Egocentrism and class inclusion | AQA A-Level Psychology Revision

For 7182 specification, first teach in September 2025

AQA A-Level Psychology | Free Revision Notes

Estimated study time: 60 minutes

Egocentrism and class inclusion reveal important differences between pre-operational and concrete operational thinking. These Egocentrism and class inclusion A-Level Psychology revision notes explain why young children may struggle to represent another person’s viewpoint and to understand that one category can form part of a larger category.

Both abilities are named characteristics of Piaget’s stages in the revised AQA specification. They build on cognitive development through schemas and equilibration and prepare you for later work on social perspective-taking and understanding other people’s beliefs.

Learning Objectives 🎯

By the end of this revision page, you should be able to:

• Define egocentrism in Piaget’s theory.

• Explain how Piaget investigated visual perspective-taking.

• Define class inclusion and describe a typical class-inclusion task.

• Apply egocentrism and class inclusion to unfamiliar developmental scenarios.

• Distinguish pre-operational from concrete operational reasoning.

• Evaluate Piaget’s account using evidence, task demands and alternative explanations.

Revision Notes 📚

Egocentrism and class inclusion overview

Egocentrism and class inclusion are characteristics within Piaget’s stage-based account of intellectual development.

Ability	Pre-operational thinking	Concrete operational thinking
Egocentrism	The child has difficulty representing another person’s viewpoint	Perspective-taking becomes more successful
Class inclusion	The child struggles to coordinate a subclass with the larger class	The child understands part-whole relationships
Main limitation	Centration on one perspective or category	Decentration allows several relationships to be considered
Approximate transition	Before approximately 7 years	From approximately 7 years

Both abilities require the child to move beyond one immediately dominant feature.

In egocentrism, the dominant feature is:

the child’s own perspective

In class inclusion, the dominant feature is often:

the most noticeable subclass

The child must learn to consider more than one representation at the same time.

Specification focus

The AQA specification names egocentrism and class inclusion as characteristics of Piaget’s stages.

The specification does not prescribe particular named studies for these abilities. The classic tasks below are widely used illustrations of Piaget’s concepts and help students apply and evaluate the theory.

Egocentrism

What is egocentrism?

Egocentrism is difficulty understanding or representing a situation from a perspective different from one’s own.

An egocentric child may assume that another person:

• Sees what the child sees.

• Knows what the child knows.

• Thinks what the child thinks.

• Experiences the same situation in the same way.

The official AQA specimen material identifies Piagetian egocentrism as the inability to understand things from different points of view.

Egocentrism does not mean selfishness

In everyday speech, an egocentric person might be described as:

• Selfish.

• Self-important.

• Uncaring.

• Deliberately focused on themselves.

This is not what Piaget meant.

Piagetian egocentrism is a cognitive limitation.

The child does not deliberately refuse to consider another perspective. They have difficulty constructing that perspective mentally.

For example:

A child may hold a picture facing towards themselves while showing it to another person.

The child may genuinely assume that the other person can see it because the child can see it.

This is different from deliberately preventing the other person from viewing the picture.

Egocentrism and the pre-operational stage

Piaget associated egocentrism particularly with the pre-operational stage, lasting from approximately 2 to 7 years.

Pre-operational children can:

• Use language.

• Create mental images.

• Engage in pretend play.

• Represent objects symbolically.

However, their thinking remains limited by:

• Centration.

• Appearance-based judgements.

• Irreversibility.

• Egocentrism.

The child can form a representation of the world but may struggle to coordinate that representation with another person’s different viewpoint.

This stage is explained fully in the sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational stages.

Visual perspective-taking

Piaget mainly investigated visual perspective-taking.

This is the ability to understand that another person may see a scene differently because they are standing in a different position.

For example:

A child stands on one side of a table while an adult stands on the other. An object may appear on the child’s left but on the adult’s right.

Successful perspective-taking requires the child to:

1. Represent their own view.

2. Represent the other person’s position.

3. Mentally transform the scene.

4. Select the view available from that position.

5. Keep the two perspectives separate.

A young child may instead select the view that matches their own position.

Piaget’s three mountains task

Aim of the task

Piaget and Inhelder used the three mountains task to investigate whether children could understand another person’s visual perspective.

The model

Children were shown a three-dimensional model containing three mountains.

The mountains differed in features such as:

• Height.

• Colour.

• Snow.

• A cross.

• A building or other distinctive feature.

The child was allowed to examine the model from different positions.

