Jean Piaget - how is my grammar-Psych paper?

Hey I'm back LOL! I really appreciate the feedback I recieve on my essay's, although I am improving my grammar with each essay I write, I'm still nervous about it! how's my grammar on this paper so far? It's not completed but coming along nicely! Thanks!

Jean Piaget's cognitive development theory consists of three main components: schemes, assimilation, accommodation, and the stage model. Piaget stressed that children actively construct their own cognitive worlds by creating schemes (Santrock, 2007). Schemes are actions or mental representations that organize knowledge. In Piaget's theory, behavioural schemes characterize infancy, and mental schemes develop in childhood. Piaget believed children use and adapt their schemes through assimilation, which is incorporating new information into existing knowledge, and accommodation, which is adjustment of schemes to fit new information and experiences (Santrock, 2007). Piaget believed that equilibration of assimilation and accommodation is what advanced children through stages helping them to understand the world. Equilibration is the shift that occurs as children experience cognitive conflict, or disequilibrium, in trying to understand the world. Eventually, they resolve the conflict and reach a balance, or equilibrium, adopting a more sophisticated mode of thought (Santrock, 2007). Each of the stages is age related and consists of distinct ways of thinking. Piaget's cognitive theory of development encompasses four main stages: the sensorimotor stage from zero to two years of age, the preoperational stage from two to seven years of age, the concrete operational stage from seven to eleven years of age, and the formal operational stage from eleven to fifteen years. This paper will examine in detail the preoperational and concrete operational stages of development, including their characteristics, abilities, and limitations. Three experiments will be conducted on two children aged between three to five and eight to ten. The purpose of the experiment is to observe the difference between a preoperational and concrete operational child's thought process regarding egocentrism and conservation.

Pre Operational Stage

The preoperational stage occurs between two to seven years of age, and is the second Piagetian stage. In this stage, children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings (Santrock, 2007). Symbolic thought goes beyond simple connections of sensory information and physical action (Santrock, 2007). However, although preschool children can symbolically represent the world, according to Piaget, they still lack the ability to perform operations; the Piagetian term for internalized mental actions that allow children to do mentally what they previously did physically (Santrock, 2007). Operations are also reversible mental actions. The preoperational stage can be divided into two sub-stages: the symbolic function sub-stage and the intuitive thought sub-stage.

During the symbolic function stage, which occurs between two to four years of age, children gain the ability to mentally represent an object that is not present (Santrock, 2007). Use of language and pretend play are prime examples of this symbol use. However, Piaget also noted that children during this phase are unable to take the point of view of other people, which he termed egocentrism. Animism is the other limitation Piaget observed during preoperational thought. Animism is the belief that inanimate objects have life like qualities and are capable of action (Santrock, 2007).

Intuitive thought is the second sub-stage of preoperational thought, occurring between four to seven years of age. During this sub-stage children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of questions (Santrock, 2007). At this stage, children seem so sure about their knowledge and understanding, yet are unaware of how they know what they know (Santrock, 2007). Children during this sub-stage tend to center on one aspect of any problem or communication at a time. Piaget labelled this centration, a centering of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others (Santrock, 2007). Perhaps the most famous example of the preoperational child's centrism is what Piaget refers to as their inability to understand conservation. Conservation is the awareness that altering an objects or substances appearance does not change its basic properties (Santrock, 2007). It is the development of the child's ability to de-center that marks him as having moved on to the next stage.

