Cognitive Development

Cognitive Development

Intrdouction

Piaget portrayed children as active and motivated learners who, through numerous interactions with their physical and social environments, construct an increasingly complex understanding of the world around them. He proposed that cognitive development proceeds through four stages: (1) the sensorimotor stage (when cognitive functioning is based primarily on behaviors and perceptions); (2) the preoperational stage (when symbolic thought and language become prevalent, but reasoning is "illogical" by adult standards); (3) the concrete operations stage (when logical reasoning capabilities emerge but are limited to concrete objects and events); and (4) the formal operations stage (when thinking about abstract, hypothetical, and contrary-to-fact ideas becomes possible). The heart and core of this paper is to apply a series of experiment over a child aged from 3-7. For this we have chosen a 3 years old girl having some autistic problem. We will call her as Ashley throughout this case study. This series of experimene includes several tasks as follows:

Conservation Task 1: Conservation of Numbers

In this part of the case study following task will be performed. We will make two sets of ten identical items. Each set should be a different color. Than we will place one row of ten same-colored items in front of the child(3 Years old Ashley). Than we will ask the child (3 Years old Ashley) to make an identical row with the other set. After performing this we will ask the child that

“Do the two rows have the same number of items or does one row have more?”

When we reached the above mentioned phase of our case study the child (3 Years old Ashley) responded with a nod of his head. When we further carried out the phase we came to know that Ashley is not taking any interest in the study. Therefore we further added shiny pieces which involves Ashley little bit more and next time when we asked about the similarity of the two rows. She replied with a smiling “Yes”.

After this part we moved on to the next part of our case study in which we placed the items closely in one row and placed the remaining items with little bit more distance in another row. Although the items were same in number in both rows, Ahsley quickly respond to the question “Do the two rows have the same number of items or does one row have more?” with the second row.

We have concluded that ...