The procedure

A typical procedure involved the following steps:

1. The child sat at one side of the mountain model.

2. A doll was placed at another side.

3. The child was shown photographs or representations of different possible views.

4. The child selected the view that the doll would see.

Piaget’s findings

Younger children often selected:

• The view corresponding to their own position.

• A view that included features they could currently see.

• An incorrect combination of mountain features.

Piaget concluded that the children were egocentric because they could not separate:

• Their own visual experience.

• The doll’s different visual experience.

Older children became increasingly able to select the correct view.

Piaget’s conclusion

Piaget argued that pre-operational children are limited by egocentrism.

As children move towards the concrete operational stage, they become better able to:

• Decentre from their own viewpoint.

• Mentally represent different positions.

• Coordinate several spatial relationships.

Applying the three mountains task

Consider the following scenario:

Five-year-old Omar sits opposite a model village. A doll is placed on the other side. When asked what the doll can see, Omar chooses a picture showing his own view.

A developed explanation would state:

• Omar demonstrates egocentrism.

• He selects the scene visible from his own position.

• He cannot accurately represent the doll’s different visual perspective.

• This difficulty is associated with pre-operational thinking.

• He centres on his own viewpoint rather than coordinating two perspectives.

A successful response

Consider another child:

Eight-year-old Mei selects the photograph showing the buildings visible from the doll’s position, even though her own view is different.

Mei demonstrates:

• Successful visual perspective-taking.

• Decentration from her own view.

• The ability to represent two viewpoints.

• Reasoning consistent with the concrete operational stage.

Different forms of perspective

Egocentrism can affect more than vision.

A child may struggle to understand that another person has different:

• Knowledge.

• Beliefs.

• Feelings.

• Desires.

• Intentions.

However, Piaget’s three mountains task focused specifically on visual perspective.

Later theories investigate social understanding in more detail.

These include:

• age-related changes in role-taking 

• children’s understanding of false beliefs 

Visual and cognitive perspectives compared

Visual perspective-taking	Cognitive perspective-taking
Understanding what another person can see	Understanding what another person knows or believes
Depends partly on spatial position	Depends on mental-state understanding
Investigated using models or pictures	Investigated using stories and false-belief tasks
Example: the doll sees a different mountain	Example: another child holds a mistaken belief

Success in one kind of perspective-taking does not guarantee equal success in every other kind.

Why might young children appear egocentric?

Centration on the child’s own view

Centration means focusing on one aspect of a situation while ignoring other relevant information.

In a perspective-taking task, the child may centre on:

• What they currently see.

• Their own position.

• The most visually striking feature.

They fail to coordinate this information with the doll’s position.

Limited mental transformation

The child must imagine rotating or transforming the scene mentally.

A younger child may have difficulty calculating how the model would appear from another angle.

Failure may therefore involve spatial ability as well as egocentrism.

Working-memory demands

The child must hold several pieces of information in mind:

• Their own position.

• The doll’s position.

• The features of the model.

• The possible photographs.

A young child’s limited working memory may make the task difficult.

Language demands

The child must understand questions such as:

• “What does the doll see?”

• “Which picture shows the doll’s view?”

• “How would it look from over there?”

Failure may result partly from misunderstanding the language.

Task familiarity

Children may have limited experience interpreting:

• Scale models.

• Still photographs.

• Unfamiliar mountain scenes.

• A doll as a representation of another observer.

The problem may not be egocentrism alone.

Hughes’ police doll task

A child-friendly perspective-taking task

A commonly taught evaluation of Piaget is Hughes’ police doll task.

This named study is not explicitly required by the specification, but it provides a useful way to evaluate whether the three mountains task underestimated children’s abilities.

The basic task

A model contained intersecting walls.

Police dolls were positioned so that they could see some areas but not others.

The child was asked to hide a boy doll where the police dolls could not see him.

Why the task may be easier

The police doll task is more meaningful than the three mountains task because:

• The child has a clear goal.

• Hiding from a police officer is understandable.

• The walls create obvious lines of sight.

• The child can act physically rather than choose an abstract photograph.

• The story provides a reason to consider the dolls’ perspectives.

Findings and implications

Many young children were able to hide the boy doll successfully, including children younger than the age at which Piaget expected reliable perspective-taking.

This suggests that Piaget may have underestimated children’s ability.

Failure in the three mountains task could have resulted from:

• Unfamiliar materials.

• Complex instructions.

• Memory demands.

• Difficulty matching photographs.

• Lack of a meaningful objective.

What Hughes’ findings do not show

The findings do not necessarily prove that young children are never egocentric.

They show that performance depends on:

• The task.

• The context.

• The instructions.

