Piagetian Tasks PDF

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Summary of Piagetian Tasks for cognitive development ...

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Piagetian Tasks

Avery Apanius 5100:220:004 Dr. Wondimu Ahmed September 23, 2015

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Introduction Jean Piaget, a world renowned Swiss psychologist, is famous for his influential work in the area of children and education. His distinguishing accomplishments are his theories of cognitive development. He recognizes that kids learn differently than adults and has defined four stages of learning for children: sensorimotor stage (ages 0-2), preoperational stage (2-7), concrete operational stage (7-11), and formal operational stage (11-adult) (Smartwood, 2012, p. 46). In this observation, I interviewed two different participants of different age and gender and conducted two experiments associated with Piaget’s concepts of children's cognitive development. I put my focus towards the concepts of centering and abstract thought throughout the research. The first child I examined was my girlfriend’s nephew. He is an active, six year old male with noticeably advanced social skills. For this task, I placed two of the exact same glasses of liquid on the table and filled them both with an equal amount of liquid. I put food coloring in the water to make it more fun, pseudoscientific, and interesting to him. I then asked him to look at the glasses of liquid and identify which glass contained more liquid. After careful inspection, he deduced that the amounts were the same. Afterwards, I poured the liquid from the first glass into a taller, skinnier glass and poured the second glass into a shorter, fatter glass as he watched. I then repeated my original question about whether or not the glasses had an equal amount of liquid. Once again, after carefully examining the two glasses, he replied that the taller glass contained more liquid. I asked him how he came to this conclusion and he responded, “the liquid in the tall glass is higher up than the water in the short glass.” I am not surprised by this answer because he is still in the preoperational stage of development. Through talking with him, I noticed that he still struggles academically, but he is advanced in a social environment.

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The next experiment I conducted was on my eleven year old sister who is exceptionally intelligent and had a heightened creativity. This next task was chosen in order to evaluate her capability of higher order thinking. My experiment was to ask her a creative, open ended question to test her capability of abstract thinking. I asked her, “If you were given a third eye where would you put it?” She concentrates hard for a couple moments and responds quickly that she would want the eye on her forehead. I continued to ask, “Why choose your forehead?” She then informed me that’s where extra eyes go and she has seen it like that before in drawings, movies, etc. This response is very interesting and it went along the lines of what I expected to hear. She is still technically in the concrete operational stage of cognitive development, so a lack of abstract thought is similar is expected due to Piaget’s theory.

Interpretation of the Data The answers that these children gave to these questions speak very strong for what stage of cognitive development they’re in, according to Jean Piaget’s theories. During the second stage of cognitive development, the preoperational stage (age 2-7), Piaget theorizes that children ages start to learn logic and reasoning. Centration is a behavior that develops during the preoperational stage, which is the tendency to focus on one characteristics to the exclusion of others (Smartwood, 2012, p. 51). For example, when a child has a big bowl of ice cream and they complain that they don’t have enough ice cream. One way to solve that is to put the ice cream in a different, smaller bowl. Kids in the preoperational stage only concentrate on one characteristic: how the ice cream looks in the bowl and ignore all other characteristics like the amount of ice cream. Back to the experiment, in the first task the boy showed strong signs of a lack of conservation, which is normal for a child in the preoperational stage. Conservation is the idea that changing the formation of an object does not affect its amount or volume (Smartwood,

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2012, p. 52). He was cognitively unable to concentrate on more than one characteristic of the glass and liquid. Instead, he concentrated on the change of the glasses and ignored the use of the same amount of liquid. This is typical for a child of his age. Although, he is close to the end of that stage, and will soon theoretically enter the next stage, he is not academically advanced enough for his age to be able to think in that way. As a six year-old he responded exactly how I expected him too, therefore, I feel as though I have insight and a better understanding into his thought process and cognitive development. For the other task, the child, an eleven year-old girl, was asked an open ended question that was intended to lead to abstract thought. At eleven years old, she falls in the concrete operational stage (age 7-11). In this stage, their sense of conservation is fully developed, which means she has the ability to recognize that objects stay the same even though certain characteristics change (Smartwood, 2012, p. 51). Her response revealed a lot about her cognitive development. This is a challenging question to ask a child of her age, but since she was so close to the to the formal operational stage (age 12-adult), I figured her abstract reasoning would be more developed based on her personality and advanced intelligence. Contrary to my hypothesis, she provided me with a typical answer for a child in this stage of cognitive development. She based her answer off of concrete experiences that she has had with a third eye, which consists of drawings, movies, etc. Concrete experiences are defined as relating to actual experiences and substance (Barrouillet, 2015, p. 3). She has not yet developed the ability to think beyond what she has seen before in order to answer this question.

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Reflection I am well versed in Jean Piaget’s theories for the stages of children’s cognitive development, and actually applying what his ideas towards actual children really creates a greater understanding of his theories. It will be extraordinarily useful to apply these theories when I become a teacher in order to better understand how a student’s problems with the class may be a result of a lack of development in a certain area or at a particular time in their childhood. It is essential to understand the minds of the kids that you teach and to understand that children don’t learn the same way as adults do, according to Piaget. I can apply what I have learned about cognitive development in the classroom. For example, if there is a kid acting out and disrupting class, instead of just assuming he is a bad kid, I now know that it could be a result of their egocentric behavior which is common in the preoperational stage of development. Egocentrism means children assume that other people see, hear and feel exactly the same as the child does. Back to my example, if a kid is acting disruptive and making jokes while in the preoperational stage of cognitive development then they believe that everybody in the room is reacting and feeling the same way about his jokes that he is. This lab opened my mind to different causes to the actions of children that I see. My natural response is not always the right one, so it is important to apply these theories to the kids in my classroom when I become a teacher. Also, when teaching a new concept or idea to the kids, I need to keep in mind that they don’t have all of my experiences and knowledge that led to my understanding of the lesson that I’m teaching them. I need to take everyone’s background and experiences into consideration while I teach.

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Conclusion In this experiment, I carried out two Piagetians tasks on two different children at different stages of cognitive development and genders in order to obtain a more valuable understanding of cognitive development in kids. Piaget’s theories don’t always perfectly categorize a child, but generally is successful in predicting behaviors, ideas, and actions of children. Piaget effectively summarizes the different stages of development that children experience. These are lessons and facts that I can apply to my classroom when I become a teacher.

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References Barrouillet, P. (2015). Theories of cognitive development: From Piaget to today. Developmental Review, doi:10.1016/j.dr.2015.07.004 Smartwood, J. (2012). Educational Psychology. Redding, CA: BVT Publishing, LLC....