Constructivism and Piaget

From CS260SP09

Human Learning

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KetrinaYim 20:05, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Reading the Piaget excerpts brought up a couple questions. First, do the four stages of learning development (sensori-motor, semiotic, concrete, and propositional) and their corresponding age ranges apply to all children, or might it vary depending on the culture in which a child is raised in? I suppose what I'm really wondering is whether or not the cultural variable has been taken into account in studies similar to the ones Piaget describes.

Second, in chapter 4, it is shown that children younger and children older than seven differ in how they play a game of marbles, partially due to the complexity of the rules. It serves to show that each age group has a different purpose for playing multiplayer games. Apparently, the under-sevens simply enjoy playing in a group while those older prefer the competition that multiplayer offers. However, would this difference still be evident in a game with a simpler set of rules?

Seth Horrigan 23:09, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I was especially intrigued by the example of perceptions of conservation of liquids between 4- to 6-year olds and 7- to 8 year olds. As the authors describe it, the younger group interpret pouring as a physical phenomenon whose results are "literally incalculable". I cannot remember much of my thought process at that age, but the idea that water could change volume by being transformed through pouring definitely seems plausible to me. In fact, even if the child did make some inference from previous observations, there is evidence that liquids can change volume. Water left in a cup overnight will decrease in volume as will water heating on a stove (evaporation). Nevertheless, the mental process of deductive reasoning ostensibly developed around the 7-year split is fascinating. The general jump in logic to recognizing that the liquid is invariant and merely moved from one container to the next is wildly significant. Recognizing that the higher level does not necessarily imply a larger volume is no small feat; neither are the underlying concepts described (reversibility by inversion, additive identities, reciprocal relationships).

I also wonder about the inherent assumption that children move beyond precausal assumptions. Certainly there are older societies that based their historical and mythological bases on precausality, and even in modern times, although adults in western society may consciously reject precausality, they may still hold unconscious or subconscious biases that grow from inherent assumptions of precausality. We may be naturally more egocentric than we wish to acknowledge.

Nicholas Kong 06:50, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

When reading the section on classification I was initially caught by the question "Are there more flowers or more primroses?" I thought, clearly, they are of equal number, because the way the question was phrased led to an immediate assumption of two distinct sets. Only after a re-reading (and the explicit A < B hint) did I realize the question was intended to reveal the ability to recognize subsets. This had me wondering, then, how one safely and convincingly goes about testing the emergence of these internal operators, especially if language may play an obfuscating factor.

This dovetails a little into Seth's point about precausal assumptions. I agree that we do not necessarily "move beyond" these assumptions, but rather I think Piaget claims that when we develop to an operatory level we gain the ability for deductive causality. However, in instances where deductive causality cannot be applied (e.g., origin theories), we may have no choice but to fall back on a precausal explanation. A disclaimer: I left the reading slightly confused about "precausality" and am not entirely sure if it may be equated with "egocentric".

Kenrick Kin 07:50, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Nick's comment on the flowers question. It's almost like a trick question. I had to read it more than once.

I found the section on Causality and Chance interesting. The explanations the children gave for different phenomena were quite creative and I liked the term "quasi-magical" used to describe them. I wonder how children would describe user interfaces. What explanations would they give to our design choices? Computers can certainly seem magical.

Srikanth 11:37, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Throughout the reading, there are several examples that illustrate Vygotzky's concept of Zone of Proximal Development in children. In the liquid transfer experiment mentioned by Seth, or the experiment to test their understanding of sugar dissolving, it is fascinating to see the gradual and incremental development in thinking about these concepts.

The section on Causality and Chance was illuminating in how children form simpler mental models to explain phenomena they do not yet comprehend. Kenrick's question on how children understand user interfaces seems worth exploring. Even though it is probably not backed by empirical evidence, it is often observed that children are faster at learning new technologies than older generations. Could it be that children do not have to fight previously formed mental models like adults do, and form new mental models that explain the function well enough for this novelty they are interacting with?

Himanshu Sharma 14:55, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I am interested in the methodology - selection of children that were the subject of these studies leading to the conclusions made in the reading. It seems that the individual competencies have been discounted. Also, instead of the relation of age with different stages/sub-stages of learning development, the ordering of stages seems more important. Were these studies conducted with same set of children for all the stages?

The study related to learning of logic by comparing the normal children with deaf-mute and blind persons to clear the doubts about the relation of language and logic was thoughtful. A good choice of experiments made it easier to convey the thoughts meant in the reading. I could personally relate to many of them to my childhood - movement of clock, dissolving sugar and the questions related to the section on casualty and chance.