• The response required.

A child may succeed in one familiar perspective-taking task but struggle in another more complex task.

The most balanced conclusion is:

Young children’s perspective-taking may be more advanced and more context dependent than Piaget’s three mountains task suggested.

Egocentric speech

Speech without considering the listener

Piaget also used the term egocentrism when discussing children’s communication.

A child may speak without adapting the message to what the listener:

• Already knows.

• Can see.

• Needs explained.

For example:

“Put it over there next to that one.”

The child understands the reference but may not recognise that the listener lacks the same information.

Collective monologue

Piaget observed situations in which children appeared to speak alongside one another rather than engaging in a genuinely shared conversation.

Each child talked about their own activity without adjusting fully to the other child’s contribution.

Piaget interpreted this as evidence of egocentric thought.

An alternative view

Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development interpreted private or self-directed speech more positively.

Vygotsky argued that children may speak aloud to:

• Guide their actions.

• Plan.

• Solve problems.

• Control behaviour.

From this perspective, self-directed speech is not simply evidence that the child cannot communicate socially. It may be a tool supporting thought.

Class inclusion

What is class inclusion?

Class inclusion is the ability to understand that:

• Objects can belong to a smaller category or subclass.

• That subclass can simultaneously belong to a larger, more inclusive class.

For example:

All roses are flowers, but not all flowers are roses.

The category roses is a subclass.

The category flowers is the larger class.

A child with class-inclusion understanding recognises that the larger class includes:

• All members of the subclass.

• Members of other subclasses.

Part-whole understanding

Class inclusion requires the child to coordinate:

• The whole category.

• A smaller part of that category.

For example:

Seven dogs and three cats make ten animals.

The child must recognise that:

• Dogs are animals.

• Cats are animals.

• The class “animals” includes both groups.

• There are therefore more animals than dogs.

Superordinate categories and subclasses

A superordinate category is the wider class.

A subclass is a smaller group within it.

Superordinate class	Possible subclasses
Animals	Dogs, cats, birds
Vehicles	Cars, buses, bicycles
Fruit	Apples, oranges, bananas
Flowers	Roses, tulips, daisies
Furniture	Chairs, tables, cupboards

An individual item may be described at more than one level.

For example, one object can simultaneously be:

• A rose.

• A flower.

• A plant.

Piaget’s class-inclusion task

The bead task

Piaget investigated class inclusion using sets of objects such as beads.

A child might be shown:

• Seven brown wooden beads.

• Three white wooden beads.

The researcher asks:

“Are there more brown beads or more wooden beads?”

The correct reasoning

There are:

• Seven brown beads.

• Ten wooden beads altogether.

The correct answer is:

More wooden beads.

All the brown beads are included within the larger category of wooden beads.

The pre-operational response

A pre-operational child may answer:

“There are more brown beads.”

The child focuses on the visible comparison between:

• Seven brown beads.

• Three white beads.

They may compare the two subclasses rather than comparing:

• One subclass.

• The whole class.

What the error demonstrates

The child may understand that:

• The objects are beads.

• Some are brown.

• Some are white.

However, they struggle to represent the same objects simultaneously as:

• Members of the brown subclass.

• Members of the larger wooden-bead class.

The problem is not necessarily that the child cannot count.

It concerns the hierarchical relationship between categories.

A flower version of the task

A child is shown:

• Six yellow flowers.

• Three blue flowers.

The researcher asks:

“Are there more yellow flowers or more flowers?”

A pre-operational answer

“More yellow flowers.”

The child centres on the larger visible subclass of six yellow flowers.

A concrete operational answer

“More flowers, because the yellow and blue ones are all flowers.”

The child understands:

• Yellow flowers form one subclass.

• Blue flowers form another subclass.

• The whole class contains nine flowers.

• Nine is greater than six.

Application structure

A strong application would state:

“The child fails class inclusion because they compare the two coloured subclasses rather than comparing the yellow-flower subclass with the superordinate class of all flowers.”

Why pre-operational children fail class inclusion

Centration

The child centres on the largest or most noticeable subclass.

For example:

• Brown beads outnumber white beads.

• Yellow flowers outnumber blue flowers.

The dominant subclass captures the child’s attention.

Difficulty coordinating part and whole

The child struggles to represent one object as belonging simultaneously to:

• A subclass.

• A larger class.

They may mentally separate “brown” and “wooden” as though these were competing categories.

Language and conversational expectations

The question:

“Are there more brown beads or wooden beads?”

may sound unusual.

An adult might assume the researcher intends a comparison between two separate groups, even though the brown beads are also wooden beads.

