COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT and CONSERVATION characterized by egocentric, perception-dominated and

TASKS intuitive thought which is prone to errors in classification

by JEAN PIAGET (Lefrancois, 1995).

Jean Piaget, a developmental biologist who Most preoperational thinking is self-centered, or

devoted his life to closely observing and recording the egocentric. According to Piaget, a preoperational child
intellectual abilities of infants, children and adolescents, has difficulty understanding life from any other
concluded that human development involves a series of perspective than his own. In this time, the child is very
stages. These stages are known as the Sensory-Motor me, myself, and I oriented.
Stage, Pre-Operational Stage, Concrete Operations
Stage, and the Formal Operations Stage. During each of Egocentrism is very apparent in the
these stages new abilities are gained and thus prepare relationship between two preschool children. Imagine two
the child for the succeeding levels. children are playing right next to each other, one playing
with a coloring book and the other with a doll. They are
1. Sensory-Motor Stage talking to each other in sequence, but each child is
completely oblivious to what the other is saying.
This is the first stage in the development of Julie: "I love my dolly, her name is Tina"
intelligence (usually 0-2 years of age) and is concerned Carol: "I'm going to color the sun yellow"
with the evolution of those abilities necessary to Julie: "She has long, curly hair like my auntie"
construct and reconstruct objects. During this period, Carol: "Maybe I'll color the trees yellow, too"
infants are busy discovering relationships between their Julie: "I wonder what Tina's eyes are made of?"
bodies and the environment. Researchers have Carol: "I lost my orange crayon"
discovered that infants have relatively well developed Julie: "I know her eyes are made of glass."
sensory abilities. The child relies on seeing, touching,
sucking, feeling, and using their senses to learn things These types of exchanges are called "collective
about themselves and the environment. Piaget calls this monologues". This type of monologue demonstrates the
the sensory-motor stage because the early "egocentrism" of children's thinking in this stage.
manifestations of intelligence appear from sensory
perceptions and motor activities. According to Piaget, egocentrism of the young
child leads them to believe that everyone thinks as they
do, and that the whole world shares their feelings and
Object permanence is the awareness that an desires. This sense of oneness with the world leads to the
object continues to exist even when it is not in view. In child's assumptions of magic omnipotence. Not only is
young infants, when a toy is covered by a piece of paper, the world created for them, they can control it. This leads
the infant immediately stops and appears to lose interest to the child believing that nature is alive, and
in the toy. This child has not yet mastered the concept of controllable. This is a concept of egocentrism known as
object permanence. In older infants, when a toy is "animism", the most characteristic of egocentric
covered the child will actively search for the object, thought.
realizing that the object continues to exist.
Closely related to animism is artificialism, or
After a child has mastered the concept of object the idea that natural phenomena are created by human
permanence, the emergence of “directed groping", beings, such as the sun is created by a man with a
begins to take place. With directed groping, the child match. "Realism" is the child's notion that their own
begins to perform motor experiments in order to see perspective is objective and absolute. The child thinks
what will happen. During directed groping, a child will from one perspective and regards this reality as absolute.
vary his movements to observe how the results will Names, for example, are real to the child. The child can't
differ. The child learns to use new means to achieve an realize that names are only verbal labels, or conceive the
end. The child discovers he can pull objects toward idea that they could have been given a different name.
himself with the aid of a stick or string, or tilt objects to
get them through the bars of his playpen. The child During the pre-operational period, the child
begins to recognize cause-and-effect relationships at this begins to develop the use of symbols (but cannot
stage, allowing the development of intentionally. Once a manipulate them), and the child is able to use language
child knows what the effects of his activities will be, he and words to represent things not visible. Also, the pre-
can intend these effects. operational child begins to master conservation
problems.
2. Pre-Operational Stage
By the age of four children are developing a
This stage (usually 2-7 years old), bears witness more complete understanding of concepts and tend to
to the elaboration of the symbolic function, those abilities have stopped reasoning tranductively (Lefrancois, 1995).
which have to do with representing things. According to However their thought is dominated more by perception
Lefrancois, 1995, a child will react to all similar objects as than logic. This is clearly illustrated by conservation
though they are identical. At this time all women are experiments. Although the child is still unable to think in
'Mummy' and all men 'Daddy'. While at this level a child's a truly logical fashion, they may begin to treat objects as
thought is transductive, which means the child will part of a group. The pre-operational child may have
make inferences from one specific to another (Carlson & difficulty with classification. This is because, to a pre-
Buskist, 1997). This leads to a child looking at the moon operational child, the division of a parent class into
and reasoning; 'My ball is round, that thing there is subclasses destroys the parent group (Lefrancois, 1995).
round; therefore that thing is a ball'.
3. Concrete Operations Stage
From the age of about 4 years until 7 most
children go through the Intuitive period. This is
 During this stage (usually 7-11 years old) the
child acquires internalized actions that permit the child to Perhaps the most important limitation, yet the
do “in his head” what before he would have had to most difficult to describe and measure, is that of the turn
accomplish through real actions. Children begin to reason to logical operators. A pre-operational child will use
logically, and organize thoughts coherently. However, mostly simple, heuristic strategies in problem solving.
they can only think about actual physical objects, and Once a child reaches the concrete operational stage, they
cannot handle abstract reasoning. They have difficulty will be in possession of a completely new set of
understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts. This strategies, allowing problem solving using logical rules.
