why stage
Intuitive thought also called the “why stage” is defined under the Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development as a stage where children tend to grow very curious often asking a myriad of question. Children in this stage age between 4 to 7 years. It is during this that children start using primitive reasoning given an emergence in interest of wanting to know why things are the way they are. An example, a child may ask, why does the plane fly, why do the trees move backward while in car, among others. On the other hand, egocentrism is defined by the inability of a persons to understand another’s person’s point of view. It serves as a representation of a cognitive bias, whereby a person would assume other people share in his or her perspective. In other words, “it’s all about me.” Example, after seeing my mother unhappy, I would sympathize with her and try to confront her by giving out my favorite toy. Animism as defined by Piaget meant that a child’s world of nature was alive, conscious and with a purpose. During my time I used to think that when someone fell it was because the sidewalk was mad. Artificialism is the belief that certain aspect in the environment are as a result of human interventions or actions. For example, I used to say wind was as a result of someone blowing very hard (Howe et al., 2015).
According to Piaget, the difference between age 3,5, and 8 in their ability to understand how conservation work is brought about by the child’s to focus on one aspect of a problem at a time also called centration (Howe et al., 2015). For instance, children at 3 and 5 years also termed as the pre-operational may perceive water in different glasses in terms of height irrespective of the glass size. However, at concrete operation which starts at 7, children begin to decenter and are able to think beyond one aspect of a situation at a time. In this case, the child can differentiate the amount of water in the glass while considering the factor of wideness. In other words, they are able to relate between the level of water and the width of the glass to get the correct answer.
Conservation of weight task
Material: pay clay
Procedure
Divide the clay equally and make identical balls. Show it to the children and ask them whether the balls are the same. After they have agreed, pick one of the balls and flatten it to appear like a pancake. Repeat the same question of whether the two pieces of play clay are the same. Irrespective of the response, ask the child why he or she came up with the conclusion.