A young child may interpret the question pragmatically as:

“Are there more brown beads or white beads?”

The error could therefore involve language rather than a lack of logical understanding.

Limited reversibility

To understand class inclusion, the child must mentally move between:

• The whole class.

• Its component subclasses.

They must understand that the whole can be divided into parts and recombined.

This requires a form of reversible thought:

flowers → yellow and blue flowers → all flowers again

Pre-operational children may struggle to perform this mental operation.

Class inclusion in the concrete operational stage

Piaget associated successful class inclusion with the concrete operational stage, beginning at approximately 7 years.

Concrete operational children become able to:

• Decentre.

• Consider several categories.

• Understand hierarchical classification.

• Coordinate parts and wholes.

• Use logical operations.

• Reverse the division of a class mentally.

Example

Eight-year-old Cleo is shown five apples and three pears. She is asked whether there are more apples or more pieces of fruit.

Cleo answers:

“More fruit, because the apples and pears are all fruit.”

This demonstrates:

• Recognition of the superordinate class.

• Inclusion of both subclasses.

• Decentration from the larger apple group.

• Concrete operational reasoning.

Classification and class inclusion

Classification means organising objects into categories according to shared characteristics.

Class inclusion is a more specific ability.

Classification	Class inclusion
Grouping objects by shared features	Understanding relationships between category levels
Example: separating red and blue shapes	Understanding that all the shapes form one larger class
Can involve one classification rule	Requires coordination of part and whole
May occur before full class inclusion	Associated with concrete operational logic

A child may successfully sort objects by colour but still fail a class-inclusion question.

This is because sorting does not necessarily require the child to compare a subclass with the complete class.

Hierarchical classification

A hierarchy contains several category levels.

For example:

living thingsanimalsmammalsdogsspaniels

A spaniel belongs simultaneously to every category above it.

An individual dog is:

• A spaniel.

• A dog.

• A mammal.

• An animal.

• A living thing.

Class-inclusion ability allows the child to move between these levels.

Applying hierarchical classification

Amara says that her pet is a Labrador but not an animal because it is a dog.

This response suggests incomplete class inclusion.

Amara treats “dog” and “animal” as separate alternatives rather than recognising that:

Labrador ⊂ dog ⊂ animal

A more developed understanding recognises inclusion across all three levels.

Egocentrism and class inclusion compared

Egocentrism	Class inclusion
Concerns different perspectives	Concerns different category levels
Child centres on their own viewpoint	Child centres on one subclass
Tested using people, dolls or visual scenes	Tested using beads, flowers or other objects
Requires representation of another person’s view	Requires representation of part-whole relationships
Improves with decentration	Improves with decentration
Associated with pre-operational limitations	Successful performance is associated with concrete operations

Central similarity

Both tasks require the child to consider two representations at once.

For egocentrism:

• My perspective.

• Another person’s perspective.

For class inclusion:

• The smaller subclass.

• The larger class.

Central cognitive change

The transition involves decentration.

The child moves from focusing on one dominant representation to coordinating multiple relationships.

This is similar to the development of decentration and reversibility in conservation tasks.

Applying both abilities to one scenario

Five-year-old Jaya is shown a model farm. When asked what a doll on the opposite side can see, she chooses her own view. She is then shown six cows and two horses. When asked whether there are more cows or more animals, she answers “cows”.

Egocentrism

• Jaya selects her own view.

• She fails to represent the doll’s perspective.

• This demonstrates visual egocentrism.

Class inclusion

• She focuses on the six cows.

• She fails to include the cows and horses within the larger animal class.

• This demonstrates a lack of class inclusion.

Developmental interpretation

Both responses are consistent with pre-operational thinking because Jaya:

• Centres on one representation.

• Struggles to coordinate several relationships.

• Has not yet developed the relevant concrete operations.

Evaluating Piaget’s account

Strength: Piaget identified meaningful developmental changes

Piaget showed that children’s errors can reveal the organisation of their thinking.

A child’s incorrect answer is not necessarily random.

For example:

• Selecting their own view demonstrates dependence on their own perspective.

• Choosing the largest subclass demonstrates centration on a part rather than the whole.

This was an important contribution because it encouraged psychologists to investigate how children reason, rather than only whether they obtain the correct answer.

Strength: the tasks produce clear developmental predictions

Piaget’s theory predicts that:

• Younger children will show greater egocentrism.

• Older children will show improved perspective-taking.

• Younger children will fail class inclusion.

• Concrete operational children will understand hierarchical categories.