James O'Shea 15:42, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

The author mentioned how young children have largely motor-memories. The example of this was how they don't have trouble walking to school, yet they can't reconstruct their path if you asked them to represent it using 3D models. This reminded me of a study someone in our lab recently did to study cue combination in children. There is a fair amount of research on how our brain combines information from different sources, and it is generally accepted that adults are able to make use of our different sensory systems in a statistically optimal fashion. For example, we can interact with the world using both vision and haptic information, and we generally combine these sources of information in order to make sense of the world. The study I'm thinking of was designed to see whether young children combine cues in the same way. They did a study in which subjects (children) were asked to estimate the size of a block and they used either touch, vision, or both. They found that prior to 8 years old, children primarily rely on the haptic information to assess the size of an object. After 8 years old, they combine the visual information for this task.

The paper describing this study can be found here.

Brian Tran 17:08, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I was very curious as to what methodology was used to observe that children could not observe speed at a young age until it was developed as a concrete operation around the ages of 6 or 7. I feel that children have been shown to observe speed at a very young age and that to say they do not would seem contrary to my personal experience as a child. As children, we feel that we notice that we finish eating our ice cream scoop faster than somebody else. Perhaps children do not acknowledge speed as a function of time, but I feel that children notice things at the moment and that they would notice two people eating ice cream and then notice one person stopping eating. The lack of acknowledgement of speed would make one of my all time children's stories, The Tortoise and the Hare, nonsensical to many of these children. Furthermore, children would not understand the game of race until they were at least 7; yet we play it all the time. I see that the article was from the 1960s, so it might h ave been written in a time when child intellect was thought to be less than what we think it is now as was discussed in the beginning of last class’s reading.

David (Tavi) Nathanson 17:37, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

@Seth That's a very good point regarding evidence for liquids changing volume, such as the evaporation of water overnight or water left on a stove. I was wondering whether there were many examples of natural volume transformations, and I thought of a few: freezing a liquid, dropping a solid that then splits into multiple smaller parts, blowing bubbles into a cup (so that the contents of the cup rise), dough rising, meat cooking (and therefore getting smaller), and fruit drying. It's very interesting that *despite* all of these indicators of a lack of conservation, such a notion is developed. And because of that, I certainly agree that it is no small feat!

Yuta Morimoto 17:43, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

In reading, Piaget mentioned learning a process of children and describe their development of verbal skill. As we know, the process of children happens spontaneously and seems different from adult one contrary. Normally, adult acquire second language using more pedagogical way such as studying syntax. But, Piaget perspective is not focusing on the semiotic process and its similarity. I did not recognized similarity in the function of semiotic process. But I am wondering if the process is stable in adult and it can be applied to learning language application.

Anuj 01:58, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Apart from the discussions above and the interesting points that the reading raises, what beats me is what kind (backgrounds, communities) of kids are we talking about here? As was clear in last class, a major part of a child's development process comes from his environment. I think almost all of us agree on the fact that the background of a child to large extent effects her cognitive process. What is less clear here is what part of the world are we looking at? Are we looking at kids studying in the Atherton area (which is a rich neighborhood) in Palo Alto or are we talking about kids in Africa, who may or may not have in-class support from teachers. Thoughts?

Simon Tan 04:00, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

@Ketrina: I also wondered why there seemed to be no mention of cultural influences in Piaget's book. I feel that the differences in values between cultures could very likely cause development in children to vary, particularly in the area of moral judgement and social interactions. At the very least, I have doubts that all children around the world hit the stages of learning development at the exact ages that Piaget describes. Who, exactly, did Piaget study to formulate his theories?

Similarly, as Anuj mentions, social class also can affect a child's development. Schooling itself varies greatly in different parts of the world. Also, I'm under the impression that social behaviours (such as in the game of marbles) can only develop when there are ample social interaction opportunities; what if a child *is* isolated most of his/her life or schooling is done in a very anti-social way? This goes back to the discussion question of whether development differs in schooled vs. unschooled situations, which I believe it does.

Priyanka Priyanka Reddy 02:19, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

That's odd - my comment got deleted. Along the lines of what Anuj said, I was also wondering about the experiments that were done to determine the different stages of development that Piaget talks about. When he talks about how children develop from the ages of 5 and older, were those children in formal schooling? If these children were in formal schooling, then using these results to help develop software for children in developing nations would be very misleading. And, if they weren't in formal schooling, it would be really interesting to find out how much more they could develop with the assistance of formal schooling.

Constructivism and Piaget

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