1.

2011 By Kendra Cherry, Psychology Expert entitled Support and Criticism of

Piaget's Stage Theory retrieve @
http://psychology.about.com/od/piagetstheory/p/piagetcriticism.htm

This article sticks on Piagets research methods wherein the author believed
that it is difficult to generalize his findings to a large population since
Piagets major source of inspiration with his theory focused on his own three
children and all others from well-educated professionals of high socioeconomic status. In addition research is in doubt of Piaget's dispute that all
children will routinely move to the next stage of development as they
mature. Some data suggests that environmental factors may play a role in
the development of formal operations.
Moreover most researchers have the same opinion that children acquire many of the abilities at
an earlier age than Piaget suspected. As a matter of fact recent theory of mind research has found
that 4 and 5 years old children have a rather sophisticated understanding of their own mental
processes as well as those of other people. For example, children of this age have some ability to
take the perspective of another person, meaning they are far less egocentric than Piaget believed.

http://www.massey.ac.nz/~wwpapajl/evolution/assign2/AWarren/crit.html
There have been a number of criticisms leveled at Piaget's theory. Here are some of the most
common ones:
One criticism mentioned by Carlson and Buskist (1997) concerns Piaget's terminology. From a
scientific viewpoint, it is necessary to define new terms operationally, in other words, in the form

of an operation which can be duplicated. Piaget often didn't do this, so it is difficult for others to
assess the significance of his general findings because they cannot be easily and precisely
replicated. For example, consider terms like 'accommodation' and 'assimilation'. Piaget offers
these terms up to indicate a change that has occurred in a child, but what exactly has changed?
Piaget does not offer a specific operationalised definition that would guide researchers to a link
between observed behavioural changes and posited changes in the mind. This lack of operational
definitions provides a further difficulty. It becomes impossible for any other researcher to
establish a cause-and-effect relationship among Piaget's variables.
A major criticism stems from the very nature of a stage theory. The stages may be inaccurate or
just plain wrong. Weiten (1992) points out that Piaget may have underestimated the development
of young children. He cites Bower, (1982) and Harris, (1983) who have conducted research that
found that some children develop object-permanence earlier than Piaget thought. Others point
out that preoperational children may be less egocentric than Piaget believed. Flavell et al. (1982
cited in Weiten, 1992) showed that even a three year old child is aware that an adult looking at a
card from the opposite side of the child will be seeing a different view. Furthermore, individual
differences may mean that children of similar ages may vary widely across the stages. In fact
some children may never achieve the level of formal operations. If children can show a mixture
of different stages in their cognitive make-up, what is the point in attempting to differentiate
between different stages at all?
Related to the previous criticism is Gray's (1994) notion that Piaget offers no substantial
evidence for a qualitative difference in cognitive capacity between two children of different
stages. The most important aspect of Piaget's theory is that each cognitive stage is different, not
just as a matter of degree, but rather a child's type of thinking is quite different depending on the
stage it is in. Providing evidence for a qualitative difference between stages has not been
comprehensively achieved. This criticism has a further implication. If each stage is marked by a
new type of thinking, then as a child ages there should be signs indicating the sudden acquisition
of certain abilities. In fact the opposite is true. Children tend to progress rather slowly and
gradually. Gray (1994) offers the example of the conservation-of-numbers which most children
can understand by about age five, compared to the conservation-of-substance which normally
develops around age eight. While Piaget does admit that some developments can be slow, critics
argue that overall, cognitive development is so slow as to obviate the need for a stage theory at
all.
Another criticism is levelled at Piaget's action-oriented approach. Piaget believes that physical
manipulation of external objects is essential for normal cognitive development. Theorists have
argued that children born without the physical capability of outward action (consider, for
example, paralysed children born without the ability to move either arms or legs) are still capable
of normal cognitive development. Also, the physical nature of Piaget's theory fails to explain
how children understand abstract words that don't necessarily relate to an immediately physical
object.

A criticism levelled by the likes of Vygotskon cognitive development. The children Piaget
studied grew up in Geneva, a Western culture where children attend school and are trained in
certain forms of thinking. Yet Piaget largely ignored this influence and attributed each child's
intellectual growth to the individual's cognitive reaction to the environment. Later tests (Segall
and others, 1990 cited in Gray, 1994)) have shown that Piaget's formal operational period and
even the concrete operational period are heavily dependent on formal Western schooling.

http://m.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html#collapseOne
Published 2007 | BY Saul Mcleod entitled cognitive technology
Unlike Vygotkys theory, Piaget only refers to stages of cognitive development while Vygotkys
emphasized on culture affecting/shaping cognitive development. Hence, Vygotsky assumes
cognitive development varies across culture whereas Piaget merely states that cognitive
development is mostly universal across cultures.
Secondly, Vygotsky states cognitive development stems from social interactions from guided
learning within the zone of proximal development as children and their partners co-construct
knowledge. In contrast Piaget maintains that cognitive development stems largely from
independent explorations in which children construct knowledge of their own.
For Vygotsky, the environment in which children grow up will influence how they think and
what they think about.
Moreover, Vygotsky places more emphasis on the role of language in cognitive development
(again Piaget is criticized for lack of emphasis on this). For Vygotsky, cognitive development
results from an internalization of language. According to Piaget, language depends on thought
for its development (i.e. thought comes before language). For Vygotsky, thought and language
are initially separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at around three years of age,
producing verbal thought (inner speech).