’ as he lovingly referred to them) are constant (as their name
suggests) throughout all stages, working to make sense of our
environment. Schemas (strictly speaking the plural should be ‘schemata’)
are the internal representations that we hang our understanding on.
Schemata were mentioned in AS memory and will crop up in other topics
later in the year. Enough waffle… lets get on with it.


Schemas and associated concepts
Schema:
an internal representation of the world. This acts as a framework on
which the child bases its knowledge of its environment. According to
Piaget we are born with some schemata including sucking and
grasping. In the first year of life many other simple schemata
develop, for example the schema for mum very quickly develops as the child
learns to distinguish her from others as a source of food and comfort.
Later the schemata become more complex and include concepts such as
density, grammar, love, nature-nurture debate etc. Schemata
are crucial as they enable us to interpret and predict events.
Helen Bee (2000)
believes that schemata are not so much the categories themselves but the
action of categorising.
Equilibrium and
disequilibrium:
the child requires a
stable internal world. If new experience does not match existing schema
then a state of disequilibrium (or inbalance) is produced. The child
needs to accommodate to restore the balance, i.e. alter its perception of
how things work. Piaget saw this desire for equilibrium as innate and
believed that it drives or motivates us to learn. Simple examples would
be having a schema for dog and misinterpreting a cat as a dog. On being
told the mistake this causes temporary confusion and the child needs to
alter its schemata to allow for this.
Disequilibrium
is essential for learning!!!!
Adaptation:
refers to how
a child changes over time as it makes sense of the World in which it
lives. Adaptation comes about through the processes of assimilation and
accommodation:
· Assimilation:
new information or experiences can be fitted into the child's existing
schema or current understanding of the world. It sees a poodle and is
able to fit this into the same schema as the family’s bull mastiff!
· Accommodation:
new information or experiences cannot be fitted into the child's current
understanding so it either has to alter existing schema or create a whole
new schema; for example cat doesn’t fit in with its schema for dog or
George W Bush doesn’t tie in with its concept of intelligent life form!
In these cases new schemata need to be constructed or changes made to
existing schemata. So the child develops a schema for cat and one for
nepotism in World Politics!
Operations
Not always mentioned
specifically in texts but nevertheless crucial, by definition, to the
stages. Operations are mental transformations or manipulations that occur
in the mind. Piaget believed that it was operations that provided the
rules by which the child is able to understand the world. While schemas
develop with experience operations only develop as the child’s brain
develops. So children in the first two stages do not possess operations,
hence ‘preoperational.’ As the brain matures the child is capable of ever
more complex understanding.
Stages
Sensori-motor (0-2 years)
The child lacks
internal schemas or representations. The child's understanding of its
world is directly through its senses from moment to moment. It is so
called because it senses its environment and carries out movement (motor)
to react to it. At this stage that is all the child can do!
Features:
Egocentricism.
The child has no concept of 'self' so is unable to distinguish itself from
its environment. Unlike some of the other concepts Piaget believed that
egocentricism gradually reduces as the child gets older.
Research
evidence
See three mountains
task in preoperational stage.
Lacks object permanence.
Child assumes
that objects no longer exist if they’re not visible.
Research
evidence
Piaget carried out
research on his own children. They would be shown an attractive object
that would then be hidden from view. Children up to the age of 8 months
don’t bother to look for it assuming it to no longer exist. After 8
months children will continue to search for hidden objects.
Evidence
against
Bower & Wishart
(1972) showed objects to children between the ages of 1 and 4 months.
Lights were switched off so that the objects were no longer visible but
the child could be seen, by infrared camera, continuing to search for the
object.
Baillargeon and DeVos
(1991) employed an ingenious experiment using long and short carrots.
It relies on the concept that children will
spend longer looking at events that they consider to be impossible. In
this case, even though the carrots were not visible for a crucial stage of
the experiment children as young as three months old realised that they
still existed and spent longer puzzling over the ‘impossible situation.’
 |
 |
| Young children glance at this one but seem to realise
there's nothing unusual about it. |
However, they spend significantly longer looking at
this one, suggesting that they realise its impossible. That is
they realise that the carrot should still be visible in the space. |
Clearly this casts
doubt on Piaget’s assertion that children didn’t develop object permanence
until 8 months of age!
