Piaget is still relevant for understanding the development of children’s minds if we are interested in big questions like how do thinking and logical reasoning develop? Piaget’s work is still important because he was ahead of his time in thinking about how children develop new, valid knowledge, beginning with their action on the world – an insight that is currently receiving new attention.

Piaget and child development theory: Why is he still relevant for understanding how children’s minds develop?

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the most famous scholars in the history of psychology. His focus on fundamental issues concerning how knowledge develops is still relevant and has a great deal to offer current and future approaches in psychology. Yet determining this relevance for our understanding of child development is difficult because he is a paradoxical figure.

Although Piaget was very influential, publishing some 100 books and 600 papers based on uncounted studies with his collaborators, he is also one of the most misunderstood and criticized authors in psychology. Progress in science requires criticism, but to be beneficial it should be based on solid understanding. Unfortunately, much of the well-known criticism in current textbooks and blogs tends to be based on misinterpretations of Piaget’s work.

One reason why Piaget was so commonly misunderstood also reflects why his approach is still important, fitting well with current thinking in developmental psychology. He challenged preconceptions that were taken for granted by adopting a radically different worldview: that intelligence develops through our action and interaction. This view is consistent with some current theory in cognitive science. Thus, Piaget’s approach is not just historical, it established a fruitful foundation for later research.

Piaget is perhaps best known for suggesting that there are four distinct stages of cognitive development, which refer to different and increasingly complex forms of thinking through which children progress. But he later regretted this focus on stages because he understood that it is more important to understand the process through which children move from simple to more complex forms of thinking. This became his theory of how knowledge develops; understanding it is essential to examining his view of knowledge.

Piaget’s constructivist view of knowledge

To understand Piaget’s theory, it is crucial to appreciate the questions that concerned him. He was interested in how human thinking develops, especially scientific thinking. Piaget referred to his work as genetic epistemology, a term that has been misunderstood by some textbook authors as referring to genes, which is the current meaning of genetic. However, when Piaget coined the term in the 1920s, genetic (or the French genese) referred to genesis, as in origin and development. Epistemology refers to the study of knowledge. Thus, Piaget conceptualized the discipline of genetic epistemology as the study of how knowledge develops.

Central to this concept is how humans develop the ability to think – for example, how we plan for the future or reflect on the past. Genetic epistemology considers how children develop new knowledge. Some knowledge is certain or necessary, such as the understanding that two plus two is necessarily four, or that the number of objects in a group remains the same as long as objects are not added or taken away, even if they are moved around or counted in different ways.

Piaget’s question regarding the development of scientific thinking could be studied by examining its history, and he did explore this topic. But his question can also be addressed by studying children as they develop more complex knowledge and ways of thinking. Piaget initially thought he would study children for a few years, but he ended up devoting much of his extensive career to researching child development, from when he first earned a PhD in biology at age 21 to shortly before his death at 84.

Any theory of how children develop forms of thinking is based on assumptions about how they learn about their world, so the presuppositions regarding how we come to know reality should be examined. Many psychologists assume that we learn about the world just by opening our eyes and knowledge floods in. This seems to fit with our intuitions. If we imagine a scene, we might think of it as a match to a landscape we have seen. This is the idea that we know the world through representing it. It reflects the common view that knowledge is based on passively forming mental representations that match the world, much like copies. These representations are either claimed to be derived from experience (empiricism) or be innate (nativism).

Although these two approaches differ in the source of knowledge, they agree that this knowledge is a set of representations of the world. Piaget (1970) labelled this approach the copy theory of knowledge, while his American contemporary, John Dewey (1929), criticized it as the spectator view of knowledge (see Chapman, 1999).

However, if the only way we know the world is through representing it, then the only way to check such a representation is to compare it with another representation. But this does not help us check whether this knowledge is correct because that can only be done by checking the representation against reality. We would need some independent way to do that.

Thus, this representational theory of how knowledge works assumes that we already have knowledge, and it does not explain how we come to know about the world. Therefore, it is flawed and an alternative is needed. Piaget’s theory is built on resolving this problem, but if researchers are not aware of the circularity of the copy theory, then the rest of Piaget’s alternative may seem unnecessary.

As a result of repeated experiences, they come to know the world in terms of their increasing ability to anticipate what will happen when they act.

If knowledge is not a matter of representation, then how can we successfully navigate the world without bumping into parts of it? The fact that we can interact successfully with world suggests a better view of human intelligence –that is, infants and children acquire knowledge through activity. They learn about what they can do with objects, as well as other people, and what happens in response. As a result of repeated experiences, they come to know the world in terms of their increasing ability to anticipate what will happen when they act.

In framing this action-based view of knowledge, Piaget endorsed a view known as constructivism, according to which children come to understand the world through learning what they can do with it. This view involves learning to anticipate what will happen when we do something. Thus, perception, according to Piaget, is not just a passive process. To see a hammer is not just having an image of the tool on the eye’s retina; it involves understanding the potential to interact with the hammer, that is, as an object for grasping and hitting nails (or for an infant, wooden pegs).

Piaget challenged preconceptions that tend to be taken for granted and in their place worked within a constructivist, or action-based, worldview. The word constructivism has been used by a variety of theorists, so readers should carefully assess what researchers mean when they use this word.

To grasp Piaget’s explanation of how the shift from simple action to knowledge occurs, it is important to understand his concepts of scheme, assimilation, and accommodation. A scheme is a pattern of action that can be repeated. It is composed of affect, sensation, motor movements, and perception. Schemes begin with simple reflexes that gradually get more complex. For example, newborns have an initial ability to suck at their mother’s breast, and they quickly get better at this. This sucking scheme can be extended to explore other objects, such as an adult’s finger. That is, other objects are assimilated to the sucking scheme. The infant applies her previous skills to engage in a new experience. But every new experience is different, and this results in accommodation, in the sense that sucking on the nipple of a bottle is different than sucking a mother’s breast – more vigorous sucking is required to obtain milk and some breastfed babies never manage to get used to this (i.e., they do not accommodate to it).

Assimilating objects to previous action schemes gives meaning or significance to new objects. That is, infants understand something in terms of what they can do with it. The processes of assimilation and accommodation are linked and are always involved in how children adapt to the world, gradually developing more complete knowledge of reality.

In assimilation, children understand their new experience in terms of past experience, expecting the world to behave as it has in the past. For example, when babies first see a toy rattle, they may assimilate it to their learned skill in grasping objects (i.e., a grasping scheme) based on their previous experience with objects that have a similar appearance, such as sticks. Their expectations are based on their previous encounters with sticks. But because each new experience is always unique, children accommodate to any differences and thus extends their knowledge in new ways. They then develop new anticipations of what may happen.

