Recently, I have been learning in-depth about Piaget
1 and his proposed stages of cognitive development. Therefore, I thought it might be a bit of fun for any of you guys with children under the age of 7 (brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, etc.) to see whether one particular experiment works to prove or disprove a part of his theories.
Background:
Piaget argues that children between the ages of 2 and 7 years (approx.) are in the pre-operational stage of development. This has several features:
- Conservation - They cannot understand that objects remain in the same quantity even if their appearence changes.
- Animism - Giving human qualities/personality to inanimate objects (dolls become people)
- Egocentrism - Tendancy to see the world entirely through own perspective
Experiment:
Please note that the following experiment will not psychologically damage the child in any way.
This experiment will test the conservation of mass. This invloves only a large piece of blue-tak, plaster, or anything that can be easily molded.
- Make sure you have two EQUAL pieces.
- Ask the child which has more or are they the same. The child will respond they are the same (unless they are being perdantic).
- Roll (or any other method of changing the shape obviously) one of the pieces.
- Ask the child again which has more or are they the same. The child will respond that the one that looks bigger has more.
Results:
If the child says that they are the same at step 4, then they have either second-guessed you inaccurately (because you're wanting them to say the larger one) or because they have a greater sense of conservation of mass (and will therefore have good understanding of number and liquid).
However, if the child says that one is larger, they don't yet have understanding of conservation of mass (and unlikely to have developed it for number and liquid).
Issues:
Although this experiment is safe and is used widely, it has weaknesses.
Because you are asking the child twice, it is expecting that there is a different answer. Therefore, it may say the bigger one simply because they think that is what the researcher wants (deman characteristics). If you don't ask the child the first time round, but just show them, they are more likely to get it right. This is because they are concentrating more on the content and less on the form (which links into another part of Piaget's theories and experiments).
Notes:
This will not harm the child.
This does not mean the child is stupid, if they get the answer wrong. It simply means that they don't yet have the ability to understand conservation.
Piaget (Jean Piaget) is a famous child (cognitive) development pscyhologist.
There are many more experiments out there, but I like this one (it's simple and does the job mostly).
