Piaget - Some Thoughts

I don't believe I ever talked much about Piaget, so I'll do a little post about him tonight. We took his theory in class, most prominently his "ages and stages" idea of the four main stages of childhood development. I remember taking this several times in Psych courses, and even have a clever little acronym (SPCF) To memorize the order, it sounds like SPCA, no connection really but it worked for me after coming up with it in Intro Psych II!

Anyways, I put a fair bit of merit into Piaget's ideas, as the stages can quite readily be observed in real life, though the lines can be blurry with the ages, the stages do have a legitmate flow and transition, which can be observed. The first sensorimotor focuses primarily on the sensory stimuli and "feel it out" way in which infants and young toddlers explore the world. They grasp, crawl, walk, and roll around, taking in as much sensory information as they can. I mean, I don't know if you've ever watched an infant or toddler, but this is pretty accurate. They seem incredibly interested in absorbing as much information about the physical, obervable world around them, and just kind've...motor along doing so. I don't know if anyone remembers being the the grocery store when you were younger, and running your hand along the ailes touching and feeling EVERYTHING. I dunno why, I just did. 'Cause I wanted to...see how it....feels. You know? ...Sensorimotor. Anyways, moving on.

As the stages progress from sensorimotor to formal operational, we really can see some important milestones in children's reasoning and cognitions. Some concepts we went over in class, such as the law of conservation, egocentrism, and the move from logical to abstract thought are all observable changes that ARE different for every child, but also seem to follow in a more organized structure, as indicated by Piaget's stages. Studies such as the one where children observe liquid poured between different shaped glasses and even (my favourite) the marshmallow study can really show us how these differences in individual kids as proposed by Piaget could be seen in a real life application. You'll notice the kids have a VERY hard time seeing the abstract future gain of NOT eating a marshallow, and see the more concrete fact that they just want to eat it and don't care about why they shouldn't. It causes them a great deal of cognitive dissonance, even when they leave it be.

I think thats all for now, but I'll leave you with this video of the marshmallow study. Watch...laugh...and.....laugh.

~Zach