In this example, if a rattle that has been picked up makes a noise, infants will learn to shake it but not perform the same action on sticks they have previously played with. Thus, new experiences change the child’s thinking fundamentally. They may then test whether grasping another new object produces a similar rattling sound.

This process also occurs during word learning. For example, a child might learn the word dog, but then assimilate other animals to this experience and refer to horses and squirrels with the same word. Later in development, students might learn about Piaget’s theory but assimilate it into their experience with social learning theories before, hopefully, recognizing the differences and accommodating to reach a deeper understanding.

Progress through Piaget’s stages of cognitive development occurs via a constant iterative process that results in a gradual construction of more complete knowledge of the world. Construction does not mean that this knowledge is made up, but that it is built on experience with reality.

This relational way of thinking is also consistent with many indigenous peoples’ ways of understanding the world and our relations with it.

Piaget’s worldview fits with some current approaches in cognitive science based on embodiment and enaction (e.g., De Jaegher, Di Palolo, & Gallagher, 2010). This relational way of thinking is also consistent with many indigenous peoples’ ways of understanding the world and our relations with it (e.g., Ross, 2006). This perspective can be applied much more broadly beyond Piaget’s areas of interest to the development of communication and social understanding, and his own initial work on moral development can be extended.

Piaget: Stages of development

Piaget described four stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage, and formal operational stage.

1. Sensorimotor stage, birth to 18 months

In the sensorimotor stage, Piaget (1936/1963) described how infants transition from acting on the world to the beginning of mental activity. Development begins with a practical lived form of interaction centered on the child’s own body and movements that are initially involuntary. This stage builds on action in the development of thinking during the first 18 months. Infants are active and curious about new events and experiences. Babies begin interacting with action schemes like sucking, pushing, hitting, and grasping, to explore and manipulate the world they experience. From this perspective, newborns initially have no self-consciousness and no clear awareness of any effects they produce. By coordinating their actions on objects, often in social interactions, they develop a sense of themselves and how they relate to people and things. Piaget described six sub-stages within the sensorimotor stage.

Sub-stage 1: Reflex activity (birth to 1 month)

During the first month, babies’ interaction begins with sucking, rooting, grasping, touching, crying, and moving their arms and legs. Piaget described these actions as reflexes but not in the sense of involuntary bodily movements such as sneezing. These are actions newborns engage in and they also refine these skills.

Sub-stage 2: Primary circular reactions (1-4 months)

At this stage, babies’ activity is focused on their own body (hence “primary”) and it is repetitive (hence “circular”). Babies try to recreate experiences that initially happened by chance, such as sucking their thumb or grasping their foot. Also, two schemes, such as looking and grasping or reaching and sucking, may be combined into an action that the baby finds enjoyable. Piaget argued that this is not a passive process of forming associations. Instead, babies actively explore, and objects come to have significance for them.

Photo: Shutterstock.

Sub-stage 3: Secondary circular reactions (4-8 months)

Infants’ interaction at this stage changes from a focus on their own sensations to what is happening in the world. The baby starts to engage with objects and events (hence “secondary”) and repeats actions to reproduce their effects. For example, Piaget’s daughter repeatedly kicked while in her cot to make dolls that were hung above her move. She did not intend to make the dolls sway, she just enjoying that they did so, and she learned about the link between her kicking and the dolls moving.

At this stage of cognitive development, such learning is by accidental discovery. But it is focused on events in the world (e.g., seeing dolls move) rather than infants’ experience based on their own bodies (e.g., sucking or grasping). Infants’ attempts to grasp might accidently result in pushing and an object moving further away, and this could lead to interest in this unexpected outcome that the infant may explore. These examples illustrate infants’ interest and curiosity in actively exploring their world.

Sub-stage 4: Coordination of secondary schemes (8-12 months)

At this stage, babies begin to act intentionally, that is, to coordinate schemes to achieve a desired result. For example, an infant may move one object to reach another. This demonstrates the emergence of intentional activity because the baby is performing an action to achieve a desired result.

Sub-stage 5: Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months)

At this stage, babies start active experimentation in the sense that they can apply a scheme to achieve a result, but if it does not work, they can try another scheme in their repertoire of action patterns.

Sub-stage 6: Invention of new means through mental combinations (over 18 months)

At this stage, toddlers start to find new ways of doing things on their own initiative instead of through trial and error. For example, in the case of Piaget’s daughter, instead of backing away awkwardly after bumping a toy pram into a wall, she paused for a moment and then walked around the pram to push it from the other side. It appeared that she was able to solve this problem by coordinating her actions implicitly or mentally without actually having to perform them first to grasp their consequence. That is, she could anticipate the outcome of her action even before performing the action. This indicates the end of the sensorimotor intelligence stage.

Knowledge of objects

In addition to describing the six sub-stages, Piaget (1937/1971) also described how infants go through them in the process of developing concepts of the physical world, including objects, space, time, and causality. Most research has focused on infants’ developing understanding of objects. Counterintuitively, Piaget argued that infants do not start off with knowledge of objects. Instead, the knowledge of objects that we take for granted must be constructed gradually.

Piaget described how some knowledge of objects is already in place at 2 months, as indicated by infants’ expectations that someone who disappears from view would reappear. Then at sub-stage 3, infants can find an object if it is partially covered. At sub-stage 4, infants make an odd mistake called the A-not-B error. After they find an object a few times in location A, they continue looking for it in that location even when they see it placed in a new location, B. At sub-stage 5, infants no longer make this error and can find an object if they see it in the experimenter’s hand while it is being moved. Then at sub-stage 6, they can find the new location of the object even if the experimenter hides it in her hand.

2. Pre-operational stage, 2-7 years

In the preoperational stage, children begin to think about objects that are not right in front of them. Along with this advance in thinking, a limitation that is characteristic of this stage is intuitive thinking in which children focus on just one dimension at a time. Piaget devised a number of conservation tasks to assess this limitation in children’s thinking. For example, in the conservation of volume task, a child might figure out the amount of water in a glass by focusing only on the height of the liquid and not considering the glass’s width. This way of thinking leads to a number of errors due to misleading cues; the errors are overcome at the next stage.

3. Concrete operational stage, 7-11 years

According to Piaget, thinking begins in activity, but when actions are sufficiently mastered, they no longer have to be actually performed; they can be implicitly, or mentally, performed. Piaget referred to this process of mastering actions as interiorization and actions that are interiorized as operations.

Operations can be reversible in the sense that objects can be grouped together as well as separated, and liquid can be poured from a wide glass to a tall glass, and also poured back again so it reverts to its original state. Action can also be understood as reversible in the sense that the dimension of the height of the liquid is simultaneously compensated for by the change in the width of the glass so the amount of liquid remains the same.