These predictions can be tested using:

• Different age groups.

• Modified instructions.

• Different materials.

• Alternative response methods.

The tasks therefore stimulated extensive research into cognitive development.

Strength: qualitative explanations

Piaget’s clinical approach often involved asking children why they selected an answer.

This provides more insight than simply recording whether the answer was correct.

For example, a child might explain:

• “The doll sees this because I see it.”

• “There are more brown beads because brown is the biggest group.”

• “There are more flowers because all of them are flowers.”

These explanations reveal the reasoning behind performance.

Limitation: the three mountains task may be unnecessarily difficult

The task requires several abilities in addition to perspective-taking:

• Understanding a scale model.

• Interpreting photographs.

• Remembering mountain features.

• Performing mental spatial rotation.

• Understanding the doll’s role.

• Following complex instructions.

A child may fail even if they possess some perspective-taking ability.

Piaget may therefore have measured general task difficulty rather than pure egocentrism.

Limitation: Hughes found earlier perspective-taking

Children performed more successfully when asked to hide a doll from police figures.

The task was:

• Meaningful.

• Familiar.

• Goal directed.

• Less dependent on photograph matching.

This suggests that children younger than seven can represent another viewpoint when the task makes sense to them.

Piaget may therefore have underestimated children’s competence.

Limitation: familiarity may explain success

The police doll task does not necessarily prove that the child has fully overcome egocentrism.

Children may succeed because:

• The line of sight is visually obvious.

• The walls provide clear barriers.

• The required action is simple.

• Hiding is a familiar game.

They may still struggle with a more complex viewpoint transformation.

Perspective-taking may therefore be task specific and gradual.

Limitation: class-inclusion questions may be linguistically confusing

The question:

“Are there more brown beads or wooden beads?”

compares overlapping categories.

Children may expect alternatives in an “A or B” question to be separate.

For example:

“Would you like an apple or a banana?”

The child may therefore interpret “brown beads” and “wooden beads” as mutually exclusive groups.

An incorrect answer may reflect conversational expectations rather than a failure to understand category inclusion.

Limitation: children may know the categories but misunderstand the comparison

A child may correctly state that:

• Brown beads are wooden.

• White beads are wooden.

• All the beads are wooden.

They may still answer the comparison incorrectly.

This suggests that task performance depends on:

• The exact wording.

• Which categories are made visually prominent.

• Whether the question requires simultaneous comparison.

Class-inclusion understanding may not be entirely absent.

Limitation: performance may underestimate competence

A child’s underlying competence may be more advanced than the answer produced during one task.

Performance could be affected by:

• Memory.

• Language.

• Attention.

• Motivation.

• Anxiety.

• Familiarity.

• Researcher expectations.

One incorrect answer should not automatically be treated as evidence that the child lacks the underlying ability.

Limitation: development may be gradual rather than stage-like

Piaget’s account suggests a broad transition from pre-operational to concrete operational thinking.

However, a child may:

• Succeed in an easy perspective task but fail the three mountains task.

• Pass a familiar class-inclusion problem but fail an abstract one.

• Show perspective-taking in social situations but not spatial tasks.

• Understand simple category hierarchies but not complex ones.

This suggests that abilities develop unevenly across tasks.

The child may not enter a single new stage in which every ability appears together.

Limitation: domain-specific knowledge matters

Success may depend on what the child knows about the materials.

A child familiar with animals might understand:

dogs are animals

but struggle with an unfamiliar scientific classification.

Similarly, a child familiar with hiding games may succeed in the police doll task while failing a mountain-view task.

Experience and knowledge may therefore affect performance independently of a general stage.

Limitation: social guidance is underemphasised

Piaget focused strongly on the child’s independent cognitive development.

However, children may learn to consider perspectives and category relationships through:

• Adult explanations.

• Guided questioning.

• Cooperative play.

• Feedback from peers.

• Language.

• Education.

The zone of proximal development and scaffolding provide an alternative account in which support from a more knowledgeable person helps children perform beyond their independent level.

Limitation: cultural experience may affect performance

Cultures and educational systems differ in the emphasis placed on:

• Spatial reasoning.

• Classification.

• Formal questioning.

• Individual viewpoints.

• Cooperative reasoning.

The exact age at which a child succeeds may therefore reflect experience as well as maturation.

A universal stage timetable may underestimate cultural and educational variation.

Educational applications

Teaching perspective-taking

Adults can encourage children to consider another viewpoint by asking questions such as:

• “What can your friend see from there?”

• “What information does the other person have?”

• “How might the story look from their side?”

