The Application of Piaget's Schema of Operational Thinking to Religious Story Data by Means of the Guttman Scalogram

S ummary . A research into children's capacity to understand religious concepts was designed on a clinical interview basis. A standardised procedure was devised to elicit responses to religious pictures and stories and administered to a stratified random sample of 200 pupils with ages ranging from 6: 1 to 17: 11. Some forty responses for each child were evaluated on the criteria of Piaget's schema of operational thinking. Scoring reliability was safeguarded in the Piagetian evaluation by the use of independent judges familiar with the criteria and a suitable level of correlation between the investigator's and the independent judges' scores. Assessment of the validity of Piaget's schema was made by arranging scores in order of chronological age, mental age and total score and the use of the Guttman Scalogram. In all five items selected suitable reliabilities were found and the sequences of Piaget's schema of operational thinking were seen to be valid when applied to religious story data. Several discrepancies of age levels and general results are discussed, together with the implications for a theory of religious cognition

Cognition · Developmental psychology · Guttman scale · Schema (genetic algorithms) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Computer Science · Infant Health and Development · Psychology · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology

• Adolescence and Formal Operations

  Open Access•Augusto Blasi, Emily C Hoeffel•Human Development•2009

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