Cognition in Infants and Young Children - Essay Example

Cognition in infants and young children. According to Piaget’s theory, the pre-operational stage occurs during the toddler and early childhood stage, the child progresses in the use of language (Hetherington and Parke, 2003). As opposed to the preceding sensorimotor stage where the child is limited to direct interactions with the environment, in the pre-operational stage, the child demonstrates intelligence by manipulating the symbols which represent the environment.(Salkind, 2004, pp 248). Memory and imagination develop, while the mode of thinking is primarily egocentric and occurs in a non logical and non reversible manner. This stage of development lasts from age two to six. Critics have stated that Piaget underestimated children’s abilities in the pre-operational stage and this is based mainly on the following grounds (a) the child in the pre-operational stage is unable to conserve the relationship between the different dimensions of an event (b) Piaget’s theory held that children in the preoperational stage may be unable to understand object permanence (c) Piaget has underestimated the ability of children to see the world from another person’s viewpoint and referred to this as egocentrism. One of Piaget’s major findings about the pre-operational stage was that children cannot conserve different dimensions of an event. For example, when a piece of clay is molded into two different shapes, the child is unable to understand that although the shape is different, the piece is essentially the same.(Salkind, 2004, pp 249). However, in experiments conducted by Wynn (1992), on five month old infants, the findings appear to suggest that infants may even be able to calculate results for simple arithmetic operations on a small number of items. Human beings may therefore possess innate arithmetical abilities. Similarly, Xu and Spelke (2000) have also shown that when extraneous variables are controlled, infants are able to discriminate between large sets of objects on the basis of numerosity. This suggests that Piaget’s findings may be lacking in some aspects. Piaget appears to have underestimated the timing of development of children’s abilities and one example of a cognitive defect attributed to the pre-operational stage is the inability to comprehend object permanence, i.e, that an object continues to exist even when it is moved out of sight.(Hetherington and Parke, 2003). In examining object permanence, Piaget concluded from his observations that young children appear to view objects as ephemeral entities which are constantly made and unmade rather than as permanent entities that continue to exist even when they are out of sight (Piaget, 1954:11). He places the age at which object permanence gradually appears as being at about ten months. Baillarjeon et al (1985) carried out an experiment to test object permanence in infants, which belies the results obtained by Piaget. The results of their experiment showed that infants looked longer at an impossible event rather than a possible event, suggesting that they noticed and were puzzled by it, due to the understanding that objects continue to exist when occluded. These results were also observed in infants as young as 3 and half to four and half month old, suggesting that infants also understand that solid objects cannot occupy the space occupied by another solid object (Baillerjeon, 1987). This study also seriously questions the ages at which Piaget has set out the stages of cognitive development. Infants even as young as three and a half months and older seem to be able to represent and reason about hidden objects (Baillerjeon and DeVos, 1991). Schilling used Baillerjeon’s rotating screen method in exploring the effects of familiarization (Xu and Spelke, 2000) and age. His findings suggest that with six and a half month old infants, one familiarity trial elicits a preference for familiarity trials but after two or three, the infants begin to demonstrate a preference for novelty trials. His findings also suggest that there may be an age effect on looking behavior in test trials.(Schilling, 2000). In experiments that were conducted to examine infant knowledge about occlusion and containment events, experiments showed that four and a half month old infants seem to be able to reason about height in occlusion events but not in containment events – this ability appears to develop only later, at about seven and a half months of age (Hespos and Baillarjeon, 2001).In general, the research that has been conducted on object permanence shows that in experiments where support or collision events are involved, infants identify a series of variables or rules, which enables them to predict outcomes accurately over time.