In the concrete operational stage, a child can now recognize the logical relation that the volume of liquid does not change even though it might appear to do so. This is a logical conclusion about the principle of conservation. That is, even though there can be a misleading change in appearance, some underlying properties can remain the same.

In the conservation of number task, two rows of objects (e.g., five coins) are presented to a child, who sees that there are the same number in each row, and then one row is spread out to make it longer. With pre-operational thinking, children are misled by this cue and tend to say that there are now more coins in the longer row. But with concrete operational thinking, they conclude that nothing has been added or taken away, and that logically, there must still be the same number of objects in each row.

Another type of concrete operational task involves transitivity problems (i.e., based on knowing the premises that A is greater than B and B is greater than C, being able to infer the conclusion that A is necessarily greater than C).

4. Formal operational stage, 12-15 years

The formal operational stage is the final stage Piaget described. At this stage, children and adolescents can experiment by forming hypotheses and testing them systematically. This way of thinking involves abstract concepts, separating form from content (hence the name “formal operations”), and considering all possibilities. The formal operational stage is exemplified by hypothetico-deductive reasoning, in which all possibilities are considered and evaluated.

Piaget worked with his collaborator, Bärbel Inhelder, in assessing this thinking by presenting adolescents with problems based on physics and chemistry (Inhelder & Piaget, 1955/1958). For example, in the colorless liquid task, adolescents were presented with four colorless liquids and had to find out what combination of them resulted in a yellow liquid. Solving this problem requires systematically testing all possible combinations. Similarly, in the pendulum task, adolescents were asked to figure out whether the length of string, the weight of the pendulum, the height of dropping point, or the force of push determines a pendulum’s trajectory and movement. Again, solving this problem requires systematically testing all possibilities.

Not all adolescents pass Piaget’s tests of formal operational thinking, either in western or non-western cultures (Piaget, 1972/2008). Piaget (1972/2008) considered various explanations for this, such as possible differences in the rate of intellectual development due to differences in stimulation, interests, or talents. But Piaget believed that typically developing adolescents would develop this form of thinking in the context of their own area of expertise in which they can systematically work through a problem in terms of the possible variables involved, whether this is in the context of gardening, baking, or mechanics, and other activities. Although formal operational thinking was the most advanced form of thinking that Piaget and Inhelder studied, he did speculate that there might be other more advanced forms of thinking (Chapman, 1988b).

Piaget’s approach to moral development

Although Piaget is known primarily for his research on children’s cognitive development, he devoted one of his early books to moral thinking (Piaget, 1932/1965). His perspective on moral development is not well appreciated, partly because it was assumed that Lawrence Kohlberg (e.g., 1976) continued and extended Piaget’s work. In fact, Piaget’s approach differed from Kohlberg’s in important ways – yet it still tends to be overlooked.

Piaget discussed the culturally constrained rules children learn from their parents (rules from the outside) that often result in little understanding of the reasons they should be followed (heteronomous morality). Piaget also discussed another form of morality that emerges in cooperative relationships based on mutual affection. Within relationships with equals, in particular, children want to interact with each other and thus have to work out ways of getting along, which leads to developing a practical morality. Morality is implicit in these ways of interacting. This involves making rules from the inside (autonomous morality): These rules are negotiated within cooperative relationships among equals in which children must explain themselves and listen to each other. This form of relationship is best suited to reaching mutual understanding and thus, to moral development.

Within relationships with equals, in particular, children want to interact with each other and thus have to work out ways of getting along, which leads to developing a practical morality.

To reach a verbal level of articulation, children still must go through a process of articulating the form of moral knowledge that is implicit in their interaction. Piaget referred to this as conscious realization of the morality that was already implicit in their interaction with each other (Carpendale, 2009; Piaget, 1932/1965). This insight regarding how the structure of relationships can facilitate the development of mutual understanding is also highly relevant for education.

Evaluating common criticisms of Piaget

As we have mentioned, any theory needs criticism for further development. And there certainly is such criticism of Piaget (e.g., see chapters in Müller, Carpendale, & Smith, 2009). Furthermore, Piaget suggested that he was his own greatest critic in constantly modifying his theory.

However, many of the criticisms of Piaget that are common in textbooks and online blogs are based on serious misinterpretations of Piaget’s work. As Piaget put it, “it is pretty catastrophic when I see how I am understood” (Bringuier, 1980, p. 54). Next, we examine some of these criticisms to clarify the context and help deepen understanding of Piaget’s approach and theory (see also Chapman, 1988a; Lourenço & Machado, 1996).

One well-known challenge to Piaget comes from a group of researchers who claim that rather than having to develop knowledge, infants are born with innate knowledge of basic aspects of physics, biology, social understanding, and even morality (e.g., Spelke & Kinzler, 2007). Thus, infants do not need to develop knowledge of objects, as Piaget’s view of cognitive development suggests.

Many of the criticisms of Piaget that are common in textbooks and online blogs are based on serious misinterpretations of Piaget’s work.

For example, by focusing on how long infants looked at various scenes, Renée Baillargeon (1987) claimed that compared to possible events, 4-month-olds looked longer at impossible events, such as when an object appeared to move through another object. She interpreted the differences in looking time as suggesting that infants were surprised by impossible events and thus must already understand that objects continue to exist.

Most textbooks stop at this point and conclude that Piaget was wrong about object permanence. However, there has been a great deal of debate over this matter, beginning with critical evaluation of the methods used to support such claims. In fact, although we know that infants notice some difference between conditions if looking time varies, we do not why. Looking times vary for many reasons (e.g., Carpendale, Lewis, & Müller, 2018; Carpendale et al., 2026).

Beyond the extensive debates about methodology, these claims of innate knowledge are examples of a representational theory of knowledge. They disregard Piaget’s starting point, which begins from a criticism of the assumption about how children learn about the world. These researchers have not solved the problem of knowledge that Piaget addressed. Instead, they ignore it. Thus, they assume but do not explain knowledge.

Furthermore, Piaget (1937/1971) observed that infants had some knowledge of objects at even 2 months, but he placed this early knowledge within a developmental framework in which infants gradually improve their understanding of objects toward a more complete understanding. In contrast, for the neonativists, such knowledge is viewed as dichotomous: A child either understands or does not understand that objects continue to exist.

Another common criticism is that Piaget’s tasks were too difficult for young children so he underestimated their abilities. Critics argued that changing the procedure to simplify the tasks would allow younger children to pass them, which would provide a more accurate assessment of their abilities. However, the simplified tasks can be solved with simpler forms of thinking so, rather than providing a better assessment of children’s abilities, these tasks assess different abilities.

