McGarrigle and Donaldson Naughty Teddy

Piaget and development

Piaget is a famous researcher that is widely known for his theories in developmental psychology, and he proposed the theory of cognitive development. McGarrigle and Donaldson's naughty teddy experiment aimed to investigate the ideas put forwards by Piaget, specifically the concrete operational stage in children younger than 7 years old, as Piaget originally proposed.

• The theory of cognitive development suggests that mental development in children happens in four stages:
  • Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
  • Preoperational stage (2-7 years)
  • Concrete operational stage (7-11 years)
  • Formal operational stage (11+ years)

Conservation

The concept of conservation is vital to understanding the aim of McGarrigle and Donaldson's naughty teddy study. As we mentioned above, the concrete operational stage is where children can do conservation tasks.

McGarrigle and Donaldson's naughty teddy experiment

In Piaget's theory of cognitive development, it was proposed that children aged 7-11 years old develop conservation skills.

Mcgarrigle and Donaldson naughty teddy study aim

McGarrigle and Donaldson's naughty teddy study aimed to identify if children younger than what Piaget proposed develop conservation skills.

The study also aimed to identify if deliberately changing the position of sweets affected conservation skills.

McGarrigle and Donaldson naughty teddy study method

The study used an experimental, repeated measures design that was carried out in a lab setting. The study was carried out on 80 children from Edinburgh aged between four years and two months to six years and three months.

There were two conditions in the experiment.

Condition 1 - accidental counter changes

The accidental condition involved the researcher placing two rows of counters that had the same number of counters that were equally spaced. The researchers then asked the participants if there was an equal number of counters in each row.

The researcher then enacted a scenario in front of the participants in which a hand puppet, a naughty teddy bear, escaped his area and messed up the organisation of one of the rows of counters. What's important to note is that both counters had equal numbers of counters, one just was more spaced out to make the row look longer and potentially make children think it had more counters. The researcher then told the 'naughty teddy' off.

The final step of the accidental condition was for the researchers to ask participants if there was the same number of counters in each row after the scenario had been enacted.

In McGarrigle and Donaldson's study, a naughty teddy bear messed up the row of counters, flaticon.com/premium-icon

Condition 2 - intentional counter changes

In the intentional condition, similar to the other condition equal numbers of counters were equally spaced out in two rows. The researcher then asked the participants if there was an equal number of counters in each row.

Whilst the child was watching the researcher intentionally moved the counters in one row to be more spaced out (there was still an equal amount of counters in both rows). The researcher then asked the participants if there was an equal number of counters.

The researchers involved in McGarrigle and Donaldson manipulated materials to affect conservation understanding, flaticon.com/premium-icon

String experiment

Another part of the experiment was the string condition. Participants were shown two equal-length strings (both ten inches) and asked if they were of equal sizes.

One of the strings was moved into a moon shape position (the length remained the same) participants were asked again if the strings were the same size. In the second condition, one string was ten inches and the other was eight inches. The researcher asked participants if both strings were of equal sizes.

McGarrigle and Donaldson naughty teddy study results

The results indicated that:

• Primary school children were more accurate than nursery school children at conserving in both the intentional and accidental conditions.

• Intentional versus accidental changes, when using four out of four correct judgements made as a criterion:
  • Intentional = 13 children answered correctly that there was an equal amount of counters in both rows. Thus, 13 children successfully conserved when the transformation was intentional.
  • Accidental = 50 children answered correctly that there was an equal amount of counters in both rows. Thus, 50 children successfully conserved when the transformation was accidental.

• Children in the accidental condition (string moved to moon shape position) were more accurate at identifying the length of the string than in the intentional condition (unequal string lengths).

Conclusion

From the research findings of McGarrigle and Donaldson's 'naughty teddy' study, it can be concluded that children can conserve at an earlier age than Piaget suggested. Children show these skills as young as four years and two months whereas Piaget suggested that it develops at seven+ years.

McGarrigle and Donaldson naughty teddy study evaluation

Let's now discuss the strength and limitations of McGarrigle and Donaldson's naughty teddy study.

Strengths

The strengths of the research are:

• Practical applications - conservation skills have been linked to improvements in learning and mathematical skills;
  • From these results, it can be suggested that caregivers and teachers do conservation tasks with younger children and this may help and improve mental development.

• Research design:
  • repeated-measures design - as the same participants are tested in both conditions the researcher does not need to consider variability between participants affecting the results. This suggests that the research has high internal validity.
  • experimental design - the researcher has control over the experiment and so can prevent confounding and extraneous factors such as noise affecting the experiment. This also suggests that the study has high internal validity.

Limitations

The limitations of the research are:

• The study is ethnocentric - as the study was carried out on British students, the results may not be generalisable to children in other countries.

• Differences between Piaget's and McGarrigle and Donaldson's results suggest low reliability. Piaget's research indicated that children aged 2-7 did not have conservation skills but aged 7+ children did. Both studies had different procedures and so it is difficult to establish which findings are correct

• The study did not measure domain-specific conservative skills. Identifying changes in the number of counters may be easier than identifying changes in the volume or shape of objects. This suggests the study is reductionist as it does not take into account the various types of ways to measure conservation. Therefore, the results may be different when all of these are considered.