Pre-Operational Stage (2 to 7 years)
Child is still
dominated by the external world, rather than it's own thoughts. However,
it now forms some simple internal representations of its world (schemas)
through its increasing ability to use language. The stage is called
'pre-operational' since the child is unable to perform operations (such as
heart by-passes and key hole surgery; well you know what I mean!). An
'operation' according to Piaget, is a mental rule for manipulating objects
or ideas into new forms, and then, crucially, being able to manipulate
them back again. Since preoperational children are unable to reverse
things mentally they are unable to do this.
Features:
Egocentricism
Child remains
egocentric but this now refers more to its inability to see things from
other people's perspectives, as famously demonstrated by the 'Three
Mountains' task.
Research
evidence
Piaget & Inhelder’s
‘Three Mountains Task.’ Children would be seated at a table with a 3D
model of three mountains in front of them. A doll would be placed in
various positions around the table and the child shown photos of various
views. They would be asked to choose the picture that best fitted the
view as seen from the doll. To complete this task successfully children
would have to imagine the view as seen by the doll. The researchers found
that children below the age of 7 had problems completing the task, tending
to choose the photo that showed their view of the mountains. Think of the
young girl in the video explaining her new toy to her grandfather on the
phone and assuming that because she could see it so could her granddad.
Evidence to
contradict Piaget
Hughes (1975)
repeated the three mountains task using a situation he thought would be
more familiar to the child, i.e. the naughty boy hiding from the
policeman. Hughes found that 90% of children aged 3 to 5 could complete
the task successfully, concluding that it was lack of understanding rather
than egocentricism that was causing the problems for Piaget's
participants.
Animism
This is related to
egocentricism and is the tendency to attribute feelings to inanimate
objects so for example the child may apologise for hurting its teddy bear
or decide to punish one of its toys for being naughty. I’ll restrain from
any adult humour here!
Realism
Believing that
psychological events, such as dreams, are real.
Lack of Conservation

The inability to
realise that some things remain unchanged despite looking different.
Piaget concentrated on conservation of number and volume. Piaget put this
down to the child's inability to pay attention to more than one
characteristic of a situation at a time and to its inability to reverse
operations in its head (e.g. to visualise the water being poured back into
the original container).
Piaget believed that
conservation of number develops first. He demonstrated this by the use of
counters. Children are shown 2 rows each with the same number of counters
and realise the 2 rows contain the same number. If the researcher
rearranges one of the rows by spacing the counters out the child believes
there are more.
Conservation of
volume, as demonstrated by pouring liquid from small wide beakers into
tall thin measuring cylinders, develops later, at the very end of the
preoperational stage.

Evidence
against
McGarrigle &
Donaldson (1974) showed that children as young as 4 could conserve number
if the situation is given meaning.
It is also important
to note that Piaget concentrates almost entirely on mathematical skills
and logic. Between the ages of 7 and 11 children acquire a vast number of
other new skills that Piaget chose to ignore.


Rose & Black (1974)
believed asking the child the same question twice was confusing. ‘Are
there the same number of buttons in each row?’ The buttons would then be
rearranged and the question repeated. Perhaps the children believe this
to be a trick question. Samuel & Bryant (1984) repeated the counters
experiment but only asked the question once, after the counters had been
rearranged. This produced more correct answers!
General
evaluation points on this stage:
Piaget’s research has
generated lots of research into this particular stage, but it has been
inconclusive or at odds with Piaget’s original work:
Piaget often
under-estimated the age at which children could perform activities.
Wheldall & Poborca (1980) believe that children are unable to perform
conservation tasks because they don't understand the question.
Variations in an
experimental procedure can produce very different findings. Some studies
conclude that children are still egocentric others that they have out
grown this characteristic.
Piaget’s original
studies were often poorly thought through and for example were not suited
to the age range of the children he was studying. Instructions may have
been confusing or the tasks themselves too complex. For example ‘Three
Mountains’ task which was manageable when re-worked by Hughes in a more
familiar format.
Concrete Operations Stage (7 to 11
years)
The child is now able
to carry out operations on its environment and develops logical thought.
