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Inside Piaget's Mind: Stages, Schemas, and Childhood Thinking · Professor Peterson’s Psychology Classroom

0:05
Welcome to Professor Peterson's Psychology Classroom,
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connecting the science of human behavior to everyday life.
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Here's Dr. Curtis Peterson.
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All right, the first theory that has really,
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um, been utilized in a lot of cross-cultural theories,
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uh, is the theory of Jean Piaget.
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Okay, and really, uh, I think the reason
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why this has got so much cultural, cross-cultural attention
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is it is one of the more testable developmental theories.
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Is he sets up different milestones
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that go from one level to the next.
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And I should state up front that, uh, his is a
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stage theory. Meaning that we develop in
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certain stages during certain age groups.
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And those are quite common among Western
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developmental theories, the belief that each stage
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sets you up for either success,
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or if you want to put it in the extremes,
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failure, and makes it harder to accomplish
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these different tasks as
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you move through, in Piaget's example,
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his cognitive theory. Okay, the first thing
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that— the second thing I should say that should also be stated about
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Piaget's theory is his is a cognitive theory,
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meaning that he was interested in knowing
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how our cognitions change over time,
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the way we think, The way we're able to analyze, the way
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we're able to really well think about
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the world, either in concrete,
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abstract. Are we able to do certain
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cognitive tasks like understanding
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that you could take something apart and put it back together?
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And the other thing that I want to state about Piaget's
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theory is he
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is purely thinking about cognition, and he
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does talk about the interaction with the world,
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but the world only provides the information for those
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cognitive, uh, developmental tasks to be
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accomplished. Um, and what,
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what the one thing he did state about
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for example, parenting in the social
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world, is that he believed safe
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stress was important for a
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child to construct and adapt to their world.
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So what that means is, is that for him, the job
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of the parent is to set up
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safe boundaries where a child can make
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mistakes, where a child can fail, uh,
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where a child can succeed. Okay,
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and that introduces certain levels of stress to the child
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which then promote their development. All right,
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and so that's the one. The second thing
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that I want to, um, uh,
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stress about his theory Uh, the other thing
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that he— the third thing that he really, uh,
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stressed, and it's not on this slide, but the ideas of
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schemas. He introduced the term schema as
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our general representation of a
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place, person, or thing. Okay, so we
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all have a general representation of what a
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birthday party should look like. We have a general
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schema for how a 2-year-old versus
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a 30-year-old should act and behave.
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We have, in more literal terms, we have schemas
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for a dog and we have schemas for
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a cat. Okay, the reason why I
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like the examples of the schema of a dog is
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dogs come in various shapes,
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sizes, breeds, uh,
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coats, uh, temperaments,
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but yet we still have this general ability
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to— when we see a dog we've never seen before,
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that we instantly categorize it as
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a as I said, a dog. Okay.
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And so that is probably the first—
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the final thing that I wanted to state,
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other than I should include these. How do we build these
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schemas? We build them through what he considered assimilation
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and accommodation. So when we— assimilation
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is when we interact with um,
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a, a different dog.
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So let's say our initial schema was
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based upon a Chihuahua,
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and as a child we interacted with them,
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and that schema then became kind of our general
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representation of a dog. But then we
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see a pit bull Right? So there's new
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stimuli, but it fits well
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enough in the schema of the Chihuahua that we assimilate
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the pit bull into that category.
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Okay? Accommodation is,
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let's say a child has only interacted with dogs.
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Okay? And then one day the child comes across
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a cat. Well, a cat has very
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similar features as a dog. It has 4 legs,
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it walks on all fours, it has a tail, it's furry,
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it has a, you know, nose, all of those things.
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But there is enough differences in their behavior,
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in some of their physical structure, in the
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way they interact with us that we can't
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assimilate the cat into a dog schema.
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So we accommodate it by creating a new schema called
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a cat. Okay, and so we still have
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these 2 categories of a pet,
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but now we have to accommodate a second category under that,
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which is cat. All right.
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Now, um, what probably makes
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this notion kind of, uh, important is
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when it comes to especially humans,
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because we know early in infancy that
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the first kind of schema we create is the
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beginning of our self-schema through the child's visualization
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of mom. All right, and evidence for this
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is early, early in infancy,
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an infant has interacted with mom because
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mom holds the infant close. The infant has an understanding
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of her facial features, her— even
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the lightness or the darkness of her skin.
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And the child, the infant will start making preferences for
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others who have similar
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features as mom or that primary caregiver.
