The Evolution of Developmental Theories Since Piaget: A Metaview

History counts and cannot be overlooked. As a case in point, the origins of major theoretical tensions in the field of developmental psychology are traced back to Piaget (1896-1980), who paved the way to major discoveries regarding the origins and development of cognition. His theory framed much of the new ideas on early cognitive development that emerged in the 1970s, in the footsteps of the 1960s' cognitive revolution. Here, I retrace major conceptual changes since Piaget and provide a metaview on empirical findings that may have triggered the call for such changes. Nine theoretical views and intuitions are identified, all in strong reaction to some or all of the four cornerstone assumptions of Piaget's developmental account (i.e., action realism, domain generality, stages, and late representation). As a result, new and more extreme stances are now taken in the nature-versus-nurture debate. These stances rest on profoundly different, often clashing theoretical intuitions that keep shaping developmental research since Piaget.

Piagetian Tasks and Psychometric Intelligence: Different or Similar Constructs?

Research on cognitive ability is done in different paradigms. In the Piagetian paradigm, cognitive ability focuses on cognitive development along qualitative stages. Interactive real scenarios, "Piagetian tasks", are constructed for measurement. According to age, tasks differing in complexity are applied in individual measurements. In the psychometric paradigm, the investigation of cognitive ability focuses on individual differences. Intelligence is seen as a quantitative construct with gradual differences between persons and ages. Paper-and-pencil tests with items differing in difficulty are used for IQ measurement of single persons or school classes. However, do those tasks measure two distinct cognitive abilities? Solving tasks in both approaches requires basic (speed, working memory) and complex cognitive abilities (reasoning, understanding). Regarding empirical relationships, we used three Austrian samples (in kindergarten four to six years old N = 40, in primary school six to eight years old N = 40, and nine to ten years old N = 41). They were tested with psychometric tests (Raven CPM or SPM) and Piagetian tasks. In addition, mental speed (ZVT) was measured in the two school samples. The average observed correlation between IQ and Piagetian tasks was r = .51. In factor analyses, the tests loaded on a common factor of general intelligence. Further analyses revealed that mental speed is correlated more strongly with psychometric (r = .50) than with Piagetian tasks (r = .39), while Piagetian tasks are more related to parental education indicators (speed: r = .11, Raven: r = .20, Piaget: r = .25).

Consciousness in Piaget: possibilities of understanding

The objective of this article is to analyze the understanding of the concept of consciousness in Piaget. The theme of consciousness is a key concept in Piaget’s theory and he is one of the few psychologists to offer a theoretical structure for the understanding of this theme. Notwithstanding, his proposal for understanding consciousness has been little approached or discussed. Grasp of consciousness, for Piaget, can be understood as the cognitive process of assimilating one’s own functioning or that of the other when interacting with physical objects, people, and oneself. The process of constructing grasp of consciousness is explained by meaningful implication, reflecting abstraction, and equilibration. The dialectics between body and mind and between causality and implication pervade the discussions on consciousness in Piaget’s work. Consensus is not found in the literature with regard to Piaget’s conception of consciousness in virtue of this theme being dealt with at different times in his works with slightly distinct approaches. His works following the 1960s offer new possibilities of understanding the concept of consciousness. Although Piaget moved on in his formulations about consciousness, the essence of his ideas can already be found in his early works.

Where's the cookie? The ability of monkeys to track object transpositions

Object permanence is the ability to represent mentally an object and follow its position even when it has disappeared from view. According to Piaget’s 6-stage scale of the sensorimotor period of development, it seems that object permanence appears in Stage 4 and fully develops in Stage 6. In this study, we investigated the ability of some species of monkeys (i.e. pig-tailed macaque, lion-tailed macaque, Celebes crested macaque, barbary macaque, De Brazza’s monkey, L’Hoest’s monkey, Allen’s swamp monkey, black crested mangabeys, collared mangabeys, Geoffroy’s spider monkey) to track the displacement of an object, which consisted of a reward hidden under one of two cups. Our findings showed that the examined subjects possess Stage 6 of object permanence. We then compared our results with data on apes and dogs participating in Rooijakkers et al. (Anim Cogn 12:789–796, 2009) experiment, where the same method was applied. The monkeys examined by us performed significantly better than the dogs but worse than the apes. In our experiment, the monkeys performed above chance level in all variants, but it should be noted that we observed significant differences in the number of correct choices according to the level of a variant’s complexity.