However, it still requires concrete examples, being unable to think in
abstract terms. Less importance is attached to information from our
senses as we use thought and imagination more.
Features
Reversibility
refers to the ability to mentally picture an action being carried out in
reverse. This is essential for conservation, e.g. imagining the water
being poured back into the original beaker.
Conservation
made possible by the ability to decentre. Conservation of number is first
(5 to 6 years), followed by conservation of weight (7 to 8 years) and
finally conservation of volume by 11 years of age.
Transitivity
is only
possible with concrete examples. For example 'Jackie is fairer than
Sarah, Jackie is darker than Nicola. Who is the darkest?' The concrete
operational child would not be able to work this one out mentally, it
would require dolls or pictures of the three girls. Similarly A > B > C.
This would not be possible since it requires abstract thought rather than
concrete examples.
Research
Evidence
Piaget's own studies
demonstrated that children in this age group were able to conserve
successfully.
Other studies have
broadly backed Piaget’s findings for this stage, although he has been
criticised for failing to consider other cultures.
· Jahoda
(1983) found that children as young as 9 years old in Zimbabwe could
understand abstract economic concepts if they’d worked in their parents’
business.
· Price-Williams
(1969) showed conservation in children as young as 6 years old who had
been raised in pottery making factories.
Formal Operational stage (11 years
onwards)
Piaget used the term
‘formal’ since children in this stage can concentrate on the form of an
argument without being distracted by the content (Jarvis 2001). For
example if x is greater than y but less than x. The child can now work
this out without needing to know what x, y and z refer to. Smith et al
(1998) provide the following example:
‘All green birds have
two heads. I have a green bird called Charlie. How many heads does
Charlie have?’ A child in the earlier stages would be bogged down by the
content, i.e. birds have one head. Formal thinkers can concentrate on the
structure (or form) of the question in this context.
Piaget maintained
that everyone would reach this stage eventually, even if it took us until
20. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that this is not the
case and that certainly it tends to occur later than Piaget predicted.
Bradmetz (1999), in a
longitudinal study showed that out of 62 children tested at the age of 15,
on a series of Piagetian tasks, only one had reached formal thought!
Features
Abstract thought
The child can now
think in abstract terms so no longer requires concrete examples to solve
problems.
Hypothetical thought
The child is able to
consider things that it has no experience of and consider imaginary
scenarios.
Hypotheses testing
Faced with a problem
the formal thinker will approach it logically, produce a list of
possibilities and test each one systematically. (Think of GCSE science
coursework).
Solve syllogisms
These are a form of
reasoning in which a conclusion is reached from a number of statements.
For example:
When B is
larger than C, X is smaller than C. But C is never larger than B.
True or
false, X is never larger than B?
Other features
This level of thought
also allows for an appreciation of values and ideals (necessary for more
advanced moral thinking).
Research
evidence
Piaget would set
children the task of finding what determines the frequency of swing of a
pendulum. Concrete thinkers normally believe that it is the push that the
experimenter gives it. When they test possibilities they fail to control
other variables. The formal thinker on the other hand considers all
possible variables such as push, length of string, weight of bob etc.
They carefully isolate variables and control confounding variables.
Evidence
against
1.
Some psychologists argue that formal
operational thought is not as important to everyday life as Piaget seems
to have concluded. Since most problems we face have no one obvious right
answer, logical thought is not always necessary.
2. It
seems many adults never actually reach Piaget’s description of formal
thinking.
3. Gladwin
(1970) argues that the tests Piaget used are inappropriate for testing
non-western culture. The Pulawat navigators of Polynesia demonstrate
formal thinking when navigating in their canoes but fail western tests
designed to test their formal thinking.

General
criticisms
Ages and stages
·
Research often suggests that children reach the stages earlier than Piaget
suggested (e.g. Hughes).
·
Some psychologists believe that
only 30% of the population reach formal ops.
· Many
of the stages overlap (decalage), so much so that it appears deve
Performance and ability.
·
Piaget
measured a child’s performance and assumed that this was a true reflection
of its underlying ability. For whatever reason children do not always
perform to the best of their ability, e.g. lack of understanding of the
problem, as highlighted by McGarrigle & Donaldson (1974).