For example, the conservation of number task, which is usually done with five objects in each row, was simplified to two or three objects. Younger children could pass this task simply by seeing at a glance that each row still has the same number of objects, so they could pass without the logical understanding that Piaget wanted to assess, which is that the number of objects in a group does not change just by spreading them out to make the row look longer (Chapman, 1988a).

Another criticism is that children are inconsistent in the form of thinking they use. That is, a child may use concrete operational thinking on some but not all tasks (this is referred to as the problem of horizontal décalage). This evidence was thought to contradict Piaget’s stages of development. However, it does so only if Piaget had claimed that children are assumed to be in a particular stage and use only the form of intelligence of that stage.

In fact, Piaget described forms of thinking, and noted that children may use various forms to solve what to observers are closely related tasks. This evidence of inconsistency should be expected based on an understanding of his theory, which posits that children develop forms of thinking based on their experience interacting with objects. Whether children use concrete operational thinking depends on if they have gained sufficient experience with the particular materials in a specific task.

Piaget has also been criticized for underestimating the importance of social factors in development. He is sometimes contrasted with the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978), another influential figure in psychology, who emphasized the role of social interaction in development. But ironically, Vygotsky had criticized Piaget’s early work for being too focused on social factors (Carpendale, Lewis, & Müller, 2018; Carpendale et al., 2026)! (For more information on Vygotsky, see next section.)

Photo: Shutterstock.

Piaget did recognize that social factors were important and necessary in development, but he believed that they alone do not fully explain development. He argued that what is also needed is the gradual back and forth process of trying out different strategies, which he described as equilibration. Also, it is not enough simply to make the obvious claim that social experience is important in development.

Piaget argued that it is necessary to go beyond this claim to consider the forms of social relations children experience. He emphasized cooperative interactions among equals, which allow for the development of mutual understanding. In these contexts, individuals need to listen to each other and explain their own position. This is in contrast to constraining social relationships based on one-sided respect in which children cannot ask questions and thus tend to lack understanding (Piaget, 1932/1965, 1977/1995).

A final criticism, perhaps the most misinformed one, is that Piaget’s theory is based on anecdotal evidence from his own children. It is true that Piaget’s three books on infancy, out of his 60 books, were based on observations of his own infants. But these are not just anecdotes; they draw on more than 1,200 pages of detailed notes recording observations made by Piaget and his wife, Valentine. The books have been described as “three of the most remarkable and original documents in psychology” (Russell, 1978, p. 92). In his other areas of research presented in the rest of his 60 books and hundreds of papers, the number of experiments and participants in studies Piaget and his colleagues conducted is so large that it has never been counted but would be in the thousands.

Piaget and Vygotsky

Piaget is often compared to Vygotsky. The Soviet psychologist was born the same year as Piaget (1896), but died at just 38 from tuberculosis, which he contracted after caring for his mother and younger brother. But even based on the few years he was active in psychology, Vygotsky is influential and well known for his focus on the social origins of thinking. Vygotsky’s concern with the social dimension of development is often contrasted with Piaget’s, who was concerned with the individual cognitive dimensions of children’s development. Given this difference, some claim that their theories are incompatible.

However, although these two scholars differed, a more careful reading of their work suggests that they are quite compatible. Both began from the same approach examining action and interaction. When one of Vygotsky’s books was translated into English in 1962, the publisher asked Piaget to comment on it; he wrote that he fully agreed with Vygotsky’s view that forms of thinking have their origins in speech, and that thinking is first a social process before being mastered by individuals as a skill. Piaget’s fundamental point about knowledge developing from action within particular contexts links his approach to Vygotsky and to the importance of the cultural context of development.

Conclusions and extensions

We began this article with the suggestion that one reason Piaget remains relevant today is that he recognized the fundamental problem that must be solved in understanding the development of thinking. He suggested an approach to this problem beginning in activity that is congruent with some current approaches in the cognitive sciences, such as embodied, enactive, and interactive approaches. Furthermore, this action-based, process-relational perspective can be extended beyond the topics that Piaget addressed to study the development of communication, social understanding, and moral development (see Carpendale & Lewis, 2021). This is consistent with sociocultural approaches inspired by Vygotsky and others.

Infants cannot be born with knowledge, but instead are active agents with sensitivities that facilitate their engagement with parents and their physical embodiment functions to create their environment.

Piaget’s approach is also consistent with contemporary thinking in biology that rejects a dichotomy between biology and social aspects of development by recognizing that they mutually create each other, and that it is more fruitful to think of development in terms of systems of interacting factors. Developmental systems theory in biology eschews a dichotomy between nature and nurture, or biology and social experience, and instead focuses on the process of development.

Infants cannot be born with knowledge, but instead are active agents with sensitivities that facilitate their engagement with parents and their physical embodiment functions to create their environment. For example, being born helpless creates a social environment because babies must be cared for, and their further neurological development occurs in this context.

This is only a small taste of the complex system of factors in which biology and social-cultural factors mutually create each other. Culture is a central part of this worldview. That is, individuals develop within families, communities, and societies, and they also maintain as well as change their cultures in a constant bidirectional process.

Piaget’s theory is consistent with current approaches that explain what it is to be human by beginning with action and interaction. Such approaches trace the emergence of thinking within the social, emotional, and communicative contexts of human experience (e.g., Carpendale & Lewis, 2021).

For more by the authors of this article, see What makes us human? How minds develop in social interactions (Carpendale & Lewis, 2021).

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Why does social isolation affect us so much? And how does answering this question lead us to examine the way human thinking develops?

Just how social we are as a species is made even more evident by the COVID-19 lockdowns that have restricted our everyday social interactions and affected our physical and mental health. Social engagement influences us at an even more fundamental level because it is crucial to the formation of human thinking and minds.

We address this issue in What Makes Us Human? How Minds Develop Through Social Interactions. In the words of a 9-year-old, the question is, “How do you go from a bunch of cells to something that thinks?” How are we as humans able to explore such questions about our own origins and the workings of our minds?

Humans are intrigued by the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but a puzzle unfolding right before our eyes is how intelligence develops in our homes as babies start to communicate and then understand the world in ways that adults simply take for granted.

Relations with other people

In our book, we develop and justify the idea that the essential aspects of being human arise through our relations with other people.

To understand these processes and the way human intellect develops, it is essential to look closely at the nature of communication in infancy and childhood, with which much of our thinking is intricately entwined.

To explore the complexities of human language, we begin by describing the rich social and emotional niches in which human babies develop and the forms of interaction on which communication is based emerge.

We develop and justify the idea that the essential aspects of being human arise through our relations with other people.

Have you ever considered why human infants are born so helpless that they must be cared for over many years, yet they develop such powerful ways of thinking?