• “How might they feel?”

Useful activities include:

• Role play.

• Discussing story characters.

• Using maps and models.

• Describing objects hidden from another person.

• Cooperative problem-solving.

These activities also prepare children for Selman’s account of social perspective-taking.

Teaching class inclusion

Children can explore category hierarchies through:

• Sorting objects.

• Category trees.

• Venn diagrams.

• Matching subclasses with larger classes.

• Comparing parts with wholes.

• Explaining why an item belongs to several categories.

For example:

robin → bird → animal → living thing

The activity should make clear that the categories are nested rather than mutually exclusive.

Using concrete materials

Piaget’s theory suggests that concrete operational children benefit from visible and manipulable materials.

Examples include:

• Coloured blocks.

• Toy animals.

• Buttons.

• Cards.

• Pictures.

• Real classroom objects.

A child may understand class inclusion more easily when they can physically combine the subclasses into the whole class.

Using child-friendly language

Questions should avoid unnecessary ambiguity.

Instead of asking only:

“Are there more red flowers or flowers?”

a teacher might also ask:

• “How many red flowers are there?”

• “How many blue flowers are there?”

• “How many flowers are there altogether?”

• “Are the red flowers included in the group called flowers?”

This helps reveal whether an error concerns logic or language.

Overall conclusion

Egocentrism is difficulty representing a viewpoint different from one’s own. Piaget investigated it using the three mountains task and concluded that it is characteristic of pre-operational thinking.

Class inclusion is the understanding that a subclass forms part of a larger category. Pre-operational children may focus on the largest subclass, while concrete operational children can coordinate the part with the whole.

Piaget successfully identified important developmental changes. However, later child-friendly tasks suggest that he may have underestimated children because his procedures involved:

• Unfamiliar materials.

• Complex language.

• Memory demands.

• Spatial transformation.

• Ambiguous comparisons.

The strongest conclusion is that perspective-taking and classification improve with age, but development is more gradual, task dependent and influenced by experience than a rigid stage account suggests.

Hints from the Examiner Reports 💡

Examiner hint: Define egocentrism as difficulty understanding a different point of view. The official specimen question distinguishes it from object permanence, conservation and abstract reasoning.

Examiner hint: Do not describe egocentrism as selfishness. Piaget was describing a cognitive limitation, not a deliberate personality characteristic.

Examiner hint: Use the whole scenario. AQA’s 2025 report praised cognitive-development answers that made explicit links to the details provided rather than giving a general account of Piaget.

Examiner hint: Name the psychological mechanism. Instead of saying that a child “does not understand”, identify:

• Egocentrism.

• Centration.

• Class inclusion.

• Decentration.

• Perspective-taking.

Examiner hint: Keep the two concepts distinct:

• Egocentrism concerns viewpoints.

• Class inclusion concerns category hierarchies.

Examiner hint: When evaluating research, make the limitation specific to the study. The 2025 examiner report noted that generic methodological criticisms gained less credit in perspective-taking questions than points linked directly to the research.

Examiner hint: A developed task-demand criticism should explain:

1. Which extra ability the task requires.

2. Why a young child might struggle with it.

3. How this could lead Piaget to underestimate cognitive competence.

Examiner hint: Do not merely name Hughes. Explain that children performed better in a meaningful hiding task, suggesting the three mountains procedure may have been unnecessarily difficult.

Examiner hint: In a class-inclusion application, identify both levels:

• The subclass.

• The superordinate class.

Then explain why the whole class must contain more items than one of its parts.

Common Mistakes ⚠️

Mistake: Defining egocentrism as selfishness

Why this is incorrect:

Piagetian egocentrism is a difficulty in representing another perspective.

How to improve:

Use a viewpoint example rather than describing the child’s personality.

Mistake: Saying an egocentric child has no emotions for others

Why this is incorrect:

Egocentrism concerns cognition and does not prove that the child lacks affection or empathy.

How to improve:

Focus on what the child can see, know or represent.

Mistake: Confusing egocentrism with object permanence

Why this is incorrect:

Object permanence concerns whether hidden objects continue to exist.

How to improve:

Remember:

• Egocentrism: other viewpoints.

• Object permanence: hidden existence.

Mistake: Confusing egocentrism with conservation

Why this is incorrect:

Conservation concerns whether quantity remains constant after appearance changes.

How to improve:

Identify the type of task before selecting the concept.

Mistake: Saying the three mountains task measures selfishness

Why this is incorrect:

It measures visual perspective-taking.

How to improve:

Describe the doll’s position and the child’s choice of view.