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In some cases, the father and the mother,
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or just the father— whoever really nurtured that child
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from an early infant stage. Okay,
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and so they'll start growing preferences for individuals who
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are similar to that primary caregiver.
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The other interesting thing is, is that the infant
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will actually start crying and cooing in
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the accent of that primary caregiver.
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So this is why, for example, someone from
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England who has lived in the United States
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as an adult for, let's say, 30 years,
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still maintains somewhat of an English accent
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because that was ingrained in the infant's identity
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of their schema very early into infancy.
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So I hope those examples kind of represent the notion of schemas,
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assimilation, and accommodation into
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understanding next his developmental
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theories. So again, this probably looks familiar from
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Psych 101 or developmental psychology,
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but what Piaget
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sets up is what's known as a 4-stage model that
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goes from basically zero. And I know
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this slide says 11 through adulthood,
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but I do want to remind everyone Uh,
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that during Piaget's era, adulthood started
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at 18. So in his model, this should
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say 11 to 18 because that was a hard deadline
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for becoming an adult during Piaget's,
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um, social,
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um, era. Okay,
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so This is basically his model, and like I said,
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I'm going to go through it quickly, but there's some key things
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that I want you to think about when you think about whether
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this represents just the Western culture,
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or is this adaptable to
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other cultures. Okay, the first stage
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that Piaget argued was the sensorimotor
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phase. Uh, which goes from about the
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age of 0 to about 2 years of age.
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And during this phase, what the child is trying to
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really understand is a coordination
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between their sensory experience
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and their motor or bodily
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responses. Okay, so As by
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the age of 2, children have learned to interact with
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the world enough to be walking,
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constructing simple words,
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but really what they're trying to do is navigate their
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internal world to their external
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world. So a good example of this is an infant
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who goes from Um, breastfeeding to
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maybe bottle feeding, uh, to drinking out of a sippy cup,
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uh, to drinking out of just a regular cup.
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And each of those takes a different sensory motor
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coordination. All right,
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um, Piaget believed at the time
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that this stage ended when a child develops
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something called object permanence.
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Object permanence is this ability to hold objects
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in the mind even when those objects
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are present. And using
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the techniques and technologies of the time,
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Piaget set this at about 2 years of age
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because what he would do is he'd have this kind of small curtain.
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On one side is the infant, on the other side is
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Piaget or mom, and Piaget
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would put the child's favorite toy in front of the infant.
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And if they're verbal, Piaget would ask, do you
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see your favorite toy? And they'd squeak out yes or no.
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Or if they're still a bit nonverbal, he would
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look for, of course, the baby, if it's their favorite toy, would reach out
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for it and play with it. And then what
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Piaget would do is in front of the infant,
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he would take the toy and put it behind
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the curtain, okay? And then he
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again would ask the infant or nonverbally
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point to, hey, where is, um, your toy?
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And he found that before the age of about 24
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months, the child would just kind of either panic or
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cry, or they would crawl away to do some other
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activity, or, uh, they would— if
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they're verbal, they would say no toy or what toy.
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Okay. After about 24
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months— and I always kind of imagine this from an adult mind
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perspective— after about 24 months, PSJ would
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ask, hey, where is your toy? And I imagine a,
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a little 2-year-old looking at him and going, God, are you that,
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uh, uh, dumb? And they would instantly
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just go through the curtain and get their favorite toy. Okay,
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what this represented using that technology of the time
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is the idea of object permanence, that now
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the child is able to hold objects in their
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mind without the objects being present.
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Okay, which then leads into the second
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stage, which Piaget argued happened between the age
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of 2 and 7, which is a pre-operational phase.
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And I'll explain the term pre-operational and operational when
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we go from Stage 2 to Stage 3. But I want to
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talk about what's going on kind of in Stage 2
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according to Piaget, is this is where we
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go through a rapid development of symbolizations.
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We're creating symbols for everything. So we recognize
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a stop sign as a stop sign, a chair as a chair, and a table
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as a table. Um, and it—
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and as I, I'm not sure if I've said in this class,
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but between the age of about 2 to 7,
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it is estimated that a child will learn anywhere
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between about 30,000 to about 60,000
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words. Okay, now after that we trim them
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way down. Um, I think I remember maybe 10 on
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a good day, but, uh, that's kind of
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the idea of that rapid symbolization of the world.
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And if you can imagine, all of this information
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is coming to the child and putting demands on the child to construct
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and make sense of it. That it feels like the world
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is really about them. And so this
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creates, uh, some, um,
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significance about the age about 2 to 7, is this
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is also where we see the highest levels
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of egocentrism.
