Week 7- Piaget stage 2 & 3

Question 1

What are operations?

Answer 1

• Overall logic system, allows us to draw logical deductions

- Preoperational kids do not have one, concrete operations kids do have one

Question 2

What is the preoperational stage?

Answer 2

marked by the child’s use of symbols to represent objects and events

Question 3

Strength of preoperational thought: “Symbolic Function”. First use of mental schemes for what?

Answer 3

• use one thing as a symbol to represent something else
• internal problem solving (picture an outcome instead of going through trial and error)
• language use
• Symbolic/ pretend play : using one thing to symbolize something else (pretending a broom is a horse)

Question 4

Why is symbolic function so important?

Answer 4

• Speed: avoids trial and error
• scope: we don’t have to be tied to the present, can look into the future
• social interaction: once you can use words to represent things, your whole intellectual world opens and start having kid discussions and learn new things that way and communicate that way

Question 5

Name some weaknesses of Pre-Operational Thought: “Intuitive thinking”.

Answer 5

• Guessing at the answer rather than thinking it through

- thinking is rigid, insensitive to inconsistencies, focused on superficial aspects of problems, egocentric, illogical

Question 6

Pre-Operational Thought: Specific Deficiencies. Name three and explain them.

Answer 6

• animism: animating inanimate objects
• egocentrism: young children’s difficulty in seeing the world from another’s viewpoint
• centration: (tunnel vision) narrowly focused thought that characterizes preoperational youngsters

Question 7

Conservation of Number task. What is it and at what age are they able to do it?

Answer 7

• 2 rows of equally spread out chips, ask if two rows have the same number of chips? Or does one row have more chips than the other? same
• change surface appearance of one row, ask again.. not the same. why? one is longer
• by age 5, they no longer make this mistake

Question 8

Conservation of volume. Explain water glass experiment. When is this achieved?

Answer 8

• 2 glasses with equal amount water -> transfer water from one glass to a different sized glass
• kids watched the researcher take the glass and poor the water into other glass but they think it has a different amount of water
• pre-operational kids don’t get it, concrete operations kids get it
• Achieved 1-2 years after conservation of number (6 or 7)

Question 9

Conservation of mass. Explain plato ball experiment. When is this achieved?

Answer 9

• 2 plato balls of same amount
• change one ball to a long thing -> kid says longer one has more plato (even though they saw them use the same amount and just change the size)
• Achieved 1-2 years after conservation of number (6 or 7)

Question 10

Conservation of Length. Explain rectangle shift experiment. When is this achieved?

Answer 10

• 2 rectangles parallel and shift one over, they say that one is longer
• Achieved 2-3 years after conservation of number (7 or 8)

Question 11

Conservation of Weight. Explain clay ball experiment. When is this achieved?

Answer 11

• clay balls, balance scale
• put clay balls in scale and get them to agree that they weigh the same and take one and roll it into sausage and ask if they still weigh the same -> they say no, sausage weighs more b/c its longer
• Achieved 2-3 years after conservation of number (7 or 8)

Question 12

Why all these errors in conservation of numbers for pre-operational kids?

Answer 12

• centration: focus on most salient single feature of situation
  ex: focus on total length of chips but if they noticed the increased density between chips then they might see that the number of chips doesn’t change (lacks the capacity to notice everything, focus in on one thing)
• reversibility: don’t understand that superficial changes can be reversed

Question 13

Categorization. Explain pre-operational kids’ categorization inability.

Answer 13

-they say that things are all different, can’t group things together

Question 14

Categorization. Explain pre-operational kids’ inability to form classes (structure).

Answer 14

• something can belong to multiple classes but pre-operational kids don’t get it
  ex: we know that a poodle is a dog and a mammal
• we know that subclass

Question 15

Categorization. Explain the class-inclusion task (Piaget shows a kid of a certain age 12 wooden beads, 10 are red and 2 are white) in terms of pre-operational kids and concrete operations kids.

Answer 15

• Ask the pre-operational kids questions about the beads, are there more wooden beads or red beads? The child would say more red ones b/c there are only 2 white
• not able to hold in mind that there are many properties of the beads (the colour is salient but they can’t seem to think of the bead belonging to the wood category)
• Only one property at a time in their head
• Concrete operations kids gets it (can focus on more than one thing at a time)

Question 16

Critiques: Is Piaget’s View of Weaknesses in Pre-Operational Thought too “Harsh”?

Answer 16

• Underestimation:
• > egocentrism (aka lack of Theory of Mind): 2-3 year olds adjust to others’ perspectives in some situations
• > theory of mind examples: chocolate bag with cars in it, pre operational kid would say that someone else would guess cars but concrete operations kid would know that another person would guess chocolate
• > conservation tasks: cultural variation, role of experience

Question 17

What is the concrete operational stage?

Answer 17

children begin to use mental operations to solve problems and to reason

Question 18

What are mental operations?

Answer 18

strategies and rules that make thinking more systematic and more powerful