Quiz Yourself on Piaget's Stage of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget had a tremendous impact on developmental psychology, education, and psychology thought
his stages of cognitive development. Put your knowledge of Piaget to test in this quick quiz!

Ready. Set. GO!

1. Jean Piaget was a:

a) Child psychologist

b) Developmental psychologist

c) Biologist

d) Genetic Epistemologist

2. According to Piaget, children in the concrete operational stage have difficulty with:

a) Perspective-taking

b) Deductive logic

c) Inductive logic

d) conservation

3. A schema is a:

a) Category of knowledge that allows us to interpret and understand the world.

b) Process of taking in new information

c) Process of balancing old knowledge and new informtion

d) None of the above

4. Child begin to develop symbols to represent events or objects int he world during the _________
substage of the sensorimotor stage:

a) Primary Circular Reactions

b) Secondary Circular Reactions

c) Tertiary Circular Reactions

d) Early Representation Thought

5. The ability to think abstractly and systematically solve problems emerges during the:

a) Concrete Operational Stage

b) Sensorimotor Stage

c) Formal Operational Stage

d) Preoperational Stage

6. Piaget's stages are criticized by some due to:

a) His theory was based on an unrepresentative sample of children.

b) Not all people reach the formal operational stage or use formal operational thought consistently.

c) His theory underestimates children's abilities

d) All of the above.

7. Jane has learned to feed herself with a spoon. When her mother gives her a fork she immediately
begins to feed herself. Jane has _______ the fork into her schema for utensils.

a.) Accommodated

b) Appropriated

c) Assimilated

d) Initiated

8. Piaget beleived that children in the preoperational stage have difficulty taking perspective of another
person. This is known as:

a) Reversibility
b) Egocentrism

c) Metacognition

d) Constructivism

9. Jane's mother has two crackers, both of equal size. She breaks one of the crackers up into four pieces.
Jane says she wants the one with the most and immediately chooses the four pieces, even though the
two amounts are equal. Jane's choice illustrates Piaget's concept of:

a) Accommodation

b) Egocentrism

c) False belief

d) Conservation

10. Piaget assumed that children are ___________ in constructing understanding of the world.

a) Passive

b) Active

c) Neutral

d) Bystanders

Essay:

1) Piaget proposes a stage model of development. How well does the evidence support his assertion?
(Do not describe Piaget’s stages, focus on the evidence, pro or con for stage-like development)

2) Can cognitive development be trained? What would Piaget say? What would information processing
theorists say?