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Egocentrism is the belief that the world is about
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me. I exist in the world and the world is meant
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to respond to me. And who I am.
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I am the important person in the room.
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Okay, we will see this high level of egocentrum—
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egocentrism reappear in adolescence, where we see
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the second highest level of egocentrism, but it's different
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than, than this stage. The other thing that
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Piaget noted about this stage is the notion
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of irreversibility. This is where
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a child who takes apart a
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Lego object can
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understand that that Lego object can be put back together.
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Okay, and this is why in a lot of childcares
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and early child learning centers you see objects
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like that where they're helping the child develop this understanding
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that you can take things apart and put them back together. Okay,
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is they're trying to help that developmental irreversibility.
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Um, now what happens
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between the pre-operational phase and the operational
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phase is the child starts to put
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their world into an operational,
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uh, sense. Okay, and 2
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of the tests that Piaget, um, uh,
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did to kind of illustrate between Stage 2
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and Stage 3 is the notion of
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conservation and, uh,
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mental operations of perspective-taking.
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Okay, conservation. I think I have a slide here.
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Conservation is something like this. You have
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2 beakers, A and B, that are the same size,
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and they're filled with the same amount
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of liquid. Okay, and then there's a 3rd beaker
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in this example. It's taller, it's thinner,
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and what Piaget does initially is, is there the same amount of liquid
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in A and B? Most all children will say yes,
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um, and then Piaget, in front of the child, will pour
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the contents of B into C and
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then ask the child the same question. Okay,
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and what Piaget found is that children under
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the age of about 6 to 7 will say no,
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the amount has changed, either there's more or less in it
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now compared to A. Okay,
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children above the age of 6 or 7 will
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say no, they're the same amount, you just put them
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in a different shaped cylinder or different shaped cup.
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Okay, what that is is the idea of conservation, that things
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can change form but it doesn't necessarily
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mean they change mass. Okay,
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the other one is the 3-task,
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3-mountain task, where you'll notice if we're
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looking at Piaget's view, Piaget has this middle
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green larger mountain and then a darker
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green tall skinny mountain, and on his other side there's this
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light green slightly larger mountain than
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the dark green one, but not as big as the central one.
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Okay, and he will simply ask— and we
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have the child over here— and he would ask, what does the child
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see? And they'll see it, say, well, I see the light green one,
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the green big one, and then the dark green one behind that
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one. Okay, the key was though is in the next
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question. Piaget would ask So what do I see?
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All right, and he found again children under the age
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of 6 or 7 would repeat their perspective.
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They would say, well, you see what I
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see— this light green one, this bigger one,
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and then behind that bigger one is a dark green skinnier one.
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I, I don't see why you don't see anything else.
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But after the age of 6 or 7, the child starts
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to more correctly take on Piaget's perspective,
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as they'll say, you see the dark green one, uh,
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the larger one, and then the light green one.
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Okay, what does this require a child
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to do? This means a child is taking
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information into their head and they're visualizing
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it, and they're mentally rotating the table around
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in order to see Piaget's perspective. So we
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start to see what's called mental manipulation of
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physical objects. All right,
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so if we go back here, Piaget thought that this was
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significant. He felt that this is where children go from
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not only being able to symbolize things but to
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start to mentally manipulate them.
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And specifically, what do they manipulate? Or I
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could— I should say this in, uh, um, Piagetian terms— they're
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able to operate on mental
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images. Okay, so Uh,
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this includes— but what do you do with all of this significant
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stuff that you've symbolized in your world?
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You start to categorize it and put it in hierarchical
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classifications. And here's a key word: hierarchical
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classification, because we'll want to talk about that when
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we get to our cultural conversation on
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these 2 theories. This coming Tuesday, and that's one area
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that I would encourage you to pay attention to. Okay,
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um, and he, he felt though that the reason
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why this is a concrete, um,
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phase is that these categories that children put
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them into to be able to cognitively deal with
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this mass amount of information that they've learned between
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the age of birth to 6 to 7 is
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we need to put them in concrete categories.