Concrete Operational Stage

The concrete operational stage begins around age seven and continues until approximately age eleven. During this time, children gain a better understanding of mental operations. Children begin thinking logically about concrete events, but have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts (Santrock, 2007). In this stage, the child not only uses symbols to represent the world, but can manipulate those symbols logically (Santrock, 2007). But, at this point, they must still perform these operations within the context of concrete situations (Santrock, 2007). The stage begins with progressive de-centering. Early on in the stage most children develop the ability to conserve number, length, and liquid volume (Santrock, 2007). Conservation refers to the idea that a quantity remains the same despite changes in appearance. If you show a child four marbles in a row, then spread them out, the preoperational child will focus on the spread, and tend to believe that there are now more marbles than before. The concrete operations child, on the other hand, will know that there are still four marbles. By mid-stage children develop conservation of substance: If I take a ball of clay and roll it into a long thin rod, or even split it into ten little pieces, the child knows that there is still the same amount of clay. And he will know that, if you rolled it all back into a single ball, it would look quite the same as it did- a feature known as reversibility (Santrock, 2007). By the end of the stage, the last of the conservation tests is mastered: conservation of area (Santrock, 2007). If you take four one-inch square pieces of felt, and lay them on a six-by-six cloth together in the center, the child who conserves will know that they take up just as much room as the same squares spread out in the corners, or, for that matter, anywhere at all. In addition, a child learns classification and seriation during this stage. Now the child begins to get the idea that one set can include another. Seriation is putting things in order (Santrock, 2007). The younger child may start putting things in order by, size, but will quickly lose track. Now the child has no problem with such a task.

Methods

Three simple experiments will be conducted to evaluate Piagetian concepts, particularly conservation of volume, conservation of area, and egocentrism. Two children, one from the preoperational stage aged three years old, and the other from the concrete operational stage aged eight years old will be observed conducting all three experiments separately without the other child in the room. Children participating in the first experiment will be asked to respond to a conservation of volume task. Specifically, the child will be exposed to two identical, clear containers holding the same amount of liquid. The liquid from one container will be poured into a shorter, wider container and the child will be asked to assess if there is the same or different amounts of liquid in the two containers containing the liquid. While responding to the second experiment, a conservation of area task, the children consider two identical sheets of paper upon which six blocks have been placed in identical positions. The blocks on one sheet of paper will be redistributed and the child will be asked if the same or different amounts of space are left exposed on the two sheets of paper. Measuring egocentrism, the third experiment, the children will be exposed to a two-sided card with a different picture on each side. As one side of the card is pointed toward the child and the other side toward the researcher, the child will be asked to say what they see and what they believe the researcher sees. The task will be repeated two more times using different cards. After interacting and observing two children of different ages, a thorough evaluation of the differences between a preoperational and a concrete operational child's thought processes can be done.

Greetings!

Your paper is very well-written and has no obvious grammar mistakes. However, I found several instances of plagiarism. Any time you use phrases from a source, you need to cite that source. If you use the exact wording, which you did in a number of instances, you need to put it in quotation marks and give a citation showing where you found it, even if it was on a website. If you paraphrase an idea, you still need to cite the source, if the idea is not your own. Failure to do either of these things can be grounds for a failing paper on the basis of plagiarism.

Best of luck in your studies!

Thanks,

Sarah, EssayForum.com

Hmm, i thought i had cited everything, i will go through and recheck. Thanks!

hmm, im back and im having an awful time trying to think of how to word my conclusion! however on another note these 2 paragraphs from my essay, i feel are really weak, and would appreciate some feedback. Thanks!

PS - quick question is there a way to delete posts? im scared someone is going to plagiarize!

