The logical principle Definition

 

 

 

PIAGETIAN INVESTIGATIONS

After reviewing your book and the videos (provided in this document), you have learned about Piaget’s Preoperational Stage of Cognitive Development. For this assignment, you will investigate the experiments that Piaget once performed with children in order to demonstrate the mental (cognitive) changes they undergo through preschool, elementary, and middle school.

It is quite amazing to see children’s thinking style gradually become more logical and organized as they enter the next stage. Sometimes we see young children capable of certain skills but wonder why they are unable to grasp certain issues or behave in certain ways.

Watching these experiments will help you understand that children are often incapable of thinking in certain ways, not because they are not smart, but because their brains have not developed quite yet in certain ways. Piaget noted that children in the pre-operational stage are incapable of focusing on two aspects at one time. You will see this in your investigations!

That’s right! Now, you will be performing the following investigations! In this assignment, you will observe two children within the ages of 3 to 7 years old. Child #1 needs to be in the 3-5 age range and child #2 needs to be in the 6 to 7 age range.

This will allow you to truly see the differences in development. This is going to be one of the most fun assignments you have ever done in school! In the packet you have been provided videos of other researchers doing these experiments to help you understand these investigations of cognitive thinking. Be sure to watch the videos so that you can accurately perform the experiments.

**Please do not use the child’s name, but refer to them as Child #1 and child #2. DIRECTIONS:

All the steps for this project will be written in red. Be sure to follow them.

STEP 1: Read through this entire document – all the way through – so that you get an idea of what you will be doing for this project. The student who doesn’t do this usually fails to turn in the proper work. Trust me. Read through the entire document now.

STEP 2: Read the definitions and watch the videos provided for you, in this document for each of the experimental tasks. This will take about 30 minutes but will be hugely beneficial. Most of these videos are EXACTLY what you will be doing in this assignment.

Conservation

Definition: The principle that the amount of a substance remains the same (i.e. is conserved) even when its appearance changes. Source: Berger, K. 2012. The Developing Person: Through Childhood and Adolescence. NY: Worth Publishers. p. 259.

 

 

 

 

You Tube Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnArvcWaH6I (exactly what you will be doing! Watch and learn!!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtLEWVu815o (Great example of children with different thinking)

Classification Definition: The logical principle that things can be organized into groups (or categories or classes) according to some characteristic they have in common. Source: Berger, K. 2012. The Developing Person: Through Childhood and Adolescence. NY: Worth Publishers. p. 352.

You Tube Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHR0-FIl8Yg (watch part w/ Legos, similar to what you will be doing) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0hcaik-x_w (almost exactly what we will be doing, ours is better!)

Seriation

Definition: the knowledge that things can be arranged in a logical series. Source: Berger, K. 2012. The Developing Person: Through Childhood and Adolescence. NY: Worth Publishers. p. 352.

You Tube Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOorUw_XX2o (great example)

Morality

Definition: principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. Source: “morality.” In oxforddictionaries.com. Retrieved April 24, 2016, from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/mo rality.

STEP 3: The Investigation. You will now observe two children (between the ages of 3 and 7 years old). Read the following techniques before you begin your investigation with these children. You will need to make a copy of the Piagetian Investigation Form (attached to the assignment in Blackboard). Be sure to have all of the materials needed before you begin you work with the children. It is best to have a quiet space where it is just you and the child and nothing can interrupt the experiments.