Jean Piaget: Egocentricity

1. Jean Piaget: Egocentricity Jen Boryca Mary Gaffney

2. Jean Piaget’s Life Born in Switzerland August 9, 1896 Began legacy at age 10 when he published his first article. Started working with kids in 1920 when he was hired to construct an intelligence test. He observed his three children: Jacqueline, Lucienne, and Laurent. Died September 16, 1980

3. Theoretical Framework • Cognitive Developmental Theory • Model of the Three Mountains • Supports idea that children are egocentric. • Children are unaware of points of view other than their own while exploiting their fears, wishes, and desires onto the world around them. • Children in the preoperational stage lack sufficient logical skills to take into consideration another person’s point of view

4. Cognitive-Developmental Theory • Sensorimotor Intelligence: This stage tends to last from a child’s birth to two years. In this stage babies organize their physical action schemes, such as sucking, grasping, rooting, and hitting, for dealing with the immediate world.  • Pre-Operational Thought: Ages in this stage range from two to seven years. In this stage children learn to think using symbols and internal images, however their thinking is unsystematic and illogical. Children’s thinking in this stage differs from that of adults. • Concrete Operational Ages in this stage range from seven to eleven years. In this stage children develop the capacity to think systematically. However, they can only think systematically when they can refer to concrete objects and activities. • Formal Operational: This stage begins around the age of eleven and lasts throughout adulthood. In this stage young individuals develop the capacity to think systematically on a purely abstract and hypothetical plane. 

5. Egocentrism • Egocentrism is the tendency of children to cognize their environment only in terms of their own point of view. • The degree of it is directly related to a child’s cognitive development.

6. Definitions • Topological relations: the spatial relationships between different spatial units (up/down, right/left, before/behind etc.). • Shape Constancy-The ability of an individual to fit their momentary perception into any organized schema of constant shape.  Individuals that have the inability to do so tend to try to reverse the appearance of the group of mountains by rotating each specific mountain around individually.  In doing so, individuals do not take the background or the foreground into account.

7. Definitions Cont… • Centration-According to Piaget, this is one of the limitations of Pre-Operational Thought.  Individuals with a centered imagination tend to focus on one particular aspect, ignoring all other important aspects. • Irreversibility-  This is another limitation of Pre-Operational Thought where individuals are unable to reverse a series of steps in their mind.

8. Three Mountain Model Child is placed in front of a table-top model of three mountains, all different in size. Then, they are asked to recreate their point of view using the three miniature mountain models that are placed in front of them. If the child orders the miniature models correctly to replicate the large mountains, then one can conclude they understand the concept involved and are set to move on.

9. Objective of Research • To study the edifice of a unified system linking together various perspectives. • To examine the relationships that a child establishes between his or her own viewpoint and that of other observers.

10. The Problem • Is it possible to determine the stage of a child’s development by having them discern the position of objects in relation to one another in addition to various objects? • Will children who are the same age be in the same stage of development? • Will the data collected follow along the same pattern of that of Jean Piaget?

11. Critical questions that will guide the study • Will children in the same grade make the same decisions when it comes to ordering the mountains and choosing the correct pictures? • Will there be a difference between the decisions the children in 1st grade make about the mountains and their point of view compared to the 4th grade children’s answers? • Will the observations made about the Model of the Three Mountains support Piaget’s theory about egocentrism? • When it comes to understanding the study and its procedures will the younger children express an inability to even take part in the study?

12. Hypotheses • We believe it is possible to determine the stage of a child’s development by having them discern the position of objects in relation to one another in addition to various objects. • However, we do not believe children that are the same age will necessarily be in the same stages of development because they develop at different rates. This is due to the fact that each child is different whether it is due to that child’s culture, environment, gender or even SES. • In the end, we do not feel that our data will follow along the same pattern as Jean Piaget. We made this hypothesis for numerous reasons. First, our sample size is quite small when compared to that of Piaget’s. Moreover, due to technology children may be more advanced or behind in their cognitive development compared to those children at time when Piaget conducted his experiment.

13. Comparison of Research • Piaget experimented on 100 children. 21 between 4 to 6 and 6 years; 30 between 6 years, and 7 to 8 years; 33 between 8 to 9 years and six years; and 16 between 9, 6, and 12 years. • According to his results, Piaget concluded that:Stage I-4-5 yrsStage IIA & IIB- 5-7 yrsStage IIIA- 7-9 yrsStage IIIB- 9-12 yrs • We experimented on 8 first graders, 5 girls and 3 boys. Of those children, 6 of them were the age of seven and two were six years old. • We also studied 8 fourth graders, 5 girls and three boys. Of those children, seven of them were ten and the other was nine years old.

