Experiment Reveiw of Piagets Conservation Tasks - 812 Words

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†¦show more content†¦The third conversation consisted of two equal balls of clay. I asked Daniel if the balls of checkers were equal or if one ball had more clay in it than the other ball. He looked at them closely but then nod and rep lied that they were both equal. Then I squeezed one ball of clay in front of him into a flattened ball. I asked him if one had more clay or if they were of equal value. He told me that the longer, more flat clay had more clay in it. For the final conversation I placed two sticks of equal length and placed them side by side. I asked him which one was longer and he told me they were the same length. I moved one stick farther up the table and asked him the same question again. This time he told me that the stick that was farther up the table was longer than the other stick. Daniel was obviously in the stage of preoperational because he could not understand the idea that I was not manipulating the amount of objects just changing the appearance. Once Daniel is able to understand this concept he will be able to move into Piaget’s concrete operational stage. In the concrete operational stage the child is now mature enough to use logical thought or operations (i.e. rules) but can only apply logic to physical objects. During this stage Piaget’s law of conservation and reversibility come into play. This means that the child will learn that