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Piaget and Inhelder were two researchers worked with children and looked into how they perceived space and the characteristics of objects. Piaget and Inhelder wanted to find out if children in the pre-operational stage (between two and seven years old) are egocentric and therefore unable to see things from another person’s point of view.
Procedures
A model showing three mountains was placed on a table, with each mountain being a different colour and differentiated by:
- One had snow on top
- One had a house on top
- One had a cross on top
A doll was placed on one side of the table and the child sat on the opposite side. The child was asked to say what the doll could see by choosing one of a possible ten pictures. The doll was moved around the table so that it would see the mountains from various different angles.
Results
It was found that four-year-olds (in the pre-operational stage) always chose a picture which showed how they themselves would see the mountains. Most children under the age of seven could not choose the correct picture to accurately show what the doll would see.
Seven-year-olds (in the concrete operational stage) were almost always able to choose the correct picture to show what the doll would see from its point of view.
Conclusion
By age seven, thinking is no longer egocentric as the child can see more than their own point of view. However, for most of the pre-operational stage, egocentrism is a main characteristic.
It was concluded also that this task gave evidence for Piaget’s stages of development; children in the pre-operational stage were egocentric but those who were older than this were able to see things from the perspective of others, just as Piaget had hypothesised.
Strengths
- The concept of egocentrism was explored in much more depth after Piaget’s original research
- The researchers collected qualitative data as they also observed the children and were able to see what the children did and also what they were saying and doing as they were carrying out the tasks
- As the research was experimental, this means that strong controls were in place and the research was easily replicable, giving reliability to the results
Weaknesses
- Critics have stated that Piaget’s instructions to children were not clear and that they did not really know what they had to do in the task
- Further studies to show egocentrism (such as by Hughes, 1975) found that children fared better in the task if the situation that was presented to them was familiar, which means that Piaget’s results were not reliable
- Piaget is criticised for focusing too much on what children could not do and failed to report that although children could not fully see things from others’ point of view by age seven, some could almost do this and some could do it on occasion
