A Child's Understanding of Conservation as Seen by Piaget

These experiments seem to agree with Piaget’s theory that children from the ages of two and six cannot understand conservation. However, some believe that this was inaccurate and that simple changes to Piagets’ initial experiments would have different outcomes and children can grasp conservation at the pre-operational stage. As described by Oates et al. (2005), Donaldson argued that children could operate at higher levels than Piaget predicted. They made changes to the conservation of liquid experiment so that it would make more sense to children. They observed forty children and instead of using water they used pasta shells and were told that they were going to use these in a competitive game. After the children agreed that the two beakers had the same amount of pasta shells, the experimenter pointed out that there was a chip on the rim of one beaker. The beaker was then changed to a wider one and the pasta shells were poured into it. The children were asked if they had the same amount of shells or were they different and this time 70 per cent of children said that they were the same. This would suggest that children could conserve from the age of four as long as it made sense to the child. Having a logical reason

My aim while carrying out this observation was to observe a group of children, specifically the 2nd youngest child, aged 2yrs 8 months and his cognitive response to an activity involving numeracy. The type of cognitive skill I was looking for is what cognitive developmental stage children need to be at to be able to conserve and my colleague used Piaget’s Conservation Test involving Numbers to determine this.

Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, made substantial findings in intellectual development. His Cognitive Theory influenced both the fields of education and psychology. Piaget identified four major periods of cognitive development: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operations stage, and the stage of formal operations. The preoperational stage includes children two to four years of age and is characterized by the development and refinement of schemes for symbolic representation. During the preoperational stage lies, what Piaget coined, the intuitive period. This phase occurs during the ages of 4-7 and during this time, the child’s thinking is largely centered on the way things appear to be rather than on

Piaget claims that before the beginning of this stage, children 's ideas about different objects, are formed and dominated by the appearance of the object. For example, there appears to be more blocks when they are spread out, than when they are in a small pile. During the Concrete Operational Stage, children gradually develop the ability to 'conserve ', or learn that objects are not always the way that they appear to be. This occurs when children are able to take in many different aspects of an object, simply through looking at it. Children are able to begin to imagine different scenarios, or 'what if ' something was to happen. This is because they now have more 'operational ' thought. Children are generally first able to conserve ideas about objects with which they are most comfortable. Once children have learnt to conserve, they learn about 'reversibility '. This means that they learn that if things are changed, they will still be the same as they used to be. For example, they learn that if they spread out the pile of blocks, there are still as many there as before, even though it looks different!

Jean Piaget is known for his theories in cognitive development theory. His theory is based on the idea that children constantly construct knowledge as they explore and mold their environment. There are four stages in Piaget’s theory, sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operations, the stages also corresponds with how old the child is. Not every child will be in the stage that matches the child’s age because some children are exceptional. Piaget’s theory is based on the cognitive development of how the average child shows their learned behavior through performed tasks. As I went through the first interview, I realized that how the children came to develop their answers was what’s important about the assignment. each child with the Piagetian Task Kit, I started to realize The Piagetian Task Kit helped me examine and see where each child was at in their cognitive development level.

“According to Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development, it states that all children go through specific stages as their brain matures. It also stated that these stages are completed in a fixed order within all children, according to their range of age (Atherton).” In other words, one cannot expect a two month old baby to solve simple math problems as that of a five year old. There are four stages in which Piaget grouped the development of a child according to their age groups, in which children interact with people and their environment. The sensorimotor stage (birth until age 2) children use their senses to explore their environment. During this stage, children learn how to control objects, although they fail to understand that these objects if not within their view continue to exist. The preoperational stage (2 until age 7) children are not able to see other's viewpoints other than their own. In other words, if the same amount of water is poured into a short wide glass and then a tall thin glass the child will perceive that the taller glass has more water because of the height. The concrete operational stage (7 until 12) children begin to think logically, but only with a practical aid. The last stage of Piaget’s cognitive theory is the formal operation stage (12 through adulthood) in which children develop abstract thinking and begin to think logically in their minds (Piaget).