stage is also characterized by a loss of egocentric This new ability manifests itself most clearly in children's
thinking. justifications for their answers. Concrete operational
thinkers will explicitly state their use of logical rules in
During this stage, the child has the ability to problem solving (Harris and Butterworth, 2002). This area
master most types of conservation experiments, and also indicates the way in which the concrete operational
begins to understand reversibility. Conservation is the stage can be negatively defined; although children can
realization that quantity or amount does not change now use logical strategies, these can only be applied to
when nothing has been added or taken away from an concrete, immediately present objects. Thinking has
object or a collection of objects, despite changes in form become logical, but is not yet abstract.
or spatial arrangement. The concrete operational stage is
also characterized by the child’s ability to coordinate two These shifts in the child's thinking lead to a
dimensions of an object simultaneously, arrange number of new abilities which are also major, positively
structures in sequence, and transpose differences defined characteristics of the concrete operational stage.
between items in a series. The child is capable of The most frequently cited ability is conservation. Now
concrete problem-solving. Categorical labels such as that children are no longer perceptually dominated by
"number" or "animal" are now available to the child. one aspect of a situation, they can track changes much
more easily and recognize that some properties of an
Logic object will persevere through change. Conservation is
Piaget determined that children in the concrete always gained in the same order, firstly with respect to
operational stage were fairly good at the use of inductive number, followed secondly by weight, and thirdly by
logic. Inductive logic involves going from a specific volume.
experience to a general principle. On the other hand,
children at this age have difficulty using deductive logic, A second new ability gained in the concrete
which involves using a general principle to determine the operational stage is reversibility. This refers to the ability
outcome of a specific event. to mentally trace backwards, and is of enormous help to
the child in both their problem solving and the knowledge
Reversibility they have of their own problem solving. For the former
One of the most important developments in this this is because they can see that in a conservation task,
stage is an understanding of reversibility, or awareness for example, the change made could be reversed to
that actions can be reversed. An example of this is being regain the original properties. With respect to knowledge
able to reverse the order of relationships between mental of their own problem solving, they become able to
categories. For example, a child might be able to retrace their mental steps, allowing an entirely new level
recognize that his or her dog is a Labrador, that a of reflection.
Labrador is a dog, and that a dog is an animal.
Concrete operational children also gain the
A large portion of the defining characteristics of ability to structure objects hierarchically, known as
the stage can be understood in terms of the child classification. This includes the notion of class inclusion,
overcoming the limits of stage two, known as the pre- e.g. understanding an object being part of a subset
operational stage. The pre-operational child has a included within a parent set, and is shown on Piaget's
number of cognitive barriers which are subsequently inclusion task, asking children to identify, out of a
broken down, and it is important to note that overcoming number of brown and white wooden beads, whether
these obstacles is not due to gradual improvement in there were more brown beads or wooden beads (Piaget,
abilities the child already possesses. Rather the changes 1965).
are genuine qualitative shifts, corresponding to new
abilities being acquired. Seriation is another new ability gained during
this stage, and refers to the child's ability to order objects
The first, and most discussed, of these with respect to a common property. A simple example of
limitations is egocentrism. The pre-operational child has this would be placing a number of sticks in order of
a “'self-centered' view of the world” (Smith, Cowie and height. An important new ability which develops from the
Blades, 2003, p. 399), meaning that she has difficulty interplay of both seriation and classification is that of
understanding that other people may see things numeration. Whilst pre-operational children are obviously
differently, and hence hold a differing point of view. capable of counting, it is only during the concrete
Piaget's classic test for egocentrism is the three operational stage that they become able to apply
mountains task (Piaget and Inhelder, 1956), which mathematical operators, thanks to their abilities to order
concrete operational thinkers can complete successfully. things in terms of number (seriation) and to split
numbers into sets and subsets (classification), enabling
A second limitation, which is overcome in the more complex multiplication, division and so on.
concrete operational stage, is the perceptual domination
of one aspect of a situation. Before the stage begins, the Finally, and also following the development of
child's perception of any situation or problem will be seriation, is transitive inference. This is the name given
dominated by one aspect; this is best illustrated by the to children's ability to compare two objects via an
failure of pre-operational children to pass Piaget's intermediate object. So for instance, one stick could be
conservation tasks (Piaget and Inhelder, 1974).
deemed to be longer than another by both being In the latter part of the preoperational period,
individually compared to another (third) stick. the child begins to have an understanding between
reality and fantasy.
4. Formal Operations Stage
Prepared by:
The last stage (usually 12-15 years of age and Group IV Members:
continues throughout adulthood), characterized by the Castillo, Patricia A.
ability to formulate hypotheses and systematically test De Jesus, Joanna May D.
them to arrive at an answer to a problem, the individual Emnace, Rubelyn P.
in this stage is also able to think abstractly and to Gumapos, Marilou
understand the form or structure of a mathematical Malana, Davie Luh Marie M.
problem. Sison, Amapola T.
Viado, Danesa C.
Another characteristic of the individual is their
ability to reason contrary to fact. That is, if they are given IV – 3 BECEd
a statement and asked to use it as the basis of an
argument they are capable of accomplishing the task. For
example, they can deal with the statement "what would
happen if snow were black".

