Criticisms of Piaget

Assessing Piaget’s Theory Scientific research has supported Piaget’s most fundamental idea: that infants, young children, and older children use distinct cognitive abilities to construct their understanding of the world BUT… Piaget underestimated the child’s ability at various ages. Piaget confused motor skill limitations with cognitive limitations in assessing object permanence during infancy. Piaget’s theory doesn’t take into account culture and social differences.

Piaget’s Theory Challenged New studies indicate infants do more than sense and react. One study had 1-month-old babies suck one of two pacifiers without ever seeing them When shown both pacifiers, infants stared more at the one they had felt in their mouth. This requires a sort of reasoning. Study was done by Meltzoff and Borton, 1979. Figure is from Myers 5e

Cultural Context Dasen (1994): Different cultures achieve different operations at different ages depending on their cultural context. Dasen (1994) cites studies he conducted in remote parts of the central Australian desert with 8-14 year old Aborigines. He gave them conservation of liquid tasks and spatial awareness tasks. He found that the ability to conserve came later in the aboriginal children, between aged 10 and 13 (as opposed to between 5 and 7, with Piaget’s Swiss sample). However, he found that spatial awareness abilities developed earlier amongst the Aboriginal children than the Swiss children.

Critique of Piaget’s Theory Underestimates children’s abilities Overestimates age differences in thinking Underestimates the role of the social environment Lack of evidence for qualitatively different stages – gradual process Some adults never display formal operational thought processes outside their area of expertise For example, Keating (1979) reported that 40-60% of college students fail at formal operation tasks, and Dasen (1994) states that only one-third of adults ever reach the formal operational stage.