Our answer to this question follows a historical tradition that suggests that this helplessness is an important factor in the development of human thinking. This is because the need for constant care in the early years necessarily produces a social context in which complex human skills develop.

Although the infant is unable to fend for herself, she is born with a host of evolved biological characteristics that draw her into engagement with others.

For example, typically developing babies are interested in looking at human eyes, which are particularly striking compared to the eyes of other primates because the dark centre is surrounded by contrasting white sclera.

Such attentiveness to eyes may be interpreted as indicating babies’ apparent interest in other people, and this interest is typically reciprocated by parents, who love to engage with their infants. This bidirectional process of attentiveness promotes the infant’s development.

Initially, this consists of staring into the eyes of a caregiver, or cuddling into the caregiver for comfort, but these early and simple skills soon develop into more complex abilities like smiling or cooing. These new forms of interaction elicit even more positive experiences because they are so rewarding for parents.

We explore how essential social interaction is to the development of the human mind in: What Makes Us Human? How Minds Develop Through Social Interactions.

Daily social interaction

This repeated daily social interaction between infants and their parents becomes increasingly coordinated, which reflects early forms of communication. For instance, when a baby reaches her arms toward her parent, the meaning of this action — a desire to be held — is clear to the parent, who typically picks up the baby.

Through experiencing this response to her reaching, the baby learns to anticipate this outcome of her reaching action. That is, she comes to grasp the meaning that her action has for others, and then she gradually learns to communicate this desire intentionally.

This is a crucial change in ways of interacting, not seen to such an extent in other species that lack an extended period of helplessness. The baby becomes aware of the meaning in the interaction and can then anticipate the response and communicate intentionally. Later, she can learn to add words such as up or uppy to these sorts of shared social routines.

Sharing

Other acts, such as mutually sharing a toy with a caregiver or gesturing in a specific way, develop in a similar fashion as their meaning emerges within shared patterns of interaction.

Beginning at about 10 to 12 months, babies typically start to point, but not in a sophisticated way. It takes a lot of experience to realize that successful pointing involves the pointer gesturing to the object and checking that the receiver is following the line of the point. It also requires the receiver to identify what is being pointed to and why their attention is being drawn to it.

The hard-won reading of these sorts of gestures reveals the origins and nature of children’s understanding of other people. It shows how a grasp of simple experiences like reaching to be picked up facilitates further interaction in which children develop yet more complex communicative and social skills.

These are concrete examples of how increasingly sophisticated human thinking and minds emerge as communication develops in everyday interaction, a fact that makes their significance easy to overlook. They are instances of the sort of mundane interactions on which human ways of being and thinking are based.

The use of words is an extension of earlier communication with gestures. Language gradually becomes part of the way thinking can take place. Initially, the baby’s words refer to objects and actions in the here and now, but gradually they can be applied to experiences not directly perceptible – for example, toddlers can relate what happened at preschool or make up a story about an imaginary character.

More sophisticated forms of social understanding emerge when children gradually master the language skills needed to talk about human activity in psychological terms.

Most toddlers articulate what they want with words by age two, and soon afterwards use words like think and know to show that they are aware that they and the people around them are influenced by their own thoughts and motivations. By acquiring the ability to talk about the psychological world, children can begin to reflect on themselves and others in these ways.

Mutual affection and respect

From the perspective we have developed here, morality emerges at the level of interaction as children learn to coordinate their daily activities with others in relationships of mutual affection and respect.

These interactions based on equality are well suited for reaching mutual understanding because they require children to listen to others and explain themselves. This allows them to coordinate conflicts and develop a practical morality in their interaction with equals.

A further step is to begin to articulate what was first implicit in their activity, which then makes reflection possible. In this way, children become able to articulate and reflect on their initially practical ways of interacting with others.

Moral notions such as fairness and justice do not have their source in biology alone, nor are they pre-existing and passed on from a previous generation to be imposed on children. Instead, they arise through particular forms of cooperative interaction among equals based on mutual affection and respect.

To understand the way human intellect develops it is essential to look closely at the nature of communication in infancy and childhood, with which much of our thinking is intricately entwined.

Of course, explaining the origins of human thinking is controversial and not everyone will agree with our account.

In our book, we compare our developmental account, which is grounded in the processes of social interaction, with two competing explanations for human thinking: that it is either simply determined by biology or that the computer makes a good metaphor for the human mind.

First, we show that although biological factors are crucial in structuring the developmental system in which human skills emerge, the claim that thinking is determined by genes is incompatible with work in biology over the last 50 years.

Research in genetics and developmental neurobiology highlights that we must consider the complex developmental system in which multiple levels of biology and environment interact with each other to drive the individual’s development. Key aspects of human thinking, although based on neural activity, emerge only at the level of the person interacting with others.

Shared way of interacting

Second, the claim that thinking can be likened to computation is based on a flawed assumption that meaning is fixed, as it is in a computer. Instead, as we illustrate, human communication is rooted in shared ways of interacting. This is also why current approaches to artificial intelligence that attempt to model human intelligence are based on the wrong foundation.

Revealing the flaws in these two general approaches to human psychological development supports our argument that human communication and thinking emerges within interaction with others in a developmental system in which biological and social levels are thoroughly interwoven.

We trace this development by beginning as gestures emerge in early interaction, leading to language and then to human forms of thinking.

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To take a modern approach to cognitive development theory it is important to emphasise relationships, and view social interaction as the crucible in which children’s cognitive development takes place. In other words, the mind forms through being part of and contributing to social interaction, a process charged by emotion. Growing up within families provides for a long period of intense social interaction.

(Other cognitive development theories include “nativist” approaches that regard the mind as having innate abilities, growing rather like a tree does from a seed, and “empiricist” approaches that focus only on the factors that act on the mind to form it, rather than also on how the mind influences those factors.)

A relational approach can be illustrated with Donald Winnicott’s memorable quotation from 1964: “there is no such thing as a baby”. What he meant was that a baby is embedded in a complex web of interactions with others, to the extent that the boundary between the baby and parent is no longer distinct.

This theory of cognitive development sees the baby and parent shaping each other’s neurological development. Babies don’t just engage with their surroundings; they influence and shape the environment in which they learn skills. Even basic gestures such as smiling emerge through a process of development.

The relational theory of cognitive development encompasses the wider societal level: the person and culture are co-created like parent and child. A person becomes a member of society by engaging in routines, traditions, rituals, and the use of objects and symbols, including language. The person both grows as part of the culture and forms the culture with others.

Nowadays, the dominant theory of cognitive development is termed “process-relational”.

Where does the biology stop and the social start? The nature/nurture argument does not apply in this worldview. For example, social experience has now been shown to influence the way genes are expressed, through epigenetic changes.