Other
abilities.
-
Piaget
tended to focus on logical and mathematical thought development,
neglecting other developments such as memory and social abilities etc.
These may account for the wide individual differences between children.
Methods.
-
Hughes and
McGarrigle & Donaldson have shown that using different methods, children
can achieve stages at an earlier age than was predicted. They believe
Piaget’s experiments were over complex and used language that the child
was unable to relate to.
-
Piaget used
the clinical interview technique, which is time consuming. As a result
his sample sizes tended to be small.
Demand characteristics
-
It is
believed that children in Piaget’s experiments may have given answers
that they thought Piaget wanted to hear rather than the answers that
they believed to be right.
General
Favourable comments
Much of
Piaget’s work has received widespread support.
Piaget did
adapt his early theories to take account of criticisms. He also believed
that one day it could be integrated with other theories to produce a
rounded view of child development.
Productivity
Few
Psychologist, if any, have provoked as much follow up research. Over the
years this has added significantly to our understanding of child
development. For example Bruner and the Information Processing theories
both take Piaget as a starting point.
Always mention
how influential Piaget’s work has been, both in influencing educational
policies (although this was not Piaget’s intention) and in stimulating
other research.
Applying Piaget to
Education
‘Each
time one prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered
for himself, that child is kept from inventing it and consequently from
understanding it completely.’
Think of old black and white films that
you’ve seen in which children sat in rows at desks, with ink wells, would
learn by rote, all chanting in unison in response to questions set by an
authoritarian old biddy like Matilda! Children who were unable to keep up
were seen as slacking and would be punished by variations on the theme of
corporal punishment. Yes, it really did happen and in some parts of the
world still does today. Piaget is partly responsible for the change that
occurred in the 1960s and for your relatively pleasurable and pain free
school days!


·
Children should be given individual
attention and it should be realised that they need to be treated
differently.
· Children
should only be taught things that they are capable of learning
· Children
mature at different rates and the teacher needs to be aware of the stage
of development of each child so teaching can be tailored to their
individual needs.
Piaget and
Education (simplified).
When to
teach
Only when the child is ready. I.e.
has the child reached the appropriate stage?
How to teach
Child-centred approach. Learning must
be active (discovery learning.
The order of teaching has to be
determined by development of stages, so curricula are needed. E.g. teach
conservation of number before conservation of weight.
Rate of
learning
Stages of development are biologically
determined so the rate of learning cannot be speeded up. (Bruner believed
that increasing language ability would speed up rate of learning, but this
appears not to be true).
Role
of teacher (intellectual midwife)
·
adapt lessons to suit the needs of the
individual child.
·
be aware of the child’s stage of
development (testing).
·
provide stimulation through a variety
of tasks.
·
produce/provide resources,
·
produce disequilibrium, i.e. a
scenario that is outside the child’s current understanding. E.g. density.
·
use concrete examples when describing
abstract concepts, e.g. ships floating for density, pumping water around
houses for flow of current in a circuit.
Examples of
use in Education
Nuffield Maths Project is based on
Piaget’s stages and assumes that formal operations have been reached by
the age of 12. As a result concrete examples are longer required. For
example algebra can be taught.
Evaluation
Child (1997) points out that Piaget’s
view is ‘pessimistic’ if the teacher is expected to ‘sit back and wait’
for the child to develop. Teachers should, by the right techniques, be
able to encourage children to progress through the stages.
Curriculum development
Curricula need to be developed that take
into account the age and stage of thinking of the child. For example
there is no point in teaching abstract concepts such as algebra or atomic
structure to children in primary school. Curricula also need to be
sufficiently flexible to allow for variations in ability of different
students of the same age. In Britain the National Curriculum and Key
Stages broadly reflect the stages that Piaget laid down.



Practical examples:
Egocentricism dominates a child’s
thinking in the sensori-motor and preoperational stages. Piaget would
therefore predict that using group activities would not be appropriate
since children are not capable of understanding the views of others.
However, Smith et al (1998), point out
that some children develop earlier than Piaget predicted and that by using
group work children can learn to appreciate the views of others in
preparation for the concrete operational stage.