Mistake: Naming the three mountains task without explaining it

Why this is incomplete:

The examiner needs to know how the procedure tests another perspective.

How to improve:

Explain the model, doll, possible views and expected response.

Mistake: Saying children fail because they cannot see the doll

Why this is incorrect:

The difficulty is representing what the doll sees.

How to improve:

Distinguish seeing the observer from representing the observer’s viewpoint.

Mistake: Saying Hughes proved Piaget completely wrong

Why this is too strong:

Hughes showed better performance in a simpler, meaningful task.

How to improve:

Conclude that perspective-taking is task dependent and may develop earlier than Piaget suggested.

Mistake: Defining class inclusion as sorting objects

Why this is incomplete:

Sorting requires classification but not necessarily an understanding of hierarchical part-whole relationships.

How to improve:

Explain that a subclass is included in a larger class.

Mistake: Comparing the two subclasses in a class-inclusion task

Why this is incorrect:

The usual question compares one subclass with the whole class.

How to improve:

Count every member of the superordinate category.

Mistake: Saying there are more roses than flowers

Why this is logically impossible:

Every rose is also a flower, so the flower class includes the roses plus any other flowers.

How to improve:

State the number in the subclass and the number in the whole class.

Mistake: Treating the categories as mutually exclusive

Why this is incorrect:

An object can belong to several category levels simultaneously.

How to improve:

Use:

Labrador → dog → animal

Mistake: Using age as the only application

Why this is incomplete:

Piaget’s age ranges are approximate and do not explain the child’s reasoning.

How to improve:

Identify the specific behaviour showing egocentrism or class inclusion.

Mistake: Giving a generic research criticism

Why this is incomplete:

Statements such as “the study was artificial” need development.

How to improve:

Explain how photographs, scale models or ambiguous wording could lower children’s performance.

Exam-Style Questions ✍️

Questions

1. What is meant by egocentrism in Piaget’s theory?[2 marks]

2. Outline how Piaget investigated egocentrism using the three mountains task.[4 marks]

3. Four-year-old Archie sits opposite a model containing several buildings. A doll is placed on the other side. Archie is asked what the doll can see and selects the picture matching his own view.

Explain Archie’s answer using Piaget’s theory.[4 marks]

4. Explain one reason why the three mountains task might underestimate children’s perspective-taking ability.[3 marks]

5. What is meant by class inclusion?[2 marks]

6. A child is shown eight red buttons and three blue buttons. All eleven objects are buttons. The child is asked whether there are more red buttons or more buttons and answers “red buttons”.

Explain the child’s answer using Piaget’s theory.[4 marks]

7. Seven dogs and four cats are shown to a child. The child says that there are more animals than dogs because dogs and cats are both animals.

Explain what this answer demonstrates.[4 marks]

8. Compare egocentrism and class inclusion as characteristics of Piaget’s stages of intellectual development.[6 marks]

9. Two groups of four-year-olds complete perspective-taking tasks.

Task	Number passing	Number tested
Unfamiliar landscape task	12	40
Meaningful hiding task	30	40

a) Calculate the percentage of children passing the unfamiliar landscape task.[2 marks]

b) Calculate the percentage passing the meaningful hiding task.[2 marks]

c) Explain what the findings suggest about Piaget’s account of egocentrism.[3 marks]

10. Outline one strength and one limitation of Piaget’s research into egocentrism or class inclusion.[6 marks]

11. Discuss Piaget’s account of egocentrism and class inclusion.[16 marks]

Answers and Mark Scheme

Question 1

Award up to two marks:

• Egocentrism is difficulty understanding or representing a perspective different from one’s own.

• The child may assume that another person sees, knows or experiences the same information as they do.

Do not credit selfishness without a cognitive explanation.

Question 2

Award up to four marks:

• Children viewed a three-dimensional model containing three mountains.

• The child observed the model from a particular position.

• A doll was placed at a different position.

• The child selected a photograph or representation of the view available to the doll.

• Selecting the child’s own view was interpreted as evidence of egocentrism.

Question 3

Award up to four marks:

• Archie demonstrates visual egocentrism.

• He selects the view available from his own position.

• He cannot accurately represent the doll’s different perspective.

• He centres on his own viewpoint.

• This is characteristic of pre-operational thinking.

Question 4

Award up to three marks:

Possible answer:

• The task requires the child to understand a scale model and match it to photographs.

• It also involves spatial transformation, memory and complex language.

• A child may fail because of these additional demands rather than because they cannot understand another perspective.

• Piaget may therefore underestimate competence.

