Discuss Piaget’s stages of cognitive development as an explanation of Betsy and Jim’s behaviour. You must make reference to the context in your answer. (8)

Question 1

Piaget stated that there are four stages to cognitive development, the sensorimotor stage, pre-operational stage, concrete operational stage and formal operational stage.

Answer 1

Betsy is in the pre-operational stage as she is three years old, and Jim is in the concrete operational stage as he is eight years old.

Question 2

Children in the pre-operational stage are egocentric as they cannot understand another person’s point of view.

Answer 2

Betsy is egocentric as she cannot understand that Jim can see her
feet, even though she cannot see him when she is behind the curtains.

Question 3

Children in the concrete operational stage are able to understand that even if an object changes it still has the same properties.

Answer 3

Jim knows that there is still the same amount of biscuits even though he has broken one into two so there are more pieces.

Question 4

From the pre-operational stage children start to use symbolic thinking, where objects can represent something else.

Answer 4

Both Jim and Betsy use symbolic thinking as they use the rug as the sea and the doll as another pirate.