preoperational stage observation
Testing Piaget Theory In The Preoperational Stage Of Devolpment
A friend’s uncle, who lives in the area, has a set of fraternal male twins named Justin and Christian that just a week ago, turned four years old. And after getting a good connection through my friend, I was invited over to do a few of Piaget’s experiments on each of the boys. Being twins, both boys obviously fit into the preschool age-range and I determined that I should test their preoperational thought as it relates to their conservation, centration, and the irreversibility they may feature in their thinking. Piaget argues that adolescents still in the stage of preoperational thinking focus on one aspect of a situation, neglecting its other important features, which is called “centration” (Berk, 2012). They also have an inability to mentally go through a series of steps in a problem, and then reverse direction, returning to the starting point. This is called “irreversibility” (Berk, 2012, p. 322). These factors relate to a children’s lack of ability in “conservation” where an object’s physical characteristics remain the same, even when their outward appearance undergoes change (Berk, 2012). I chose to test these factors and limitations in these preschoolers to see if Piaget’s theory holds true in both subjects. For both, I first showed them two rows of six pennies, so a total of twelve were used. Both twins pointed out that each row of pennies contained the same amount of pennies. However, when I picked up the 2nd row of pennies and gave each of them more separation than there was in the first row, both boys told me the row, now with wider divides between each penny, had more pennies because “it has more!” as they would stretch their hands as if reaching out was making their case. The question I asked was not complicated and their understanding of it seemed clear when I asked, “which row has more pennies now?” And yet they both responded that the longer row of pennies that still contained only
A friend’s uncle, who lives in the area, has a set of fraternal male twins named Justin and Christian that just a week ago, turned four years old. And after getting a good connection through my friend, I was invited over to do a few of Piaget’s experiments on each of the boys. Being twins, both boys obviously fit into the preschool age-range and I determined that I should test their preoperational thought as it relates to their conservation, centration, and the irreversibility they may feature in their thinking. Piaget argues that adolescents still in the stage of preoperational thinking focus on one aspect of a situation, neglecting its other important features, which is called “centration” (Berk, 2012). They also have an inability to mentally go through a series of steps in a problem, and then reverse direction, returning to the starting point. This is called “irreversibility” (Berk, 2012, p. 322). These factors relate to a children’s lack of ability in “conservation” where an object’s physical characteristics remain the same, even when their outward appearance undergoes change (Berk, 2012). I chose to test these factors and limitations in these preschoolers to see if Piaget’s theory holds true in both subjects. For both, I first showed them two rows of six pennies, so a total of twelve were used. Both twins pointed out that each row of pennies contained the same amount of pennies. However, when I picked up the 2nd row of pennies and gave each of them more separation than there was in the first row, both boys told me the row, now with wider divides between each penny, had more pennies because “it has more!” as they would stretch their hands as if reaching out was making their case. The question I asked was not complicated and their understanding of it seemed clear when I asked, “which row has more pennies now?” And yet they both responded that the longer row of pennies that still contained only