The national curriculum emphasises the
need for using concrete examples in the primary classroom. Shayer (1997),
reported that abstract thought was necessary for success in secondary
school (and co-developed the CASE system of teaching science). Recently
the National curriculum has been updated to encourage the teaching of some
abstract concepts towards the end of primary education, in preparation for
secondary courses. (DfEE 1999).
A few concluding comments useful for
essays.
Child-centred teaching is regarded by
some as a child of the ‘liberal sixties.’ In the 1980s the Thatcher
government introduced the National Curriculum in an attempt to move away
from this and bring more central government control into the teaching of
children. So, although the National Curriculum in some ways supports the
work of Piaget, (in that it dictates the order of teaching), it can also
be seen as prescriptive to the point where it counters Piaget’s
child-oriented approach. However, it does still allow for flexibility in
teaching methods, allowing teachers to tailor lessons to the needs of
their students.
Vygotsky
For most of his adult life Vygotsky lived
in Communist Russia, as a result his work shows definite Marxist
influences emphasising the role of social interaction and culture.
Vygotsky died of tuberculosis at the age of 38, as a result his theory
never went through the later developments that Piaget’s and others were
afforded.
Elementary mental functions.
These are present at birth and include
sensation and attention. They only show minor development by experience.
Higher mental functions.
These include problem solving and
thinking.
Cultural influence.
This is required to take us from
Elementary to Higher functions. By cultural influence Vygotsky meant
books, teachers, parents, experts or anything capable of passing on the
knowledge of previous generations.
Language
is essential for the
communication of knowledge and ideas and as a result is crucial to
Vygotsky’s theory.
To understand the theory it is important
to understand the role language plays in thinking. In fact the two are
closely linked. Try to imagine thinking without the use of words.
Vygotsky believed that thought and language develop through a number of
stages:
Ages 0 to 2 years
Language and thought develop
independently of one another. Children have pre-verbal thought and
pre-intellectual speech.
Ages 2 to 7 years
Language has two functions:
1.
Monitor and direct
internal thoughts (inner voice we talk to ourselves with).
2.
Communicate thoughts to
others (talk out loud).
When children at this age talk out loud
to themselves, Vygotsky saw this as a sign that the child is unable to
distinguish between the two.
Age
7 onwards
The child distinguishes between the two
functions of language. Private language is used for thinking and becomes
central to cognitive development. Vygotsky believed that language and
thinking developed in parallel to each other. As our ability to use
language improves this increase our ability to think and vice
versa.
Research evidence
Berk (1994) found that 6 year olds who
gave themselves verbal instructions on what needed to be done to complete
a maths problem performed better on the task. She concluded that
self-guiding speech is important in developing the child’s abilities as
Vygotsky predicted.
In a follow up experiment it was also
shown that as 4 to 5 year olds became better at a task their speech became
increasingly internalised. This suggests that talking out loud is used by
children when learning new tasks. As they become more competent it
becomes internalised.
Social interaction
With language the child has the ability
to learn from those with more knowledge, especially adults. Learning
occurs by active internalisation of strategies picked up by communicating
with others.
Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).
‘…what is the zone of proximal
development today will be the actual zone of development tomorrow. That
is, what a child can do with some assistance today she will be able to do
by herself tomorrow.’ (Vygotsky 1978).
The ZPD is the difference between what
the child can achieve on its own and what it can achieve with help from
others. For learning to occur the adult must provide a challenge that is
beyond what the child is capable of, but within its capabilities with
help, i.e. within its ZPD. Therefore the child can only reach its full
potential with help from others. The help given by adults is referred to
as scaffolding. It is important that the child is challenged
without experiencing failure.
Research evidence
Moss (1992) found that parents,
particularly mothers, provide scaffolding. Moss observed three
strategies:
1.
Mother instructs the
child with strategies it would not otherwise know.
2.
Mother encourages child
to keep using useful strategies.
3.
Mother persuades the
child to drop inappropriate strategies.
Conner et al (1997) found that fathers
are as good at scaffolding. They also found that children that have
received scaffolding show longer-term improvements in skills as well as
immediate improvements.