Alternative relevant answers include:

• The mountain setting is unfamiliar.

• The child has no meaningful goal.

• The doll’s perspective may appear unimportant.

• The instructions may be confusing.

Question 5

Award up to two marks:

• Class inclusion is the understanding that a smaller subclass is contained within a larger class.

• The child understands that an object can belong simultaneously to the subclass and the superordinate category.

Question 6

Award up to four marks:

• The child fails class inclusion.

• The red buttons form a subclass.

• All eleven objects form the superordinate class of buttons.

• The child centres on the larger visible subclass of red buttons.

• They fail to coordinate the subclass with the whole class.

• The answer is consistent with pre-operational thinking.

Question 7

Award up to four marks:

• The child demonstrates class inclusion.

• Dogs and cats are understood as subclasses.

• Animals form the larger, superordinate class.

• The animal class contains all eleven items, while the dog subclass contains seven.

• This part-whole reasoning is characteristic of concrete operational thought.

Question 8

Award up to six marks for direct comparison.

Possible content:

• Both are characteristics within Piaget’s theory.

• Both distinguish pre-operational from concrete operational reasoning.

• Both involve centration during earlier development.

• Both improve through decentration.

• Egocentrism concerns difficulty representing another viewpoint.

• Class inclusion concerns difficulty representing a subclass within a wider class.

• Egocentrism is commonly tested through visual-perspective tasks.

• Class inclusion is tested using hierarchical categories.

• Egocentrism requires coordination of two perspectives.

• Class inclusion requires coordination of part and whole.

• Both may be underestimated by tasks containing confusing language or unfamiliar materials.

Higher marks require linked comparisons rather than separate descriptions.

Question 9a

4012​×100=30%

Award one mark for appropriate working and one mark for:

30%

Question 9b

4030​×100=75%

Award one mark for appropriate working and one mark for:

75%

Question 9c

Award up to three marks:

• A much larger percentage passed the meaningful hiding task.

• The difference was 45 percentage points.

• This suggests that performance depends on task design.

• Young children may possess greater perspective-taking ability than an unfamiliar landscape task reveals.

• Piaget may have underestimated competence by using difficult or meaningless procedures.

Do not claim statistical significance because no inferential-test result is provided.

Question 10

Award up to three marks for a developed strength and three marks for a developed limitation.

Possible strength:

Piaget developed systematic tasks that produced clear predictions about children’s reasoning. The procedures encouraged further research and revealed qualitative differences between children’s answers at different ages.

Possible limitation:

The three mountains task contains additional spatial, linguistic and memory demands. Success in more meaningful tasks suggests that Piaget may have mistaken difficulty with the procedure for an inability to take another perspective.

Alternative creditworthy points include:

• Clinical questioning provides insight into reasoning.

• Procedures can be replicated.

• Class-inclusion wording may be ambiguous.

• Original samples were limited.

• Performance may underestimate competence.

• Development may be gradual or domain specific.

• Piaget underemphasised social and cultural support.

Question 11

A strong response should include:

Knowledge and understanding

• Piaget’s stage-based account.

• Pre-operational and concrete operational thinking.

• Definition of egocentrism.

• The distinction between egocentrism and selfishness.

• Visual perspective-taking.

• Piaget and Inhelder’s three mountains task.

• Selection of one’s own view.

• Centration on the child’s perspective.

• Definition of class inclusion.

• Subclasses and superordinate classes.

• Part-whole relationships.

• Piaget’s bead or flower task.

• Pre-operational focus on the dominant subclass.

• Concrete operational decentration.

• Hierarchical classification and reversibility.

• Relationship between the two abilities and developmental stages.

Evaluation

• Piaget identified systematic qualitative changes in reasoning.

• The tasks generated clear, testable predictions.

• Clinical questioning provided insight into children’s explanations.

• The three mountains task contains spatial, memory and language demands.

• Hughes’ child-friendly police doll task suggests earlier perspective-taking.

• Success may depend on familiarity and meaningful goals.

• Class-inclusion questions may be linguistically ambiguous.

• Children may interpret overlapping categories as alternatives.

• Performance may underestimate competence.

• Abilities may develop gradually rather than through rigid stages.

• Performance may differ across tasks and knowledge domains.

• Social guidance and culture may affect development.

• Vygotsky provides an alternative emphasis on scaffolding and social learning.

• Piaget’s broad account remains useful even if his original ages and tasks underestimated children.

Higher-level responses will keep egocentrism and class inclusion distinct, use specialist terminology accurately and explain how each evaluative point affects Piaget’s conclusions.