(Baillerjeon, 2004). This suggests that different rules may apply over different time frames, as infants learn more rules and these may not necessarily be in accordance with the pattern of stages set out by Piaget. Piaget demonstrated egocentric thought in the pre-operational stage through the 3 Mountains task (Piaget and Barbel, 1956). In this experiment, the child sits in front of a picture of a mountain but has to choose a photograph which corresponds to another viewpoint (a doll’s) of the mountains. The results of this experiment showed that the child was unable to accomplish this and chose the photograph from his or her own perspective, leading the authors to conclude that the child “appears rooted in his own viewpoint in the narrowest and most restricted fashion.” (Piage and Inhelder 1956, p 242). On this basis, they have offered the view that the child is unable to transcend this egocentrism until he reaches the age of 8 or 9. However, subsequent research on the pre-operational stage, using more child friendly tasks has reached different conclusions and challenges Piaget’s views on the child’s geocentricism (Masangkay et al, 1974; Light and Nix, 1983). Flavell et al (1981) used a simpler series of tasks to examine whether a child is capable of seeing things from another person’s perspective. On one of the simpler tasks which involved turning a picture for the examiner to look at upside down and predicting which of the two pictures the examiner was viewing, children as small as three years old showed the ability to take into account another person’s perspective. Borke (1975) contends that the three mountain task as set out by Piaget is not easy, because the mountains are remarkably similar albeit with small differences. She repeated Piager and Inhelder’s basic design but substituted a more age appropriate task, based on the hypothesis that a child’s ability to succeed on a perceptual task is a function of both the nature of the task as well as the kind of response required and both should be controlled in the research design for optimum results. She used objects familiar to the children and asked them to rotate the display. The findings in her study suggest that it is not the lack of awareness of the child of another person’s perspective which is the issue, rather it is the lack of conceptual skills to communicate that awareness which may have accounted for the results obtained by Piaget and Inhelder (1956). The more conceptually difficult a task is, the greater the likelihood for children under seven years of age to give their own perspective in an attempt to perform successfully at it. Donaldson (1978) in critiquing Piaget’s three mountains task contends that context is an important aspect that must be taken into consideration; children are able to understand others’ feelings, hence tasks that can tap this ability will be a better measure of cognitive ability. This was illustrated in an experiment she conducted, where children were supposed to hide a baby doll from toy police officers and then imagine the viewpoint of the officers. Children performed much better in this test than they did in the Piagetan three mountain test, suggesting that young children may be capable of empathy, contrary to Piaget’s contention that they are totally egocentric and do not take into account the perspective of others. Piaget’s cognitive theories are substantially accepted and have been the guiding force in understanding the cognitive process in children. However, as the research studies above have shown, it appears that the Piagetan assessments may need to be revised and modified. In the light of the new findings that are emerging, it appears that Piaget may have underestimated children’s abilities as well as the ages at which these abilities emerge. References: * Baillarjeon, Renee, Spelke, Elizabeth S and Wasserman, Stanley, 1985. “Object permanence in five month old infants”, Cognition, 191-208. * Baillerjeon, Renee, 1987. “Object permanence in 3 ½ and 4 ½ month old infants”, Developmental Psychology, 23(5):655-664 * Baillerjeon, Renee and DeVos, Julie, 1991. “Object permanence in young infants” further evidence”, Child Development, 62(6): 1227-1246. * Baillerjeon, Renee, 2004. “Infants reasoning about hidden objects: evidence for event general and event specific expectations”, Developmental Science, 7(4): 391- 424 * Borke, Helene, 1975. “Piaget’s mountains revisited: changes in the egocentric landscape”, Developmental Psychology, 11(2): 240-243. * Donaldson, M, 1978. “Children’s Minds”, Collins. * Flavell, John H, Abrahams-Everett, Barbara, Croft, Karen and Flavell, Eleanor R, 1981. “Young children’s knowledge about visual perception: Further evidence for the Level 1-Level 2 Distinction”, Developmental Psychology, 17:99-103 * Hespos, Susan J and Baillerjeon, Renee, 2001. “Infants knowledge about occlusion and containment events: a surprising discrepancy”, American Psychological Society, 12(2): 141-147 * Hetherington, E.M. and Parke, R.D, 2003. “Child Psychology: A Contemporary Viewpoint” (5th Ed.), New York: McGraw-Hill. * Light, Paul and Nix, Carolyn, 1983. “Own View versus Good view in a perspective taking task”, Child Development, 54.2, pp 480-483 * Masangkay, Zenaida, McCluskey, Kathleen A, McIntyre, Curtis W, Sims-Knight, Judith, Vaughn, Brian E and Flavell, John H, 1974. “ The early development of inferences about the visual percepts of others” Child Development, 45: 357-366. * Piaget, Jean and Inhelder, Barbel, 1956. “The child’s conception of space”, London: Routledge. * Schilling, Thomas H, 2000. “Infants looking at possible and impossible screen rotations: the role of familiarization”, Infancy, 1(4): 389-402 * Salkind, Neil J, 2004. “An introduction to Theories of Human Development”, Sage. * Wynn, Karen, 1992. “Addition and Subtraction by human infants”, Nature, 358: 749-750 * Xu, Fei and Spelke, Elizabeth S, 2000. “Large number discrimination in six month old infants”, Cognition, 74: B1-B11 Read More