Evaluation
Vygotsky’s greatest contribution was in
recognising the importance of social interaction in the cognitive
development of children. Whereas Piaget predicts that all children,
regardless of culture, should make the same progression through his
stages, Vygotsky believed there would be significant cultural
differences. In fact both get some support from later research. Some
features of development appear universal whereas others show distinct
cultural variations.
Criticisms
·
Motivation
·
Vygotsky does not consider the importance
of the child’s desire to learn.
·
Vague
·
Vygotsky did not say what types of social
interaction are best for encouraging learning.
·
Social interactions
·
These can sometimes be
counter-productive. Not all criticisms are useful or well received!
Durkin (1995) points out that often advice from parents can serve to make
the child even more determined to do things its own way.
·
Individual differences
·
Some children, regardless of help given
by others, still develop at a slower rate, suggesting that other factors,
including genetic must be involved. (Genetic explanations would not have
sat comfortably in Soviet Russia!).
Again it is always credit-worthy to note
the contribution Vygotsky made to our understanding of child development,
how it has filled some of the gaps left by Piaget, and how it has been
used in educational policy in the West.
Note although Vygotsky died in 1934 his
work wasn’t translated into English until 1962.
Applying Vygotsky to Education
Vygotsky emphasises the role of social
interaction in teaching and this is where his greatest contribution has
been. Effective teachers are those with more knowledge than the child and
can include peers. Teachers need to provide scaffolding and be able to
adjust the level of assistance they provide depending upon the progress of
the child.
ZPD and Scaffolding
Tasks that are set for the child need to
be pitched at the right level. Tasks that are too difficult are outside
the child’s ZPD, and regardless of the amount of help in the form of
scaffolding, the gap can not be bridged. If the task is too easy the
child will not be motivated.
As Wood et al (1976) put it; if a child
is succeeding at a task then adult assistance can be reduced. Similarly
if the child is struggling then greater assistance needs to be provided.
Wood (1988) studied primary school classes and concluded that it is not
possible for teachers to recognise the ZPD of 30 different students.
Instead, he argues, scaffolding is more appropriate for one on one
situations.
Bliss et al (1996) looked at the ways
scaffolding was being used in the science classes of 13 London Junior
schools (ages 7-11). The results showed that scaffolding was not being
used effectively and reported what they described as ‘pseudo-scaffolding.’
Peer tutorin
One area in which scaffolding appears to
have been used successfully is in the area of peer tutoring.
Vygotsky emphasises that anyone with more
knowledge than the child can act as teacher, be it an adult, older child
or a more advanced child of the same age (peer). In the classroom
situation the more advanced child can act as tutor and since he/she is of
similar age they should have a good understanding of the tutees situation
and should also be working in the same ZPD.
Tudge (1993) found that the best peer
tutors are those who are significantly ahead of their tutees. However, if
the tutor lacks confidence or fails to provide the necessary scaffolding
then the tutoring is ineffective.
Barnier (1989) found that the performance
of 6 to 7 year olds on various spatial tasks was significantly improved
when they were tutored by 7 to 8 year olds. Ellis and Gauvain (1992)
found cross cultural support for peer tutoring when they compared native
North American Navahos with ‘Euro-American’ children. Both benefited from
peer tutoring even though the methods used by the two cultures were very
different. The ‘Euro-Americans’ tended to give more spoken instructions
and were generally less patient with their tutees.
Peer tutoring is a vital element in
Shayer and Adey’s CASE project. After being introduced to a task and
provided with cognitive dissonance (disequilibrium), the students are
asked to work in groups. The idea being that the more able will be able
to encourage the less able.
Information Processing Approach
Note, this has
been dropped from the specification this year so the examiners cannot ask
a specific question about IP theory. However, I have retained it in the
notes, partly because you may find it interesting (unlikely but you never
know) and partly because it took me bloody ages to include it in the first
place!!
It has long been a popular practice by
Psychologists and others to liken the workings of the brain to the most
advanced technology of the day. In the past this has including primitive
calculating machines and telephone exchanges. Today it is the modern
computer, and the information processing approach tries to draw analogies
between the two. For example the proponents of this approach talk of
structures such as short term and long-term memory and of processes
such as attention, storing, encoding and problem solving.