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So during this phase, um, uh, you,
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you'll probably hear children talk about good guys and
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bad guys, um, cops and robbers,
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uh, black and white,
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um, and children really
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have a rigidity of saying a bad person
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cannot be a good person and a good person cannot be a
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bad person. Okay, and so this is
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the concrete level. Now,
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one of the things, and probably one of my criticisms of
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Piaget's theory, is when he went from,
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if you know, to sensory to pre-operational and then pre-operational
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concrete He had some behavioral measures
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through each stage. The last stage of what he called
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formal operations, he did basically
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on paper-pencil tests that require
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individuals to take some type of moral
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or logical argument. And are
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they able to see it in a more complex, abstract way Or
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do they keep these solid categories?
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Okay, one test that has been famously
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done, um, uh,
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especially in the domain of morality,
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is this basic, um, um, uh,
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kind of story. A man has a wife.
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And his wife needs a life-saving
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medication. Okay,
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um, but, and if she doesn't get this dose, she will
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certainly die in the next, uh,
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overnight. Okay, it's that serious of a medication,
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uh, but he can't afford the medication, and he's went
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to the pharmacist and said, hey, can I borrow this? I'll pay you back.
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And the pharmacist said clearly no, because there
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was, there was no way he could guarantee that he could pay for it.
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So what does the husband do to save the wife?
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Well, he, at night, he breaks into the pharmacy
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and he steals the medication and gives
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it to his wife and saves his wife's life. And the
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moral question is, is Who
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are the bad guys? Who are the good guys? Is the pharmacist
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to be blamed for not giving a medication to
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save a human being, or is the husband to blame
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for stealing from a pharmacist who,
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uh, does his job in order
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to feed and house his own family? Okay, and,
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and this is the moral dilemma. Do we now put
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these in concrete categories? Pharmacist is
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the good person, the one that was victimized,
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and the husband is a criminal and a bad person
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and therefore should be punished. If you listen
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to that answer, it's a very concrete answer.
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You have a good guy and you have a bad guy, or you have a
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victim and you have an offender. Okay,
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and what they look for is what's known as formal
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operations, where you come to this understanding
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that yes, the husband did a bad thing,
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but he also saved a human life.
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The pharmacist has the right
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to sell his product,
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but should he seek out
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really punitive punishments when
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all the husband was trying to do is save a life? Which is
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really why you go into pharmaceuticals, theoretically,
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in the first place, is to provide medications to
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help people live. Okay,
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that's more formal operations thinking.
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That's more— there's abstract to this.
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And I always think of it this way after working in the field of domestic
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violence and relationship violence and then working
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with, uh, female inmates,
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is that a person who is in prison definitely
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did something wrong,
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but that doesn't mean that all of them is
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a bad person. Okay,
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so for example, um, I, I often,
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uh, interviewed women and did counseling
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and treatment with women who did very, very bad things.
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Yet they would provide care and
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concern when other inmates got sick or were
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having problems. They would go to every family visit,
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and during that visit, they behaved like,
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in many examples, a mother who was nurturing and
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caring. Some of them were very
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financially responsible. Um,
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and so, yes, they did this very bad thing that,
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yes, they should have some repercussions for,
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but they're not totally a bad person.
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On the domestic violence end, I can't tell you
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how many times I went to a crisis intervention
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domestic violence scene and the offender
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was a police officer or a judge or
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an attorney or a doctor. All of
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those categories that we normally categorize as
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good people. And yes, I will even say I have been to
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a Mormon bishop's house. I have been to a
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pastor's house. I have been to a Catholic
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priests or house. So even in
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those categories, those individuals who promote
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morality and doing the right thing,
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such as our law enforcement field, they still
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can have qualities that, that if
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someone outside that category did something,
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we would say they are bad. They're bad people.
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Okay, and formal operations is being
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able to understand and think about conditions
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not in rigid categories, but in more
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abstract, more logical, or systematic
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ways of thinking. Okay, so that's
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Piaget's theory. And again, we I'm
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going to leave the cultural components and the cross-cultural
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comparisons, uh, because what I want you to do,
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uh, after this class is I want you yourself
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to think, is this something
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that can— that, that you think applies to
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all human beings worldwide,
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or do you think that this theory would
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change based upon the culture,
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the socialization, the, uh, in,
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in the way of being in different
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communities, in different places. And I want to encourage
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you to really think about the moral example
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and formal operations, uh,
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the concrete, uh, thinking and the Concrete
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operational phase, and really the symbolization,
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uh, in the pre-operational phase.
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Okay, and so, uh, think about those,
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and if you choose to do the discussion questions, I can't wait to
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see your responses. Again, there is no right or
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wrong. Um, thank you for
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joining us for this Psychology Explained. I hope you'll join
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us in later episodes where we can— we'll continue to investigate
32:24
the human mind and psychology.