DNA is the source material and is fixed, but how it is expressed can be changed by experience. This has generated a whole new branch of research, social genomics: the study of how social experience shapes gene expression.

The father of cognitive development theory: Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) has had a monumental impact on cognitive development theory. Piaget proposed a developmental theory based on the view of development known as “constructivism.” That is, we come to know the world through acting on it. He wrote that, “In order to know objects, the subject must act upon them and, therefore, transform them.”

Piaget argued that babies and children learn about the world through their action on the world. In this process they develop patterns of interaction involving emotions, sensations, motor movements, and perception, known as “schemes”.

Once a scheme begins to develop through particular interactions, it will be extended in slightly different situations. That is, the child assimilates new experiences to what she has previously learned, but since the experience will be different, the scheme will be modified or accommodated. Repeated many times, this process results in cognitive development.

(Photo: Shutterstock.)

Piaget said children learn through interaction with the world, developing patterns called “schemes”.

Piaget was interested in the stage-by-stage sequence of development that all children go through, each stage providing the foundation for the next. Through extraordinarily detailed observations of children, including his own three, he proposed four stages:

• Sensorimotor stage (during the first two years): a stage in which babies develop action schemes like sucking, pushing, hitting and grasping.
• Pre-operational stage (between two and seven years): the child develops the ability to think, but has limited ability to apply logic to a situation to deduce something by thought alone.
• Concrete operational stage (between seven and 11 years): the child starts working things out through logical thought, rather than just action.
• Formal operational stage (12-15 years): the child engages in systematic experimentation, forming hypotheses, testing them out and trying alternatives.

Sociogenesis theory of cognitive development: Lev Vygotsky

Another 20th-century giant of child development theory, Lev Vygotsky, is commonly regarded as the originator of the idea that the mind forms through social processes.

In fact, the idea predates him considerably, but he articulated it and developed it into a major influence on the modern science of child development, a remarkable feat since he only spent 11 years working on it, moving from work on art and literature when he was 27 and tragically dying when he was only 38.

According to Vygotsky, all higher mental functions occur twice, first between people in social interaction, then within the person’s mind. In this way, he said, social interactions form the mind, they don’t just influence a process already in motion like watering a seed to grow into a plant.

A key tenet of cognitive development theory is Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development”. This follows from his idea that thinking is first social before becoming mastered by an individual.

In the process of developing a new way of thinking there is a gap between what children can achieve alone and what they can achieve with the assistance of others. Two children may appear to be at the same level of development, but with help, one may be capable of more than the other. They differ in their ability to master a new way of thinking.

The key to cognitive development, according to Vygotsky, is the help that the more experienced adult gives the child to grow within this zone.

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Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” highlights how children learn best with guidance, bridging the gap between what they can do alone and with help.

Vygotsky introduced the idea of “elementary” and “higher” mental functions. Elementary functions are products of evolution and biologically explained. They include involuntary attention and the ability to make simple connections between events.

In contrast, higher mental functions emerge through social interactions and culture. These include language, systems of counting, memorising techniques, art, literature, maps, and so on.

Vygotsky paid much attention to how language develops and considered how children talk to themselves. According to his theory of cognitive development, children learn to talk through relationships and conversations and then use speech as a tool for their own thinking, by talking to themselves.

This applies equally to hearing children, and sign language used by children who cannot hear. Research has indeed shown that children who interact more with others talk to themselves more when they are alone, and that children who are not allowed to talk to themselves perform less well in cognitive tests.

Later, speech goes “underground” to become inner speech or verbal thought, though it sometimes comes back out during adulthood. For example, when we are working out particularly difficult problems. Vygotsky theorised that children (and adults) use speech when operating in their zone of proximal development, just beyond their level of competence.

How parents can support cognitive development: scaffolding

Cognitive development theory uses a metaphor from the construction industry: scaffolding, a temporary structure around the growing building to assist its construction.

In cognitive development theory, scaffolding gives children a structure to master a skill, after which it becomes redundant. In this context, scaffolding is about supporting children within their zone of proximal development: setting goals, regulating their actions and inhibiting unhelpful responses, organising their actions and selecting strategies. It can be as simple as a series of hints and prompts that are appropriate for the child’s developmental level.

Recently, many researchers have studied scaffolding and its impact on cognitive development when variously applied. Cognitive development advances when scaffolding is applied well and constantly adjusted to the child’s progress.

Piaget versus Vygotsky

Psychologists have long sought to discuss the theory of cognitive development by comparing the work of Piaget and Vygotsky, both of whom emphasised the role of social interaction, though in different ways.

In reality, both of them emphasised social interaction to such a degree that even leading experts often can’t read statements from one or the other and be certain of whether it was written by Piaget or Vygotsky.

One way to see a difference is through a thought experiment: What would happen to child development if there were no adults?

For Vygotsky, there would be no development, because children cannot move forward out of their zone of proximal development without more expert help.

For Piaget, there could be development, albeit not a type to be recommended. Two children interacting with each other could learn more than one child alone.

Executive function: a core concept in cognitive development theory

Put very simply, executive function is a set of mental skills that helps a person gain control over their actions and thoughts. Scientists have identified four components:

1. Working memory – the ability to hold information and recall it when carrying out a task.
2. Inhibitory control – suppressing initial impulses in favour of more rational action.
3. Attentional flexibility – changing from one way of solving a problem to another.
4. Planning – using all the skills above, creating a strategy to get a task done.

(Photo: Shutterstock.)

Executive function emerges through social interactions, particularly parental scaffolding that helps children operate in their zone of proximal development.

These skills develop in a sequence. Working memory typically develops in early childhood and improves during preschool and beyond. Inhibitory control and attentional flexibility develop in preschool. Planning skills develop during childhood and adolescence.

Like other cognitive development skills, executive function emerges through social interactions, particularly parental scaffolding that helps children operate effectively in their zone of proximal development. If children are specifically taught executive function skills at an appropriate level relative to their development, their skills improve.

Poverty is a key inhibitor of developing executive function skills. But its negative impacts can be mitigated if the parent-child attachment is secure and if the child has more social interaction, for example, at a daycare facility. Sadly, poverty reduces parental resources and is frequently associated with poorer relationships and more chaos.

Cognitive development theory: the importance of social interaction in language development

Unsurprisingly, language ability is critical to the cognitive development that takes place within relationships. The importance of social interaction in language development is one of the most consistent findings across cognitive development research.

Language develops in a critical early period of a child’s life. Research on feral children and on deaf children raised without sign language shows that they cannot learn normal syntax and morphology.

The first language abilities emerge shortly after birth. Babies will respond more to familiar voices, the language of their families, and books that were read aloud while they were in the womb. One-year-olds can distinguish among speech sounds that adults who have learned particular languages can no longer distinguish.

