Week 3 Toddler and preschool development

Question 1

Piaget suggested there are four core concepts that are the focus of the preoperational cognitive stage: What are they?

Answer 1

Realism

Attributing tangible substances to something that is intangible.
For example, children might have a dream about going to the movies and when they wake up they feel that it did actually happen. In this scenario, the child is attributing a tangible experience of going to the movies, to an intangible dream

Animism

Attributing animal or human characteristics to objects.
For example, a young child might believe their toys have real feelings, or might try to avoid or stop others from stepping on toys so they don’t hurt them.

Artificialism

Children see things in the natural world as being made or designed by humans.
For example, a child sitting in the car with their parents might see some ducks slowly crossing the road and say “why can’t we make a duck that walks faster”.

Conservatism

Children learn to reason about the physical properties of their world.
For example, children may not know that a quantity doesn’t necessarily change if it’s been altered by being stretched, cut, shrunk or poured.
- Think the money situation with Sandra when she was a kid lol