Piaget Theory of Children Cognitive Development Essay Example for Free

Piaget Theory of Children Cognitive Development EssayMuch of the seek since the late 1950s on the exploitation of role taking and moral judgments has its roots in the enquiry conducted by Piaget in the 1920s. iodin thrust of Piagets theorizing in his earliest writings dealt with the pro pose that kidskinren progress from an self-absorbed to a perspectivistic state. He proposed that tikeren younger than 6 or 7 years of age do not clearly differentiate between self and another(prenominal)wises or between thoughts (the mental) and external regular(a)ts. A consequence of the failure to differentiate the self from others is that the child is unable to affiance the perspective of another person. For instance, in communicating with others the child is unable to manage into account the requirements of the listener. A consequence of the failure to differentiate thoughts from external events is that the child portions an target reality to internal mental events such as dream s. A major developmental transition was posited to perish when the child shifts from an egocentric state to single in which the self is differentiated from others and there is the ability to take anothers perspective. (Angela M. ODonnell, Alison King, 1999)How eer, the well-nigh extensive research in a social domain undertaken by Piaget during this early pointedness dealt with childrens moral judgments. Those were also the only studies on moral development to be done by Piaget. threesome specific aspects of Piagets moral development theory had a substantial influence on later research. One was the char practiseerization of moral development as a process of differentiating moral from nonmoral judgments. The second was the proposed inter dealing between global cognitive orientations and moral judgments.And the third was the proposed traffic 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 by two moral judgment levels (following an early premoral phase), the first being labeled heteronomous (generally corresponding to ages 3 to 8 years) and the second labeled autonomous. In the heteronomous level, the child has unilateral respect for full-gr receives ( adhesioned as authority) and morality is, therefore, establish on conformity.The right or good is seen by the child as adherence to externally determined and restore rules and commands. The young childs morality of conformity and unilateral respect becomes transformed into a morality of cooperation and mutual respect. The behind for the autonomous level is the emergence of concepts of reciprocity and equality. At this level, rules ar viewed as products of mutual agreement, serving the aims of cooperation, and frankincense atomic number 18 regarded as changeable. (Gwen Bred prohibitieck Fischer, 1999).In formulating the levels of heteronomy and autonomy, Piaget studied childrens judgments about some(prenominal) specific issues, including rules, punishment, intentionality, be, stealing, and distributive justice. A truncated description of the levels can be provided by considering some of the studies of childrens thinking about rules and about intentionality in situations involving dimension 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 characteristics regarding the increasing specializations that issue forth with development were relevant. One proposed characteristic was the childs egocentricism, the failure to clearly come across the selfs perspective from that of others. A second relevant experience was the young childs failure to differentiate the animal(prenominal) world from social and mental phenomena young children confuse the indispensable and objective aspects of their experience. (Richard I. Evans, E leanor Duckworth, 1973)According to Piaget, one concrete manifestation of young childrens inability to differentiate perspectives and to differentiate the physical from the social is their attitudes 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 everyone adheres to the same rules. There is a failure to comprehend the possibility that rules whitethorn 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 guarded 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 genera l consensus. (Harry Morgan, 1997)Another manifestation of the young childs cognitive confusions is that judgments of right and wrong are based on the material consequences of actions, 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 tot up of damage (e. g. , gaolbreak the 15 cups 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 deviation 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 pretend to a very poor friend is wors e than stealing a lesser amount for oneself. (R. Clarke Fowler, 1998). In contrast with the heteronomous level, at the autonomous level respect is no longer 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 decreasing orientation to dealings with adult authority that usually gets during late childhood. Relations with government (parents, teachers, etc. ), he maintained, are likely 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 faithfulness of their superior status.In order for the shift from a heteronomous to an autonomous orientation to occur the child essential more clearly differentiate the self from others and, thereby, be able to take the perspective of others. Relations wit h 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 plug into to on an equal footing, the child is stimulated to view his or her own perspective as one among many different perspectives.In the process, mutual respect replaces unilateral respect for authority and the bases of a sniff out of justice reciprocity, equality, and cooperation emerge. Rules are because regarded as social constructions, based on agreement, that serve functions shared by the participants of social interactions. The increasing awareness of others perspectives and subjective intentions leads to judgments that are based on intentionality rather than consequences. (John H. Flavell, 1963)In accessory to the connections to general cognitive capacities, Piagets characterization of m oral judgments was a global one in that development was delimitate as entailing a progressive differentiation of principles of justice (ought) from the habitual, customary, and linguistic ruleal (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 knowledge. Only at more advanced stages are moral judgments and knowledge of the social order (or even morality and physical law) distinguished. It is precisely on this basis that Piaget thought it was methodologically valid to examine childrens concept s of rules of stain games as a means to understanding their moral reasoning. (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. Each 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 kindred 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 mull of knowledge has been to escape the philosophic traps of subjectivity and objectivity. The former makes knowledge a self satisfying admixture where, for the sake of consistency, the subject creates concepts of objects and reality. T his position tends toward error through failure to come to grips with the items of reality. It puts the subject in check 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, reservation the subject only a valid recorder of reality. Distortion can occur either through exposure to odd circumstances or through breakdowns in the subjects recording devices. The position of relativity seeks solution to both(prenominal) problems. Its clearest expression is found when both subject and object are disposed 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 yet as subjec t and object are able to extract orderly relations from their interactions. These relations among actions and reactions chroma definitions of both agents. They are the medium for knowing and provide the terms by which subject and object execute 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.True 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 transposed subject and object are posited and relations come secondarily. In Piagets scheme, neither subject nor o bject ever gets to know one another with certainty. Together they can work only toward relations that are reliable. rigourousness is al ways 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 effectual similar but actually render a different song. The stumbling block is evident, for example, in the many ways phenomena originally 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 alternative 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 two 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 credit Piaget with having shown that children are cognitively dynamic and control rather than being controlled by external objects or other persons. This emphasis has clouded the circumstance 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 si gnatureed. Each reaction is reciprocal to something children do. In the case of conservation, to 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 possible 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) Insofar as actions make contact with other things, or persons, effects of actions are not solely under the control of the child. These things react in reciprocity to the actions exerted upon them and together 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 other persons parts, alone. This is why for Piaget, the child is led to seek a solution in the coupling and arrives at the ratiocination 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 go through 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 interchangeable reciprocity where ones action is free to match or counter the others action. The second is a reciprocity of full complement where ones act ion must conform to the dictates set down by the others action. g) These two forms describe the basic relations 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 incorporated 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)