Piaget’s View

(Section 1 – Application Paper) Analyze a person’s cognitive development, from birth to full
cognitive maturity, from Piaget’s view. This person can be yourself, someone else, or someone
imaginary. Address at least 10 concepts associated with Piaget’s theory. Include an example of
each concept within your narrative. Please highlight these 10 concepts in Bold. Write this section
in the form a biography (example given below.)
Reference Page: This first part of your paper should not require references.
Format: APA7 formatting must be used on the cover page, body of paper and reference page.
Example of the style I’d like for the first section:
Calvin Broadus was born October 20, 1971 to Beverly Tate and Vernell Varnado in Long
Beach, California. His parents described him as a happy, outgoing infant who responded with
glee when his father would sing Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” to him. Calvin’s first example
of a secondary circular reaction occurred at just three months of age, when he accidentally
banged a wooden block (G, if you must know) against an empty tea kettle, resulting in a
satisfying bass tone. Over the next several days Calvin practiced this again and again, perfecting
this new skill, perhaps setting the table for greatness to come…
Note how I bold the actual Piagetian concept, and then give an example of Calvin performing it.

(Section 2 – Critical Thinking and Scientific Understanding)
You will need to search for and read 3 articles/books, all centered around Piaget’s most famous
concept: object permanence.
1 – Jean Piaget’s 1954 book The Construction of Reality in the Child
This is available via google books. It doesn’t provide access to the whole book, but enough for
our purposes. You might buy one and consider it a souvenir for the class. I purchased a few
copies and put them in the East Campus Library as well. If none of those work for you, I scanned
about 20 pages into .pdf documents and put them in the Papers folder for you.
You should read pages 44-47, at least. It might be helpful to start from page 30, instead. Or, you
might read all that is available if you like. Note: Piaget refers many times to the exact ages of his
children. 0;9 (4) means that the child was 9 months, 4 days old. 0;6 (19) means 6 months, 19 days
old, etc. On page 44 he refers to the 4th stage: What he means here are the substages of the
overall Sensorimotor stage – see the chart in Ch 5 in your text for a refresher.
2 – Baillargeon’s 1987 study – Object permanence in 3½- and 4½-month-old infants.
You can find this in the PsycArticles database through the Valencia online library. Note: there are
3 experiments described in this study. Reading and understanding just the first one should be
sufficient for this paper.
3 – Lourenco’s 1996 study – In defense of Piaget’s theory: A reply to 10 common criticisms
You can find this in the PsycArticles database through the Valencia online library. This is a high
level study, it is not the easiest to read and digest. Reading and understanding the introduction
and Part 1 of the 10 should be sufficient for this paper.

Reference Page: You will need to include these 3 references (and likely only these 3 references) in
appropriate APA format on your reference page.
In Part 2 of your paper, you will need to thoroughly answer #1, and answer 2 of the remaining 3 prompts.
Provide a robust, evidence based response with appropriate internal citations if necessary.

1. Who is right? A good answer should make appropriate reference to all three articles.
2. What would be your scientific critique of this research be? (Of reading 1, 2, or 3.)
3. What is the next line of research that should be done to advance our understanding in this area?
4. If Piaget were alive today, and had access to modern technology and modern research methods,
how do you think this would have affected his views and methods?
Please copy and paste the 3 prompts into your paper, that way it will be very clear which of your
arguments are connected to which prompt.

This paper focuses on Piaget. This means that using concepts from Vygotsky’s work, or language
development won’t be eligible as concepts in the first part of the paper.

Be sure you get your person to adolescence and include at least one concept from each of Piaget’s
four stages.

Be sure you focus on the Piagetian concepts. Discussing physical dev., or language dev., or the
identity statuses is not the focus of this paper, and won’t count.