Piaget believe that children are active thinkers. He recognized that the mind develops through a series of irreversible stages. He also acknowledged that a child’s maturing brain builds schemas that are constantly assimilating and accommodating to the world around them. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is split into four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The sensorimotor stage occurs from birth to nearly two years of age. At this stage, infants learn about the world around them by sensing it and interacting within it. It is also in this stage that the idea of object permanence develops, that is, the awareness that things continue to exist even when they are not being observed. In my personal life, I am certain that in this stage of development I would have enjoyed peek-a-boo, because if I didn’t see it, to my developing mind, it wasn’t there at all. The second stage, preoperational, lasts from two years of age to seven years of

Bryant believes that Piagets experiments into conservation skills were too difficult for children to give the correct answers. He argues that it was only the way in which Piaget presented his tasks that the results showed the children as being non-conservers.

“In his famous penny conservation experiment, Piaget demonstrated that until about the age of 6, children would say that the spread out row of pennies had more than the row with the (equal number) of more squished together pennies, even if they themselves counted each row. Piaget explains this contradiction by stating that children’s logic in this time period is ruled by perceptions as opposed to reasoning” (Anthony). Preschoolers use different kinds of symbols, objects and things to describe their surroundings. As they can point at a box and say, “mom like at that house, it’s so big and colorful”.

My case subject is Regina Holms, a second grader, from County Elementary School. Before I interviewed the subject, I received permission for her guardian. During the interview, Regina and I conversed while working on one of the seven Piagetian tasks, the volume task. During this task, Regina’s stage of development was determined.

Next, the "pre-operational stage" is the second stage of Piaget’s theory. This stage lasts from around 2 - 7 years. In this stage, Piaget proposed that a child fails to understand the concept “conservation” - the belief that things remain constant in terms of number, quantity and volume irrespective of variations in appearance. In experiments to test number conservation, Piaget showed the child two sets of checkers, which had exactly the same number of checkers in each set. He then changed one of the checker sets, keeping the same amount of checkers in it, so that it was only different in appearance. When the experiment ended, the results showed that the children believed that the sets were of different quantity, thereby, proving Piaget’s theory factual. (Piaget 1952)

For the purpose of this paper, I will replicate the conservation tasks experiment to test Piaget’s theories. My test subject is a five year old girl named Truphena, she -according to Piaget-is categorized to be in the pre-operational stage of intellectual development. Therefore she wouldn’t be expected to succeed at the conservation tasks that will be presented to her. I also have another subject named Franklin who is nine year old, he

In the sensorimotor stage the child discovers the environment through physical actions such as sucking, grabbing, shaking and pushing. During these first two years of life children realize objects still exist, even if it is out of view. This concept is known as object permanence. Children in the preoperational stage develop language skills, but may only grasp an idea with repeated exposure. As Piaget describes in the next stage, children draw on knowledge that is based on real life situations to provide more logical explanations and predictions. Lastly, in the formal operational stage children use higher levels of thinking and present abstract ideas.

The endogeneous constructivism claims knowledge is formed through cognitive abstraction based on prior knowledge. Piaget’s (1952) theory of cognitive development included environmental influences into knowledge construction. However, Piaget gave more credit to children’s thinking capability in his theory. Children can interpret and respond to new events using existing schemes (Piaget, 1952; Ormrod, 2008). Piaget’s idea of conservation posits children/people knowledge is held in one’s mind until another experience pertaining to the person’s knowledge is challenged/changed (Piaget,

The first stage of Piaget’s development theory is the sensorimotor stage which takes place in children most commonly 0 to 2 years old. In this stage, thought is developed through direct physical interactions with the environment. Three major cognitive leaps in this stage are the development of early schemes, the development of goal-oriented behavior, and the development of object permanence. During the early stages, infants are only aware of what is immediately in front of them. They focus on what they