COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT and CONSERVATION TASKS by JEAN PIAGET

Jean Piaget, a developmental biologist who devoted his life to closely observing and recording the
intellectual abilities of infants, children and adolescents, concluded that human development involves a
series of stages. These stages are known as the Sensory- Motor Stage, Pre-Operational Stage, Concrete
Operations Stage, and the Formal Operations Stage. During each of these stages new abilities are
gained and thus prepare the child for the succeeding levels

Sensory-Motor Stage- This is where infants learn about their world predominantly through their senses
(hence s ens or i) and by doing (hence motor)

This is the first stage in the development of intelligence (usually 0-2 years of age) and is concerned with
the evolution of those abilities necessary to construct and reconstruct objects. During this period,
infants are busy discovering relationships between their bodies and the environment. Researchers have
discovered that infants have relatively well developed sensory abilities. The child relies on seeing,
touching, sucking, feeling, and using their senses to learn things about themselves and the environment.
Piaget calls this the sensory-motor stage because the early manifestations of intelligence appear from
sensory perceptions and motor activities.

EXAMPLE: Object Permanence – this develops when a child recognizes that objects continue to exist
even when they are no longer visible. If you present a 4-month old child with an eye- catching toy then
cover this toy with a pillow, the child would not attempt to search for the toy. Piaget concluded from
this that the child does not understand that the toy continues to exist under the pillow; the child expects
the object to reappear but does not actively search for it.

Pre-Operational Stage

This stage (usually 2-7 years old), bears witness to the elaboration of the symbolic function, those
abilities which have to do with representing things. According to Lefrancois, 1995, a child will react to all
similar objects as though they are identical. At this time all women are 'Mummy' and all men 'Daddy'.
While at this level a child's thought istran s du ct ive, which means the child will make inferences from
one specific to another (Carlson & Buskist, 1997). This leads to a child looking at the moon and
reasoning; 'My ball is round, that thing there is round; therefore that thing is a ball'.

EXAMPLE: Piage took two identical beakers and fill each with the same amount of water, after a child
agreed that the two beakers contained the same amount of water,he poured the water from one of the
beakers into a much taller and thinner beaker. He then asked the child whether the two differently
shaped beakers still contained the same amount of water. Confronted with a problem like this the pre-
operational children said ‘no’. They focused on the higher water line in the thinner beaker and
insistedthat there was more water in the slender beaker.
Concrete Operations Stage

During this stage (usually 7-11 years old) the child acquires internalized actions that permit the child
todo “in his head” what before he would have had to accomplish through real actions. Children begin to
reason logically, and organize thoughts coherently. However, they can only think about actual physical
objects, and cannot handle abstract reasoning. They have difficulty understanding abstract or
hypothetical concepts. This stage is also characterized by a loss of egocentric thinking. During this stage,
the child has the ability to master most types of conservation experiments, and begins to understand
reversibility. Conservation is the realization that quantity or amount does not change when nothing has
been added or taken away from an object or a collection of objects, despite changes in form or spatial
arrangement. The concrete operational stage is also characterized by the child’s ability to coordinate
two dimensions of an object simultaneously, arrange structures in sequence, and transpose differences
between items in a series. The child is capable of concrete problem-solving. Categorical labels such as
"number" or "animal" are now available to the child.

EXAMPLE: Piaget, gave a pre-operational child seven carnations and three daisies, then told the child the
names for the two types of flowers and then asked the child to sort them into carnations and daisies.
This should be no problem. Then ask the child whether there are more carnations or more daisies. Most
children would correctly respond that there are more carnations.Then to ask to ask the child if there are
more carnations or more flowers; at this point most pre-operational children would respond incorrectly
- that there are more carnations than flowers. Generally pre- operational children can’t handle
hierarchical classification problems that require them to focus simultaneous on two levels of
classification.The child who has advance to the concrete operational stage is not as limited by centration
(hinders the child from focusing on more than one feature of a problem simultaneously) and can work
successfully with hierarchical classification problems

Formal Operations Stage

The last stage (usually 12-15 years of age and continues throughout adulthood), characterized by the
ability to formulate hypotheses and systematically test them to arrive at an answer to a problem, the
individual in this stage is also able to think abstractly and to understand the form or structure of a
mathematical problem. Another characteristic of the individual is their ability to reason contrary to fact.
That is, if they are given a statement and asked to use it as the basis of an argument they are capable of
accomplishing the task. For example, they can deal with the statement "what would happen if snow
were black".

EXAMPLE: Many adolescents spend lots of time considering theoretical possibilities to concepts such as
justice, love, and free will. They can think hypothetically, thus, they can think about what could be as
well as what actually is. For e.g. if asked what it would be like if people had tails, persons of the formal
operational stage might say ‘Dogs would know when you are happy’ or ‘Lovers could hold their tails in
secret under the table’ whereas concrete operational thinkers might tell you ‘not to be so silly’, or ask
where on the body the tail might be.
YOUR EXPERIMENT:

Characteristics of the Preoperational Stage:

The preoperational stage occurs between ages two and six years old. Language development is piece of
element of this period. Piaget relize that children in this stage not yet understand concrete logic, cannot
mentally manipulate information and are unable to take the point of view of other people which he
termed egocentrism. During the preoperational stage, children also become increasingly adept at using
symbols, as evidenced by the increase in playing and pretending. For example, a child is able to use an
object to represent something else, such as pretending a broom is a horse. Role playing also becomes
important during the preoperational stage. Children often play the roles of "mommy," "daddy,"
"doctor," and many else.

Egocentrism:

Piaget used a number of creative and clever techniques to study the mental abilities of children. One of
the famous techniques egocentrism involved using a three-dimensional display of a mountain scene.
Children are asked to choose a picture that showed the scene they had observed. Most children are able
to do this with little difficulty. Next, children are asked to select a picture showing what someone else
would have observed when looking at the mountain from a different viewpoint. Invariably, children
almost always choose the scene showing their own view of the mountain scene. According to Piaget,
children experience this difficulty because they are unable to take on another person's perspective.

Conservation:

Another well-known experiment involves demonstrating a child's understanding of conservation. In one

conservation experiment, equal amounts of liquid are poured into two identical containers. The liquid in
one container is then poured into a different shaped cup, such as a tall and thin cup, or a short and wide
cup. Children are then asked which cup holds the most liquid. Despite seeing that the liquid amounts
were equal, children almost always choose the cup that appears fuller. Piaget conducted a number of
similar experiments on conservation of number, length, mass, weight, volume, and quantity. Piaget
found that few children showed any understanding of conservation prior to the age of five.