GCSE Psychology Development Study: Piaget and Inhelder (1956)

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Piaget and Inhelder (1956) 'Three mountains task' aims

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• Piaget & Inhelder wanted to look at the extent to which children of different ages were able to take the view of another person.

• Piaget & Inhelder wanted to look at children's overalls system of putting together a number of different views of what they see.

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Piaget and Inhelder's procedure: participants

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• A total of 100 children were studied

• Children 4 years old were NOT involved in the study as they were considered too young for the task

• 21 children (4-6.5 years)

• 30 children (6.5-8 years)

• 33 children (8-9.5 years)

• 16 (9.5-12 years)

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Piaget and Inhelder's procedure: four main pieces of equipment

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1. A model of three mountains, using sheets of paper pasted together to form card (1 metre sq., 12-30 cm high, lowest mountain was green + house on top, next highest was brown + red cross on top + stream coming down it, highest was grey + path winding down

2. Ten pictures of the three mountains model were taken from different positions around it.

3. Three pieces of card, the same color as the mountains which the child could arrange according to a certain viewpoint

4. Wooden doll (3 cm high + with no facial features)

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Piaget and Inhelder's procedure: ways of questioning the child

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• The child was asked to use cardboard shapes to show how the mountain scene looked from different viewpoints. They were asked to place the shapes to show the view they themselves were looking at. They were also asked to place the shapes to show what the doll, positioned by the researcher around the model, could 'see'.

• The child was shown ten pictures of the model and asked to pick out the picture that represented what they could see from different positions. They were also asked to choose the picture the doll could 'see' again from different positions the doll was placed in.

• The child chose a picture and then had to position the doll so it could 'see' the viewpoint.

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Piaget and Inhelder's results

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• Pre-operational Stage

  • A child from 4 to 6.5 years in this stage chooses pictures and places cardboard to show their own view of the three mountains model, even if asked to show the doll's view.

  • Children cannot place the doll in a position where the view matches a picture the child is shown.

  • Even though the older children in this stage start to see that there are views other than their own, overall they show egocentrism.

• Concrete operational Stage

  • From 7 to 9 years old, the child starts to understand that others looking from a different position can see the model differently.

  • By 9 to 10 years old, children can understand that the doll has a different view if in a position that is different from their own.

  • As part of the experiment, the researchers gathered qualitative data and included observations about individual children in their report.

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Piaget and Inhelder's conclusion

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• The researchers concluded that children up to 7 years old were egocentric (they could not see from a viewpoint other than their own). Although towards the end of pre-operational stage, the children were more able to think about someone else's viewpoint; overall, children in this stage did not have the understanding of 'viewpoint' yet.

• Older children were non-egocentric since they were able to look at the mountains as objects relating to one another, such as the larger one sometimes blocking the view of the smaller one. Also, older children were able to position their own viewpoint among views of others and construct mental representations of what others can see since they had the ability to coordinate different perspectives, while the younger children could not do so.

• The 'three mountains task' provided evidence for Piaget's stages of development as it showed that children in the pre-operational stage were egocentric, whereas those in the concrete operational stage could take a different view from their own and coordinate different viewpoints.

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Piaget and Inhelder's evaluation: strengths

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• gathered observation and qualitative data

• used experimental methods

• there was reliability in the findings

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Piaget and Inhelder evaluation: weaknesses

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• Other studies that used more realistic scenarios did not give the same findings

  • Helen Borke (1975) changed Piaget and Inhelder's task to make it more appropriate for the younger children.

  • Willingham used Betty and Repacholi & Alison Gopnik's (1997) study to criticize Piaget's stages of development. In a similar study, they found that children of 18 months could show non-egocentric behavior.