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The Accuracy of Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Harrison Gray
Submitted as a Psychology Practical Report
Due Date: 4th June
Tutor: Ms Joblin
Class: Year 11 VCE Psychology
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Jean Piaget is recognised as one of the leading Psychologists of the 20 th century. His work
with infants and children on the subject of cognitive development has shaped the view that
Psychologists today have on the focus. Piaget’s theory was that cognitive development
within the early years of childhood through to adulthood is broken up into four stages. Each
of the stages in the theory has certain goals that have to be reached before the person
completes the stage. The stages covered in this report are the Pre-operational and Concrete
operational stages. The second stage in Piaget’s theory is the Pre-operational stage, which is
from two to seven years of age. The main goals in this stage are; decentring (when a child is
able to see things from another person’s perspective), animism (which is the mind frame
when a child thinks that all objects can feel and therefore hurt), transformation (when a
child can understand that an object can change from one form to another) and reversibility
(where a child can count or view something one way, but cant repeat it backwards. This
occurs early in the child’s development, but is able to accomplish reversibility by the end of
the Pre-operational stage). The third stage is called the Concrete operational stage, which is
from seven to twelve years. The goals in this stage are; conservation (when a child
recognises that an object does not change its weight, mass, volume or area when the shape
alters its appearance or shape) and classification (an ability that involves the child putting
different objects into groups or under ‘classifications’ depending on the characteristics of
the objects). The reason the year 11 Psychology class is doing this experiment is to assess
the accuracy of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
Piaget’s theory of the four stages wasn’t left alone. Many replications and analysis of the
theory have been performed since the theory was first published. One such previous
research experiment was performed by Phillips, who tested reversibility in a four year old
boy currently in the Pre-operational stage (according to Piaget’s theory). The boy was asked
whether he had a brother, to which the boy replied ‘yes, his name is Jim’. But when Phillips
asked ‘does Jim have a brother?’ the boy replied ‘no’. This shows that a child of four has not
yet mastered the developmental skill of reversibility, supporting Piaget’s theory that a child
does not develop this until the end of the Pre-operational stage (6-7 years). Another
previous research subject is of course Piaget himself, who conducted many different
experiments on his own theory of cognitive development. One such experiment was for a
girl during the Pre-operational stage on egocentrism. The task for the child was to view a
diorama with models on it (Piaget used mountains with different landmarks on each). The
child was to walk around the diorama and see it from all angles. Then a doll was placed on
the opposite side of the mountains to the child and Piaget showed her several pictures of
different angles to the mountains, including the dolls perspective and the girl’s perspective.
Piaget asked her to choose the picture of what the doll would be seeing and three times out
of three the child instead chose the one from her perspective. That experiment shows that
children up until the age of seven cannot see things from another persons (or objects)
perspective.
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Similar to the above experiments, the year 11 Psychology class performed a range of
experiments on children from both the Pre-operational and Concrete operational stages.
The independent variable was the activities that the class asked the children to perform. The
dependant variable was the results that the children achieved. The hypothesis was that
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development was accurate in predicting when a child would
develop various cognitive abilities.
Method
Participants
The participants in these experiments were all students from Lara Primary School. Sixteen
students were in the Pre-operational stage and seventeen students were in the Concrete
operational stage. The year 11 Psychology class used stratified random sampling and
random allocation in selecting the subjects for the experiment. Factors that may have
affected results were;
 There was a boy with Autism within the Pre-operational students.
 Some students didn’t want to participate in the activities which may have affected
their results.
 The researchers were pressed for time and may have had to rush the experiments.
 There were only six activities over two stages and they were only tested once per
student.
 Ms Joblin’s Psychology class only performed one set of activities in the Preoperational stage whereas the other experiments were performed by another
Psychology class.
Materials
Computer
Calculator
Stationary Equipment
Equipment used for activities
5th Edition Psychology textbook for VCE Units one and two
Procedure
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The Psychology class first established their aim, which was to test two of the stages in
Piaget’s theory.
Next they decided upon a hypothesis for the outcome of the experiment.
They then devised a range of activities to test the participants.
The Psychology class then tested the students and thoroughly recorded their results.
After testing the participants, the class collected the results from the other Psychology
class and compared them, graphed them and drew conclusions from them.
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Results
Test results for students in the Pre-operational stage.
Stage – test
Pre-operational stage
Egocentrism
Reversibility
Concrete Operational Stage
Conservation of Mass
Conservation of Number
Conservation of Volume
Conservation of Length
Correct
Incorrect
100%
94%
0%
6%
31%
59%
65%
35%
69%
41%
35%
65%
Test results for students in the Concrete operational stage.
Stage – test
Pre-operational stage
Egocentrism
Reversibility
Concrete Operational Stage
Conservation of Mass
Conservation of Number
Conservation of Volume
Conservation of Length
Correct
Incorrect
75%
66%
25%
34%
31%
32%
44%
12%
69%
68%
56%
88%
Pre-operational Stage
100
90
80
70
Results (%)
60
Activities
50
Egocentrism
40
Reversibility
30
20
10
0
Pre-operational Participants
Participants
Concrete operational
Participants
4
Concrete operational Stage
100
90
80
70
Results (%)
Participants
60
Pre-operational
Participants
50
40
Concrete operational
Participants
30
20
10
0
Coservation Conservation Conservation Conservation
of Mass
of Number of Volume
of Length
Activities
Discussion
As shown in the collated data above, the results of this experiment don’t support the
hypothesis that Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is accurate in predicting when a
child would develop various cognitive abilities. This shows because in some cases the
Concrete operational students were not able to complete the Pre-operational tests as well
as the Pre-operational students and vice versa.
This supports the theories of many Psychologists that Piaget’s theory is not broad enough in
its age groups. There are other criticisms of Piaget’s theory, such as when Donaldson (1979)
stated that Piaget may have overestimated his participants’ abilities in English and that what
he marked down as a wrong answer may have just been a misunderstanding on the child’s
part. Another criticism, (Kail & Bisanz, 1992) says that students in the Pre-operational stage
were unable to complete tests Piaget set from higher stages (Concrete operational stage for
example) because their attention would wander and they would forget the task they were
set.
This shows that while Piaget’s theory is accurate in some ways, he didn’t take into account
enough factors that may have influenced the results he obtained. Therefore, Piaget’s theory
of cognitive development in children is not as accurate as it may seem. This is yet another
experiment that doesn’t support his theory. The cognitive abilities in the very young are
extremely hard to interpret or record, as they cannot speak or understand you easily, and
although it gets easier as the children learn English, the tests performed need to be done on
a large scale before it can be generalised to the wider population.