Mental rotation and the human body: Children's inflexible use of embodiment mirrors that of adults

Adults' mental rotation performance with body-like stimuli is enhanced if these stimuli are anatomically compatible with a human body, but decreased by anatomically incompatible stimuli. In this study, we investigated these effects for kindergartners and first-graders: When asked to mentally rotate cube configurations attached with human body parts in an anatomically compatible way, allowing for the projection of a human body, children performed better than with pure cube combinations. By contrast, when body parts were attached in an anatomically incompatible way, disallowing the projection of a human body, children performed worse than with pure combinations. This experiment is of specific interest against the background of two different theoretical approaches concerning imagery and the motor system in development: One approach assumes an increasing integration of motor processes and imagery over time that enables older children and adults to requisition motor resources for imagery processes, while the other postulates that imagery stems from early sensorimotor processes in the first place, and is disentangled from it over time. The finding that children of the two age groups tested show exactly the same effects as adults when mentally rotating anatomically compatible and incompatible stimuli is interpreted in favour of the latter approach. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? In mental rotation, adults perform better when rotating anatomically possible stimuli as compared to rotating standard cube combinations. Performance is worse when rotating anatomically impossible stimuli. What does this study add? The present study shows that children's mental transformations mirror those of adults in these respects. In case of the anatomically impossible stimuli, this highlights an inflexible use of embodiment in both age groups. This is in line with the Piagetian assumption of imagery being based on sensorimotor processes.

Early Tests of Piagetian Theory Through World War II

Psychologists recognized the importance of Jean Piaget's theory from its inception. Within a year of the appearance of his first book translated into English, The Language and Thought of the Child (J. Piaget, 1926) , it had been reviewed and welcomed; shortly thereafter, psychologists began testing the tenets of the theory empirically. The author traces the empirical testing of his theory in the 2 decades following publication of his initial book. A review of the published literature through the World War II era reveals that the research resulted in consistent failure to support the theoretical mechanisms that Piaget proposed. Nonetheless, the theory ultimately gained traction to become the bedrock of developmental psychology. Reasons for its persistence may include a possible lack of awareness by psychologists about the lack of empirical support, its breadth and complexity, and a lack of a viable alternate theory. As a result, the theory still exerts influence in psychology even though its dominance has diminished.

When Stroop helps Piaget: An inter-task positive priming paradigm in 9-year-old children

To determine whether inhibitory control is domain general or domain specific in school children, we asked 40 9-year-old children to perform an inter-task priming paradigm in which they responded to Stroop items on the primes and to Piaget number conservation items on the probes. The children were more efficient in the inhibition of a misleading "length-equals-number" heuristic in the number conservation task if they had successfully inhibited a previous prepotent reading response in the Stroop task. This study provides evidence that the inhibitory control ability of school children generalizes to distinct cognitive domains, that is, verbal for the Stroop task and logico-mathematical for Piaget's number conservation task.

Evidence for an inhibitory-control theory of the reasoning brain

In this article, we first describe our general inhibitory-control theory and, then, we describe how we have tested its specific hypotheses on reasoning with brain imaging techniques in adults and children. The innovative part of this perspective lies in its attempt to come up with a brain-based synthesis of Jean Piaget’s theory on logical algorithms and Daniel Kahneman’s theory on intuitive heuristics.

Pediatric Hospital: The Paradigms of Play in Brazil

The role of play in Brazilian children’s hospitals is highlighted, as well as the perspective of humanization in Brazil. Some aspects of our culture are crucial to understanding the importance of play considering our society. Sabara Children’s Hospital (“Hospital Infantil Sabará”) in Brazil is used particularly to discuss humanization. To understand the issue of play in Brazil, it is important to discuss hospitals in their social context, their history, current roles in children’s care, humanization history and child development, according to the approaches of Piaget and Winnicott that are used in our culture.

The idea of an exact number: children's understanding of cardinality and equinumerosity

Understanding what numbers are means knowing several things. It means knowing how counting relates to numbers (called the cardinal principle or cardinality); it means knowing that each number is generated by adding one to the previous number (called the successor function or succession), and it means knowing that all and only sets whose members can be placed in one-to-one correspondence have the same number of items (called exact equality or equinumerosity). A previous study (Sarnecka & Carey, 2008) linked children's understanding of cardinality to their understanding of succession for the numbers five and six. This study investigates the link between cardinality and equinumerosity for these numbers, finding that children either understand both cardinality and equinumerosity or they understand neither. This suggests that cardinality and equinumerosity (along with succession) are interrelated facets of the concepts five and six, the acquisition of which is an important conceptual achievement of early childhood.