Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

Melike TOPCU

PSY231 163407266

I choose a topic of regarding the cognitive development in early childhood. My video based on piagetian approach: the preoperational child.The preoperational stage is the second stage in Piaget's theory of cognitive development.  This stage occurs roughly between the ages two and seven. Piaget noted that children in this stage cannot yet use logic but symbolic thought expands. According to preoperational though, conservation is defined as the ability to comprehend that some properties of certain objects such as number or weight despite undergoing superficial transformations.Piaget believed that children in his preoperational stage of development, mainly aged 4 to 7 are in capable of conserving. This is due to their incapacity to understand the transformation carried out in the tasks. He also attributes this to the precedence of perception before logic. The preoperational child focuses on the initial state of the object and the finial state of the object and does not possess the operations required to reverse the transformation in order to deduce any form of conservation .From all these information about the Piagetian approach, I did a video shoot based on test of various kinds of conservation such as number,length,liquid,matter(mass) wit my cousin who is five years old.In terms of number of conservation task, my cousin saw two equal, parallel rows of grapes, when I ‘’asked did there the same number of grapes in each row or did one row have more?‘’ he said that they are the same but when I changed space the grapes in one row farther apart and then asked him the same question he said that ‘’the longe rone has more .‘’One of the other various dimensions of conservation is liquid.My cousin saw two identical glasses holding equal amounts of liquid when I asked ‘did both glasses have same amount of liquid or did one have more?’he said that they are the same amount of liquid.When I pour liquid from one glass into a third glass, a tall, thin one.After watched the water poured out of one of the short, wide glasses into a tall,thin glass.Despite seeing that the liquid amounts were equal, he chose the glass that appears fuller.When I asked why,he said that ‘because this one is bigger.’The other test of various kinds of conservation is lenght.When my cousin saw two parallel sticks of the same length his answer is two sticks are equal but when I move done stick the right later I asked ‘did both sticks the same size or did one other longer?’ his answer is the one on the right or the left is longer.