Babies understand words before speaking them. When they learn to speak in their second year, there is an explosion of understanding and speaking words.

So great is the richness and complexity of what children learn so quickly that some have proposed particular innate skills, beyond just the ability to use language that humans have, but other animals don’t.

Noam Chomsky has proposed an innate propensity to grasp syntax and proposed a “universal grammar” for human beings. As children develop, he argues, pre-existing on/off switches are triggered, leading the child from the universal grammar to the actual languages they learn.

Proponents of a social cognitive development theory find many problems with this version of nativism. The developmental view, based on Piaget and Vygotsky, is that children learn language through interaction with their parents and others and through learning social routines on which communication is based.

Parents typically modify language for babies and toddlers – a high intonation often called child-directed speech. This is often called motherese, though fathers do it too. Parents speak more slowly and more simply (though perhaps not in all cultures). Interestingly, in some contexts, fathers tend to use more complex speech, stretching children more within their zone of proximal development. This might be why a father talking with his child correlates better with later language skills than a mother talking with her child.

Researchers have also found that simply hearing words in their environment makes no difference to their language ability. Instead, children learn words in interactions with parents and carers. Time and again, the importance of social interaction in language development is reinforced, lying at the heart of cognitive development.

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What is social emotional development?

When social emotional development has proceeded well, children develop five key social and relationship skills. These include:

Self-awareness

They recognize their emotions, describe their interests and values, and accurately assess their strengths. They have a well-grounded sense of self-confidence and hope for the future.

Self-management

They manage stress, control impulses, and persevere in overcoming obstacles. They can set and monitor progress toward personal and academic goals and express their emotions appropriately in a wide range of situations.

Social awareness

Their social learning enables them to take the perspective of and empathize with others and recognize and appreciate individual and group similarities and differences. They seek out and appropriately use family, school, and community resources.

Relationship skills

They establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships based on cooperation. They resist inappropriate social pressure; constructively prevent, manage, and resolve interpersonal conflict; and seek and provide help when needed.

Responsible decision-making at school, at home, and in the community

In making decisions, they consider ethical standards, safety concerns, appropriate social norms, respect for others, and the likely consequences of various courses of action. They apply these decision-making skills in academic and social situations and are motivated to contribute to the well-being of their schools and communities.

Adapted from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL).

The social emotional development journey: baby steps

The first steps of social emotional development are gaze, attachment, attention and gestures.

1. Gaze

Even before birth, babies react to projections of faces through the abdomen into the womb. They will gaze into the eyes of their mother and father within days of being born. At 4-5 months, babies will stop smiling and frown if their carer stops smiling or smiles at the wrong time relative to the activity they are both engaged in. The foundations of relationship skills are being laid.

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2. Attachment

Attachment is a cornerstone of early social emotional development. The strong emotional bonds that form between infants and caregivers over the first year of life are referred to as attachments, which are based on children’s experience with their caregivers. The originator of the idea of attachment, John Bowlby (1958), observed in the 1950s that infants go through a period between about 6 and 30 months when they require the care and proximity of one or two key people, known as “attachment figures”. Emotional learning starts within these intensely emotional relationships. Patterns of everyday love and care set up the infant’s expectations of how particular caregivers will respond to them. Bowlby called these “internal working models”.

3. Joint attention

This is the ability to home in on another person’s point of view while they are describing or pointing at something, such as a toy or book. It starts around the age of one. The baby learns gradually to switch attention between the carer and the object. Babies will also start to look to the carer when they don’t understand a situation, possibly as a bid to get information or just comfort. Joint attention is a foundation for relationship skills.

4. Intentional gestures

At this stage of social emotional development, around the first year, infants start to point at things. Some months later, they start to use head movements, for example, to indicate yes and no. Gestures can be learned through imitation, such as waving and nodding; others are not necessarily what carers are doing, such as lifting the arms.

Social emotional development: preschoolers’ social learning of others’ perspectives

The next key stage in the social emotional development journey is the emergence of an understanding of others’ perspectives.

The “false belief” test is one measure of this understanding. The child is presented with the story of Maxi, who returns home from shopping with his mother, and, before going out to play, puts his chocolate away. While he is outside, his mother moves the chocolate. When Maxi gets hungry and returns for his chocolate, where will he look for it and/or were will he think it is? A five-year-old will know immediately that Maxi will look for it where he left it, but a three-year-old will incorrectly claim that Maxi will look for it where Maxi’s mother put it.

Another test that a three-year-old is unlikely to pass involves showing something to them that looks like a stone and which they identify as a stone. But once they touch it, they discover it is a sponge. Three-year-olds will then claim they knew it was a sponge all along and that another child would think it is a sponge too.

As children develop, they reach higher levels of social learning.

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For example, the “faux pas” test is a measure of a child’s reaction to a situation in which a child says he does not like a picture and then realises he is standing next to the child who drew it. Social learning involves recognising the embarrassment and the feelings of the budding artist.

Six stages of social learning in childhood

Two researchers, Henry Wellman and David Liu (2004), developed a five-stage test of social understanding up to five to six years of age.

1. Grasping that people may want different things (diverse desires).
2. Understanding that different people may have and act on different beliefs about the same thing when it is not known whether these beliefs are true or false (diverse beliefs).
3. Appreciating that a lack of visual access results in not knowing something (knowledge access).
4. False belief understanding, as described above.
5. Grasping that the emotions that someone experiences may be different from what they display (hidden emotion).

More recently, a sixth stage has been added: understanding sarcasm, which is reported to emerge when a child is six to nine years old.

Emotional learning: the development of empathy

Empathy is the emotional reaction to another’s feelings. Reacting emotionally to another’s distress starts very early, before babies are one year old.

Researchers have observed four stages in the emotional learning of empathy:

1. Global empathic distress. A baby cries when another baby cries.
2. Egocentric empathic distress (11-12 months). As in the first stage, but the babies do something to soothe themselves, like seek refuge with their father.
3. Quasi-egocentric empathic distress (12-14 months). The toddler will attempt to soothe the distress of the other child.
4. Veridical empathy (two years). Toddlers will bring distressed children something to comfort them, like their own teddy bear.

Other research has shown that babies as young as 8-10 months show facial and vocal responses to the distress of another.

Parents who actively encourage emotional learning in their children, helping them see the perspectives of others, have children with more empathic skills. Children who are not just told the rules, but who are made aware of the consequences for others of their own actions, tend to have greater empathy and a feeling of responsibility for the feelings of others.

Relationship skills: prosociality or being nice to others

A key area of current research is the emergence of prosocial behaviour in children: that is, when one person acts for the benefit of another.