Assumptions
Adults seem to think differently, and
usually more effectively, than children. This difference is attributed to
more efficient processing of information. Possible reasons for this:
1. The
child has limited processing abilities. Tests on recall have shown that
adults are better at recall after only hearing stimulus material presented
to them once. This could be due to brain maturation and growth. For
example myelination occurs as we develop. This is coating of the nerve
fibres with an insulating fatty sheath that speeds up the rate of
transmission of information in the brain.
2. A
greater knowledge base and know better ways of learning, for example
adults have learned how to chunk information (remember Miller and all
that?). See Chi (1978).
3. Adults
have developed better strategies to help memory and other important
cognitive skills.
Knowledge base
Adults clearly have a much greater
knowledge base than children. Chi (1978) showed that this alone can make
a difference in cognitive performance. He compared 10-year-old chess
players with adult non-chess players. Although the adults had better
overall memories the children were much better at recalling chess
positions than the adults, presumably because of their better knowledge of
chess.
Automatic Processe
As we get older and more practised at
tasks they require less effort and processing time. For example driving a
car. As a learner we have to attend carefully and concentrate on every
move. As experienced drivers we are able to drive miles with little or
no focussed attention to what we are doing. Similarly, reading, maths
etc. require far more effort by a young mind than by an adult mind. In
information processing terms this automating of processes frees up space
in memory and other structures allowing more efficient processing.
Pascal-Leone and Case
These are both referred to as neo-Piagetian
because of their similarities to the master’s theory.
Similarities with Piaget
1.
Children have structures
(schemas or schemes) for their understanding.
2.
Children move through
stages: pre-concrete to concrete to abstract (formal).
Differences from Piaget
1. Children
don’t use just the one strategy, as Piaget suggested, when tackling a
problem. They use many, the number varying depending on the complexity of
the problem.
2. Cognitive
development relies on an increase in mental power. They refer to this as
M-space. Pascal-Leone equates this to the number of schemes that a child
can work with at a time. M-space increases with age and this explains
cognitive development. M-space is often likened to working memory or,
keeping the computer analogy alive, to random access memory (RAM).
Case
suggested three reasons why M-space increases with age:
a.
The brain develops and
myelination takes place allowing faster transmission of nerve impulses.
b.
Schemes and strategies
become automatic so require less memory. This frees up extra memory for
dealing with other tasks.
c.
Once schemes are
automatic they become ‘central conceptual structures.’ These allow
children to think in more advanced ways and as a result come up with still
better strategies for solving problems.
Case’s schemes are similar to Piaget’s schemas. Children can acquire new
schemes by either
1.
Modifying existing
schemes or
2.
Combining existing
schemes together.
Research evidence
Case (1992) asked children to draw a
picture of a mother looking out of a window at her son playing peek-a-boo
with her in the park on the other side of the road! Younger children can
only draw part of the scenario whereas older children can cope with the
whole thing. Case believed that this was due to the younger children’s
limited M-space or lack of capacity to hold the entire picture in their
mind.
Positive comments
The IP approach has been successful in
studying adult thinking.
Many studies have shown that what Piaget
put down to lack of necessary structures can in fact be attributed to
insufficient storage capacity or M-power (space).
It is able to explain some individual
differences in development, for example research has shown that different
people have different speeds of transmission in the nervous system and
that faster conduction in neurons is correlated to higher IQ.
Negative comments
It is difficult to work out how many
structures or schemes are being used to solve a particular problem.
We are unable to measure a person’s
mental capacity.
It is difficult to distinguish changes in
strategies from changes in M-power.
Personal/practical note.
Compared to Piaget
and Vygotsky, this is a relatively new theory and so consequently research
evidence is scarce. Personally, although I believe the theory has merit I
still find it a little ‘wishy washy.’ Given the choice opt for one of the
other two, or if you’re asked to describe two, opt for both of the
others! Unfortunately, since the information processing
theory is specifically mentioned in the syllabus the question could in
theory, ask for a description/evaluation of this.
