The Theories Of Piaget 's Theory

The study of conservation task by Piaget typically yields the result that children at a certain age group exhibit certain understanding of conservation. A child younger than 7 or 8 is incapable of understanding the basis of conservation (Piaget & Inhelder, 1974). Piaget’s theory suggests that a child’s understanding of conservation marks a transitional period in their development where cognitive perceptions change from pre-operational to operational (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). Conservation is defined as the knowledge that appearance may change but quantity and weight or number remain unchanged in a child’s mind despite transformations such as changing the object’s shape, sectioning it into pieces or displacing it into different containers (Siegal, 2003). Piaget himself has found out that the conservation of certain variables is not achieved together at the same time (Flavell, 1963). According to Flavell (1963), Piaget’s subject’s showed that conservation of matter is common at 8 to 10 years of age, weight at 10 to 12 and volume only at 12 years onwards. Piaget’s study of conservation of number yielded similar results when administered to children of age 4 to 7 (Flavell, 1963).

During the preoperational stage, the child tends to focus on single dimension. This was proven by Piaget’s conservation problems (Siegler, 2014). Other children like this 3 year-old tends to make similar errors. In this case, the grandmother poured milk from a taller container into a smaller bottle. The 3 year-old would perceived that the taller container would have more volume of milk and would not completely fill the smaller baby bottle; however, they actually had equal volume which brought startling/amazement as the unconditioned response to this behavior. The grandmother took the initiative of imitating a monkey when presenting the monkey cup to the baby. The 3 year-old baby was fascinated by the magic that this conservation measure

An experiment was performed to examine the age at which infants recognize certain outcomes as impossible. Five-month old infants were tested in the procedure depicted in Figure 1. 3a. According to Figure 1, the first step in the experimental procedure is that two identical objects are to be placed into a case or box, these objects are primarily toys that would capture an infant’s attention. The infant would be roughly 5-months old, and the next step of the experimental would consist that the screen that is hanging from the case or box is to be lifted up and cover the two objects from the 5-month old infants vision. Within the third step the empty hand of the researcher doing the experiment would come in from the same hole that it first came through when it first placed the two objects in the case. The forth step of the experiment would consist of the hand taking one of the two objects from the case which may or may not be seen being removed. In the fourth step an object could also be added, which again can be hidden behind the screen or be completely seen by the 5-month old infant. The fifth step of the experiment in turn would result in two ways, the first being that the case that contained the two objects is now revealed to contain one. Now the second result can end up in which the 5-month old infant is left to wonder and think as two why there may still be two objects when there was clearly a hand that came in to take one object away. 3b. There are two conditions that

Experiments highlighted one of the major flaws in Piagets work – he failed to take notice of the context of the tasks he gives to children. He concentrated on a few tasks which often led to an under-estimation of the

This experiment is used to see if a child understands that the amount of a substance remains the same even when the shape is changed. The experiment will show if size influences them in their decisions. This experiment will also show if they have the ability yet to think backwards from one shape back to the other.

Conservation- The child has a better ability to identify the task at hand. For example; there are two small water cups that have the same amount of water, but then one of the water inside one of the cups is transfer into a taller glass the child is able to problem solve that both small and tall glass still carries the same amount of water. This idea of conservation could be implement into many formats of measuring, including numbers, mass, length, area, volume, etc.

During the ages of seven to eleven years, concrete operations begin. Children develop the capacity to think analytically, but only when they can refer to actual objects and use hands-on activities. Then they begin to internalize some tasks and they don’t depend on what they have seen.. They become capable of reversing operations. For example, they understand that 2 + 1 is the same as 1 + 2. When real situations are presented, they are beginning to understand others’ points of view.

Looking at the two stages for Piaget which are the Preoperational and the Formal Operational stages. These two stages consist of different ages, brain comprehension, and construct ideas that are presented in front of them. Conducting an Interview with children from both stages gave an understanding of Piaget theories and why the ages of the children hold a different perspective. This interview that has been completed has four types of conservation in which are liquid, number, and matter, and lastly, length. Each of these types of conservation have an experiment that is specifically designed to test these theories hands on. Each of these conservations consists of two sets of the same things and the child then determines what is seen.

Much of Piaget’s early work involved the “clinical method” – children being asked questions in a somewhat unstructured way, the onus being to establish whether they understood different problems. This approach was criticised for being unscientific, with Piaget and his fellow workers eventually being more precise in their experiments. It was agreed however that Piaget posed problems in a way that young children found difficult to comprehend. (Eysenck,

Jean Pigiat, a Swiss psychologist and philosopher, theorized that children all go through cognitive developmental stages. These stages differed by age as well as cognitive reasoning. The Sensorimotor Stage, 0-2 years, focused on the child’s ability or lack of rather to understand object permanence. The second stage, described as the Preoperational Stage, focused on children of the spanning the ages of 2-7 years old. In this group the children understood object permanence however could not transform those images or ideas in their mind. The Concrete Operations stage occurred between the ages of 7 and 11 years old and was defined by the child’s ability of conservative thought. These children developed the capacity to

Piaget worried that the development of knowledge representation and manipulation is not genetically programmed into the brain. He perceived children as young scientists who are motivated to understand the world and realize the mistakes that others have made about the world. Piaget believes that “Changes in knowledge structures drive changes in fundamental cognitive capabilities. The seemingly natural

Next is the preoperational stage which is the most important stage in cognitive development process. In this stage, the children learn everything from the natural phenomena such as language and behavior. This stage is allowed them to start the symbolic thinking. For example, when a box is pushed in front the children, they imagine the box as a moving car. Then, they make the car sound when they think that is a car. Besides, children in this stage start to work with the problem solving tasks just like the ways to get the thing at cupboard and ways to wear shirt. Ojose (2008) mentioned that “children’s perceptions in this stage are generally restricted to one aspect or dimension of an object at the expense of the other aspects” (p. 27). For instance, when one 500ml bottle is filled with water fully and one 1500ml bottle is filled with ¼ of water, the children think that the 500ml bottle is more water than the 1500ml bottle. That is because the children can only differentiate the dimension and the height as they do not know the amount of the water inside the bottle. When teaching the child in this stage, the adults act intelligently. They give an effective question about the characteristic object for developing their cognitive. For example, mother, who teaches

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)

Educational Implications of Piaget’s Theory. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is well-known and provides a basic understanding of the cognitive process and how children

Overview: Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, believed that children between the ages of seven and twelve, i.e. the concrete operational stage, begin to understand the concepts of reversibility, which is one of the important processes for logical thinking of conservation, besides classification and seriation. Reversibility is the ability to think about steps on any certain action and being able to mentally reverse the steps to return to the starting point (Woolfolk & Margetts, 2016). Children recognise that numbers, objects or events can be reversed, i.e, changed and returned to original condition. Inductive reasoning is incorporated by solving problems involving concrete objects and materials in the early stages of concrete operational level and build on towards deductive reasoning in the later stage. Reversibility is involved at all developmental stages of Piagetian theory. Reversibility plays an significant role in developing knowledge connected to the curriculum areas like Mathematics and Science. For example, investigating the connection between addition and multiplication; subtraction and division; fractions, decimals and percentages, and demonstrating it using concrete materials provides students with a significant opportunity to put the concept of reversibility in action. At the concrete operational stage, the child is able to think through a series of steps and mentally reverse the steps to return to the