Toddlers around the age of 14 and 18 months typically love to help their parents with housework and picking up dropped objects, often so enthusiastically that it becomes very difficult to get any housework done at all. This may, however, not be prosocial, but just a desire to be involved in the activity.

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Two-year-olds will stop playing to help someone, even if that person does not realise they need help – for example, if they have dropped something unknowingly.

Parents’ encouragement of helping in the home is associated with greater social understanding in children later. Giving a 20-month-old a reward for prosocial behaviour actually decreases the helping behaviour, whereas praise strongly encourages it. These things happen irrespective of a child’s temperament.

Nine influences on social emotional development in children

Social emotional development in childhood is a gradual process of social learning and emotional learning through activity and talking about the activity.

Culture

Children’s rate of social learning varies significantly, as does the age at which they are able to pass the false belief test. Australian and Canadian children understand false belief, on average, a little before British or American children. Austrian and Japanese children lag further behind. In some communities, children will pass the test only at the aged of eight, for example, Samoan children, Junin Quechaun children in Peru, Mofu children in Cameroon, or the Tola and Tainae children of Papua New Guinea.

Interestingly, authoritarian parenting reduces performance in the false belief test in European Americans, but not in Korean-American families where they a positively related.

Siblings

Interaction with siblings helps social learning and relationship skills. Children with siblings progress some months ahead of children without siblings, though the varied results from research suggests that more than just the fact of having siblings is involved. The quality of the interaction may be important. For example, a child with older siblings may be more exposed to discussions about what others know and don’t know. Also, the impact of siblings is less on a child with already advanced language abilities. One theory is that siblings help generate greater self-awareness through more frequent references to “me” and “mine”.

Play

Pretend play involves making plans and assigning roles, and this may develop social learning and relationship skills. It may also be a factor in the sibling effect.

Peers

Popular children tend to be better at the false belief test and children who have been rejected by peers tend to do worse on the faux pas test. It is unclear which way cause and effect are working here. Lack of friendship and a low level of social learning could contribute to each other.

Child characteristics

A shy and socially fearful temperament is associated with more advanced social understanding in preschool, though the evidence is not entirely consistent.

Blindness and deafness

An inability to see or hear delays social learning, though this is not the case for deaf children with deaf parents who communicate well with them, suggesting that language is important for social learning.

Parent-child interaction

The way that parents interact with their children and use language influences the children’s social development. Responsive conversations, with organised give and take, contribute to social understanding. So do conversations about thinking, desires, emotions and intentions.

Parents with more advanced social understanding have children with better social learning. Parents who talk to their children more about others’ feelings have children who do better on the false belief test. Authoritarian parenting, characterised by shouting and physical punishment, is associated with less social learning.

Earlier attachment

Children who have enjoyed secure attachment in their first year will tend to do better in the false belief test when they are five.

Mind mindedness

If a parent describes their child as someone with a mind, rather than just a physical being – so-called “mind mindedness” – and use psychological terms to describe their children, the children are likely to pass the false belief test at an earlier age. Hearing psychological terms used to explain and elaborate social events improves children’s social understanding. A mediating factor here is the higher language skills of these children.

Social emotional development: the role of language

Language has been shown to play a very important role in the whole process of social emotional development in the early years. Advanced language skills are linked to better performance on the false belief test, for example.

Purposefully teaching children the meaning of mental-state words, such as know, think, wonder, and figure out, has a positive impact on understanding of emotion at age three and performance in the false belief test at age four.

The benefits of strong social emotional development: good relationship skills

Does a child who does better in the false belief test or the faux pas test have better relationship skills and a better social life with friends? The answer is yes. Such a child is likely to have better relationship skills, engage less in conflict, use more sophisticated arguments in response to others’ perspectives and interests, have better close friendships, and be less likely either to bully or be bullied. Greater social understanding and relationship skills are not linked to premeditated proactive use of aggression, but they are linked to the more unthinking reactive form.

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Some of these associations are small – for example, only 4% of the variance in peer popularity could be linked to difference in performance on the faux pas test.

Advanced social emotional learning: morality

Jean Piaget

In The Moral Judgement of the Child (1932/1965), Jean Piaget discussed children’s understanding of the rules of the game and their judgement of bad behaviours. He proposed that morality emerges as children develop relationship skills with peers.

Piaget observed how children play with marbles:

• At three years, children tend to be unaware of any rules.
• Between three and six years, children are inconsistent about rules and their application.
• From the age of seven, children understand the rules.
• From the age of nine, children start to understand that rules are not simply handed down from on high, but are agreed by mutual consent.
• From the age of 11, children master the rules completely and police them.

These are only approximate ages for the children Piaget interviewed. He thought that what is important in moral development are relationships of cooperation among equals. These are best suited for understanding others and working out a solution that is good for all. In contrast, within relationships of constraint, children have difficulty understanding others’ perspectives, so these relationships are not well suited for moral development.

Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg took another approach. He maintained that the key to morality is not behaviour itself but the reasons that a person has for behaving that way. For example, not paying taxes could be a selfish means of cheating the state, or an unselfish stand against the way the state uses the money.

Kohlberg posed painful moral dilemmas, often choices about who should be allowed to die in a situation with two possibilities. He then observed how people respond to them.

He described six stages or world views.

1. Might is right. Rules must be followed, and disobedience should be punished.
2. Do to others what you would want them to do to you.
3. Do to others as if they were yourself, with the perspective extending to family and friends only.
4. Communities need accepted rules to prevent breakdown, and these should be broken only in the most extreme cases.
5. Rules should be defined by fundamental human rights. The question should always be asked: are current rules and laws moral?
6. Everyone affected by a rule should have a say in how that rule is put in place and implemented.

Kohlberg observed that most adults reach stage 3 or 4, and few reach 5 or beyond. He believed that moral development occurs as people encounter situations where the current rules break down and they are faced with new moral dilemmas.

Objections raised to Kohlberg’s theory include:

• People are not always consistently in one stage at a time.
• Some cultures place more emphasis than others on social solidarity, harmony relationships and deep affection for others. This affects how rules are applied.
• The stages are not necessarily hierarchical. There are very good people who help others in their communities and yet are at stages 3 and 4.

Morality versus social conventions

Not all rules are the same, and children learn this early. Some rules are social conventions – calling a teacher “Mr” or “Mrs”, wearing a school uniform, how to hold a knife and fork. But other rules are moral, including those relating to protecting others from harm, such as not stealing or not fighting. Children as young as three years understand the difference between these types of rules.

Some have criticised both Piaget and Kohlberg for mixing up the learning of social conventions and morality. “Domain theory” holds that they are separate processes from the outset, though this idea creates the problem of rules that are somewhere in between, such as lining up and dressing in a way that may offend others.

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