Piaget’s Research Methods

  • Piaget’s research methods have been criticised for several reasons, the first being that his studies involved children from European academic families who valued certain aspects of cognitive development such as logical thinking. In other cultures, greater value may be placed on basic concrete operations rather than abstract ideas. This means that Piaget’s findings (and theory) may not be representative of the development of thinking in all children from all cultures.
  • Secondly, the design of many of the studies may have confused younger children in particular, since the tasks did not relate to real life. Donaldson argued children can understand another’s viewpoint if asked in a way that draws on their knowledge from everyday life situations. This was demonstrated in the study by Hughes. Therefore perhaps the information relating to egocentrism in Piaget’s theory is invalid.
  • It has been argued that Piaget’s studies involved demand characteristics and therefore the children felt they had to respond in a certain way. For example, McGarrigle and Donaldson (1975) argued that the deliberate transformation in conservation tasks (and asking the same question twice) suggests that the experimenter is looking for a different response. In fact, research shows that children are capable of conservation at an earlier age than Piaget suggested, when these demand characteristics are not present (e.g. McGarrigle and Donaldson’s 1974 study).
  • The theory could be suggested as a very ambitious attempt, since it attempts to describe children’s cognitive development from irrational and illogical, to rational and logical. Nevertheless, the ideas that children learn basic operations (e.g. reversibility) and that these operations allow them to solve numerous problems, are valuable ones.
  • Piaget underestimated the age at which children could do things. This may be because he did not distinguish between competence (what a child is capable of doing) and performance (how a child performs on a particular task). Piaget assumed that failure on a task lacked the underlying cognitive structures required for success, however it could be that they lacked other abilities in order to be successful, such as the manual dexterity to pick up the cloth to search for an object (object permanence).
  • Piaget also underplayed the role of social factors in cognitive development. For example, children’s cognitive development benefits from social interactions with adults and other children, as seen in Vygotsky’s theory. Therefore, the theory could be seen to ignore the importance of other factors found to affect development.
  • Despite these shortcomings, it must be remembered that Piaget produced the first comprehensive theory of cognitive development, and therefore made a valuable contribution to his field. This theory has been extensively tested, consequently the theory has generated much research which has furthered our understanding of cognitive development. Moreover, his theory has had considerable impact on educational practice (e.g. it led to... complete later when we have covered this………..) which therefore demonstrates its practical applications.