Challenges of preoperational tasks by piaget PDF

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Summary

studies that challenge the preoperational task by piaget and other criticisms to the preoperational tasks by piage...

Description

Experiment

Method/Explanation

X Transitive inference may be due to memory limitation - Train 4 year old with diff length of 5 rods and Bryant & Trabasso learnt that A>B, B>C, C>D, D>E. - When test children were able to conclude that B>D, so they shown no transitive inference but memory limitation.

X Conservation tasks may cause misunderstanding to children McGarrigle - Sleeping cows (all cows were sleeping) - “are there more black cows or more cows?’ 25% correct (6 year old) – this is the usual Piagetian question 

Rose Blank

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‘Are there more black cows or more sleeping cows?’ 48% correct (6 yearold) 

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Conservation task altered to include 1-judgement version Found that first grade children made fewer errors not only on 1-judgement task but also on subsequent standard conservation tasks given 1 week later.

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Evaluation Young children can make transitive inferences if precautions are taken to prevent deficits of memory from being confused with inferential deficits. This is contrary to piaget’s conclusion

Piaget underestimated the role of language (Donaldson) and failing could be bc failing to understand or reason the task.

Asking the same conservation questions twice is not usual pragmatics as child will ask ‘was I wrong the first time’ Incorrect response is primed by interaction of perceptual context and linguistic input

McGarrigle & Donaldson

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Looked at 4 & y year olds in length and number conservations Transformation occurred bc of direct action by experimenter & when it happened ‘accidentally’ as a by-product of an activity directed towards a diff goal by a naughty teddy Conservation occurs when action was accidental; so said the two rows contains the same number of counters. When conservation was lower when action was intentional; so said that number of counters was diff when transformed.

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Characteristics of experimenter’s behaviours, in particular action towards the task material influence children’s interpretation of utterances Traditional conservation tasks underestimate children’s cognitive abilities Conservation failure is a pragmatic failure Criticism: o There might have been distraction by teddy, causing centering by preoperational children → paying attention to Teddy & not possible number change. o Moore & Frye: ▪ Centration resulted in worse performance for relevant task ▪ Contrasted effect of two factors; ▪ 1. Relevance of transformation (to quantity) → when teddy added bead, children still said the two rows had same number ▪ 2. Cause of accident → when task is presented as a game & experimenter made unreliable (said he was trying to trick the child) children still made conservation errors ▪ Found that when teddy added bead or removed bead & the child still said there was the same amount in each row.

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X Language difficulty Donaldson

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child’s difficulty in reasoning stems not from inability to think logically Traditional Piagetian tasks make little sense to preschool children Piaget’s testing situations are too abstract & do not connect with young children’s every day, social experience.

Siegel

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X Degree of difficulty

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Performance was strongly affected by subtle changes to wording of questions that children are asked

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Cannot be always sure that children interpreted a question exactly as experimenter intended without very careful testing of question wording - Repeated questioning in conservation tests violates the normal rules that govern conversation. Individuals with autism may struggle using piaget’s theory of development as they may find it harder to reach each stage by the age range. As their cognition is diff,

X Universal aspect

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Piaget does not take into account individuals diff and cultural diff in terms of cognitive development as they may not all be the same

X Piaget is unfalsifiable Hughes

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Child has task of hiding the boy doll from policemen doll Asked ‘where can you hide the thief’ 3.5 & 5 year old, 90% correct replies in the 2 policemen situation 5 year old year old given series of conservation problems → all unsuccessful were then given one of three kinds of training: accuracy feedback, explain their reasoning & given feedback on that, feedback then asked ‘how do you think/knew that?’ (so asked to explain reasoning behind experimenter’s judgement of their own answer) children in 3rd group performed the best 3rd condition is high in efficacy bc it sets a context for the repeated question asking, since they can see why experimenter behaves as he does in the task. The learning involved two distinct realizations: that relative length did not predict which row had

Siegler

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these results seem impossible to reconcile with Piaget’s theory that egocentric child cannot understand the possibility of other point of view

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being encouraged to take on the perspective of the experimenter contributed most to children’s developing insights into the nature of conservation argues for an experimental context in which the child and experimenter can collaborate in their search for the correct answer rather than the traditional relationship in which children may be induced to provide an answer that they know to be incorrect

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the greater number of objects and that the type of quantitatively relevant transformation did. I -...