Applying
Information-Processing theory to the classroom
Task Analysis
This is seen as the most important
implication for education. Since the child has a limited mental capacity
the teacher needs to ensure that the child is not overloaded. In order to
do this the information to be taught needs to be broken down into its
constituent parts. This also ensures that the information is presented in
the most effective way.
A knock on benefit of task analysis is
that if the child fails to understand the material it should be easier to
see where mistakes have been made if the task has been broken down.
(Think of maths problems: teachers typically tell their students to show
their working. This is useful to the teacher if the final answer is wrong
since they can trace the steps back to see where the error has occurred).
Examples from maths
Brown and Burton (1978)
These use the term ‘bug’ to refer to an
error in a child’s arithmetic rules for example:
625 The child always subtracts the smallest number from
the largest
-478 regardless of which is on the top line.
____
253
Brown and Burton devised games called
‘Buggy’ and ‘Debuggy’ to help teachers spot the bugs in a child’s
thinking. The important thing for teachers to realise is that such errors
are due to systematic errors that can be corrected rather than due to
carelessness.
Recognising the limited capacity of the
child
The IP approach emphasises the limited
capacity of the child’s mind. As a result it is essential that teachers
present material in manageable chunks that do not overload the child’s
mind. Teachers can also teach strategies for increasing the child’s
processing ability such as ‘chunking’, rehearsal and elaboration; think
back to AS ‘memory’ with levels of processing and multi-store models etc.
Metacognition
This is being aware of your own mental
processes, for example realising that ‘chunking’ can help improve STM and
that processing information at the semantic level will aid long term
recall; knowledge that you should be armed with and which you should use
in combat situations! An example of this in young children was
highlighted by Palincsar and Brown (1984). Children often have problems
understanding text because they concentrate on individual words and
sentences rather on the bigger picture. The researchers taught children
to consider the context of the text and significantly increased their
comprehension skills. (Again it is crucial for your own learning that you
see the composite elements of a topic within the overall context of that
topic. This will be particularly important for the synoptic element of
Module 5 trying to put the various strands of psychology into an overall
context.
Measured Intelligence
On the face of
it this seems as though it should be an innocuous enough subject, but
partly because of the way it was handled in the early days, when we lived
in less enlightened times, it has become the most controversial of all
topics in Psychology.
The issue that
still rages is to what extent environmental factors and genetics determine
your level of intelligence; nature versus nurture at its ugliest. Over
the years the entrenched and prejudiced views of a number of Psychologists
have stirred the argument, most notably Jensen, Hernstein and Murray and
the late Sir Cyril Burt! Add to this the fact that few can agree on what
exactly ‘intelligence’ is, let alone how to measure it, and you have
subject matter ripe for evaluation.
However,
throughout the topic it is important to bear in the falsehood of the
traditional argument. The geneticists claim that if the heritability of
IQ is high then the environmental factors must be of little importance.
Conversely the environmental argument assumes that if environmental
factors are most important then genetic factors must be of little
importance. Both extremes seem to miss the obvious point that both nature
and nurture might be crucial. Intelligence will be low if excellent
quality genes are not educated, or if excellent education tries to
influence defective genes!
Nature: the
geneticist’s argument
There is clear
anecdotal evidence for the genetic causation of intelligence provided by
family studies. Galton as long ago as 1869, reported in his study
‘Hereditary genius’ that intelligent sons tend to have intelligent
fathers. As with later studies involving race, Galton, like his
successors failed to recognise the importance of family influence and
exclusive education. In particular, in Galton’s case, most Victorian
children lived in poverty and had little in the way of formal education,
just like their parents. Whereas the influential and wealthy had access
to public schools followed by a University education at Oxford or
Cambridge just like their parents!
Apologies for
the rant… the sociologist in me seeping out there. Didn’t realise it
existed lol!

Twin studies
Clearly if
genetics play a crucial role in determining measured intelligence then we
would expect MZ twins to have similar IQs. The closer the correlation
between IQ the more likely the genetic link. Any difference between IQ
would have to be attributed to other factors, namely environmental, such
as education or upbringing.
Bouchard &
McGue (1981)
These reviewed
111 (unlucky for some) studies and found that identical twins are more
similar in their measured intelligence than fraternal twins.

Findings in
detail:
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