5. Conservation Tasks
Conservation is the conceptualization that the
amount or quantity of a matter stays the same
regardless of any changes in an irrelevant dimension. It is
also something that had created considerable confusion
during earlier stages, and which means the amount or
quantity of matter remains the same, despite changes
made in its outward appearance. Thus, even though the
distribution of matter changes nonetheless conserves its
properties. The development from non-conservation to
conservation is a gradual one. As with all other changes
in cognitive structures (schemata), the change is largely
a function of the actions (cognitive and sensory-motor) of
the child. According to Piaget, conservation structures
cannot be induced through direct instruction (teaching)
or reinforcement techniques. Active experience is the
key.

The following are the different Conservation

Problems or Tasks developed by Jean Piaget and his co-
workers to assess children’s levels of conceptual
development and their level of attainment with respect to
the concepts involve.

a. Conservation of Number
Number is not changed despite the
rearrangement of objects.
b. Conservation of Length
The length of a string is unaffected by its shape
or its displacement.
c. Conservation of Liquid Amount
The amount of liquid is not changed by the
shape of its container.
d. Conservation of Substance (Solid Amount)
The amount of substance does not change by
changing its shape or by subdividing it.
e. Conservation of Area
The area covered by a given number of two-
dimensional objects is unaffected by their
arrangements.
f. Conservation of Weight
A clay balls weighs the same even when its
shape is elongated or flattened.
g. Conservation of Displacement
The volume of water that is displaced by an
object depends on the volume of the object and
is independent of weight, shape, or position of
the immersed object.