14. After analyzing his results… • Piaget believed that at the age of about 8 or 9 children achieve "visual realism.“ • Piaget claimed that children achieve co-ordination of viewpoints at about age 9 or 10. At this point, the child has now entered into Substage IIIB.

15. Setting Holy Family of Nazareth Catholic School • Early afternoon on April 8th & 9th of 2010 • First and Fourth Grade • Collection of data through interviewing students one by one • In hallway outside of classroom

16. Procedure • Part A • Part B • Part C

18. Demo

19. Piaget’s Rating System • This rating system was created by Piaget and is the same system that was used to rate Piaget’s results. It is divided up into three stages, with the second and third stage containing two substages.

20. Stage 1 • Child does not get “constancy of shape.” • Egocentrism holds then back from understanding topological viewpoints, such as right/left, in front/behind or above/below.

21. Stage 2 • Substage IIa • Confusion • Answer with their point of view • Unable to imagine other viewpoints (such as the doll’s) • Substage IIb • Discern about different viewpoints but are unable to relate the relevant factors in correct way • Do not imagine that the doll sees a different perspective • Beginning to move from spacial egocentrism to true relativity

22. Stage 3 • Substage IIIa • Fully understands topological relations but not initially • children understand changes in the positions but only take partial changes into account • Substage IIIb • Can now co-ordinate perspectives as well as understand relationship between position and perspective. • Understand topological relations and can imagine viewpoints other than their own.

23. Sample Stage IIA • The student can determine their own perspective but fails to model any other point of view.

24. Sample Stage IIB • The student tries to portray a viewpoint different from his own. However, they are still unable to portray the doll’s viewpoint. • For example, Jude placed all of the mountains in a row and each time the doll was moved to different positions throughout the model, he simply twisted one mountain around in a circle. Thus, he trying to make a viewpoint other than his own; however he still believed that the model was fixed.

25. Sample Stage IIIA • Hayden, 10, was able to correctly pick the picture where the doll is placed after a few tries. Each time he would pick a picture up and check to see if it was the right viewpoint. Only after two tries was he able to correctly point out the correct picture.

26. Sample Stage IIIB • Everett was able to produce all the correct answers. He placed the models correctly as well as the pictures and the doll. All viewpoints were understood and he felt confident in his answers.

27. Graph Key • 2= Stage 2  Substage IIa • 2.5=Stage 2 Substage IIb • 3=Stage 3 Substage IIIa • 3.5=Stage 3 Substage IIIb

28. First Graders

29. Fourth Graders

30. First Grade Overall Stages

31. Fourth Grade Overall Stages

32. Hypotheses • We believe it is possible to determine the stage of a child’s development by having them discern the position of objects in relation to one another in addition to various objects. • However, we do not believe children that are the same age will necessarily be in the same stages of development because they develop at different rates. This is due to the fact that each child is different whether it is due to that child’s culture, environment, gender or even SES. • In the end, we do not feel that our data will follow along the same pattern as Jean Piaget. We made this hypothesis for numerous reasons. First, our sample size is quite small when compared to that of Piaget’s. Moreover, due to technology children may be more advanced or behind in their cognitive development compared to those children at time when Piaget conducted his experiment.

33. Things Brought into Question • Lack of time • Amount of children researched • More grades to research • Larger base board for big model • Paper doll instead of wooden doll

34. Was Piaget Right or Wrong? • Piaget was…

35. Conclusion • Our First hypotheses was correct because it was possible to determine the stage of each child’s development by having them discern the position of objects in relation to one another in addition to various objects. However at times we had difficulty discerning which stage each child was in because a lot of the children were showing signs of transitioning into the next substage.

36. Conclusion Cont… • Our second hypothesis was correct because in the first and fourth grade classes, children of the same age fell under different substages of the rating system. For example, 7 yr old Serra fell under substage 2b while 7 yr old Sarah T. was still in substage 2a. Thus proving our hypothesis correct that children develop at different rates.

37. Conclusion • Our third hypothesis was partially correct. When analyzing the 6 and 9 year olds, our data followed along with that of Piaget’s results. However, when studying the 7 and 10 year olds, our results were slightly different. We concluded that although researchers argue that Piaget underestimated children’s capacities, especially those of the pre-operational child, that Piaget may have actually overestimated the 7 and 9 year olds.

38. Nature vs. Nurture