Children are interesting individuals. I came to this conclusion the week I was babysitting two of my younger cousins: one a jubilant nine year old and the other at the tender age of three. By the end of the week, I understood that a three year old has a significantly different thinking pattern than their older siblings. To me, the different manners through which my cousins learned, thought, and expressed themselves was extremely fascinating. Eager to understand these differences in greater detail, I set out do some research.
While searching for explanations, I learned that cognitive development in children has intrigued many developmental psychologists in the past years. Jean Piaget was one such psychologist, and he was the first to comprehend …show more content…
The main characteristic of this stage is a child’s ability to perform mental operations for physical events. In contrast to the preoperational stage, children are now able to pass conservation tests. However, limitations still exist in performing mental operations regarding abstract or hypothetical situations. This ability would only be possible with experience. For example, if children during this stage are given a set of conditions and asked to infer an outcome of a hypothetical situation, they would be unable to deduce how the conditions relate to each other and manipulate the outcome of the situation. However, as development continues, children eventually move on to the final stage of development.
The final stage of development is the formal operations stage. This emerges during adolescence, and individuals are now able to perform the most sophisticated and complex thinking. Unlike in the previous stages, individuals can now relate two conditions together and determine the outcome of an event. For example, an individual in this stage would be able to make the following reasoning: “If I stay out past curfew, I’ll be grounded. If I am grounded, I will lose many privileges. Therefore, to keep my privileges, I must not stay out past
While searching for explanations, I learned that cognitive development in children has intrigued many developmental psychologists in the past years. Jean Piaget was one such psychologist, and he was the first to comprehend …show more content…
The main characteristic of this stage is a child’s ability to perform mental operations for physical events. In contrast to the preoperational stage, children are now able to pass conservation tests. However, limitations still exist in performing mental operations regarding abstract or hypothetical situations. This ability would only be possible with experience. For example, if children during this stage are given a set of conditions and asked to infer an outcome of a hypothetical situation, they would be unable to deduce how the conditions relate to each other and manipulate the outcome of the situation. However, as development continues, children eventually move on to the final stage of development.
The final stage of development is the formal operations stage. This emerges during adolescence, and individuals are now able to perform the most sophisticated and complex thinking. Unlike in the previous stages, individuals can now relate two conditions together and determine the outcome of an event. For example, an individual in this stage would be able to make the following reasoning: “If I stay out past curfew, I’ll be grounded. If I am grounded, I will lose many privileges. Therefore, to keep my privileges, I must not stay out past