Child A's answers correlated with Piaget's theory regarding conservation of volume and area; however there was a slight deviation from Piaget's theory concerning egocentrism. Child A, when viewing the conservation of volume task was influenced by the perceptual cue of height, this shows that she is concerned with one characteristic of an object, ignoring other aspects which is what Piaget believes a preoperational child would do. She had no concept of quantity of liquid, meaning she had no conservation skills. Child A had no way of realizing that something stays the same when liquid is poured from one container to another; the inability to conserve because children focus on centration is a characteristic of the preoperational stage. During the conservation of area task, child A continues to focus on one characteristic excluding all others, this time it was the amount of space covered by blocks. Child A fails to realize that no additional blocks have been added or removed, therefore that area must remain the same. Preoperational children are typically swayed by external appearances which correlate with this present study. When measuring egocentrism in child A, her answers were typical to that of Piaget's theory two out of three times. She believed the experimenter was looking at the same picture she was looking at although she had just identified the pictures were different on both sides, only minutes before. This established that the child cannot take on the perspective of another. However, the third time doing the egocentrism task, child A correctly stated the picture she was looking at and the picture the experimenter was looking at. The reason for this can be because the picture the experimenter was looking at was a pizza slice, when the pizza slice picture was shown to child A to identify, she became very excited and even screamed out to her mommy "look pizza." This excitement and love for pizza for child A could have skewed the results in that she made an extra effort to remember the pizza, obviously because she is partial to this food. Not enough evidence has been proved in this present study to discount that preoperational children lack egocentrism, therefore it can be concluded preoperational children still lack the operations to take on the point of view of others.

Child B's replies to the conservation of volume task correlated with Piaget's theory; however there were slight differences relating to the conservation of area and egocentrism task. Child B correctly stated that the volume did not change and her reasoning that only the container had changed as well as no liquid had been added or removed, was concurrent with the fact that she has developed operations which by definition includes reversibility. In Piaget's theory conservation of volume task is the first conservation task to be accomplished by a concrete operations child, therefore child B's answer is in accordance to the theory. In Piaget's theory he believed that children learned conservation systematically which he labelled horizontal declage. During the conservation of area task, child B correctly observed that the area did not change, stating a reasonable rationale that no blocks had been added or removed. This is inconsistent with Piaget's theory because his theory clearly states that different conservation tasks are mastered at different levels of the concrete operations stage. Horizontal declage is the idea that children learn different conservation tasks and different ages (Santrock, 2007). As stated above conservation of volume task is the first to develop, however conservation of area task is the last to develop, usually around ten to eleven years of age. The discrepancy of the findings between this current study compared to Piaget's theory can be tied to the fact that this area of Piaget's theory have been criticized, and it has been proven that some cognitive abilities emerge earlier than what Piaget thought (Santrock, 2007). When measuring egocentrism in child B, her answers were typical to that of Piaget's theory two out of three times. She believed the experimenter was looking at a different picture than she was looking at. This established that the child can take on the perspective of another, therefore egocentrism had diminished. However, the third time doing the egocentrism task, child B could not state the picture the experimenter was looking at. The reason for this can be because the child was bored by this time, and the picture was an un-stimulating stimulus of a house. She could not remember what the picture was, however she did know the experimenter was looking at a different picture from her, and she just couldn't recall what the picture was of. This concludes that the child had developed the ability to view another's perspectives, therefore, had successfully moved onto the concrete operations stage, which correlates to Piaget's theory that concrete operational children do not express egocentrism

Greetings!

I don't find your analysis weak. There are a few places where the expression of your analysis could be a little smoother, or where you had run-on sentences. Here are some editing suggestions:

however there was a slight deviation from Piaget's theory concerning egocentrism. Child A, when viewing the conservation of volume task, was influenced by the perceptual cue of height. This shows that she is concerned with one characteristic of an object, ignoring other aspects, which is what Piaget believes a preoperational child would do.

During the conservation of area task, child A continues to focus on one characteristic excluding all others. This time it was the amount of space covered by blocks.

The reason for this could be because the picture the experimenter was looking at was a pizza slice. When the pizza slice picture was shown to child A to identify, she became very excited and called out to her mother, "Look, pizza!"

Piaget believed that children learn conservation systematically which he labelled horizontal declage.

The reason for this could be because the child was bored by this time, and the picture was an un-stimulating representation of a house. She could not remember what the picture was; however she did know the experimenter was looking at a different picture than she was; she just couldn't recall what the picture was.

Good work!

Thanks,

Sarah, EssayForum.com

We cannot remove posts, as this free site exists to help students learn from each other. However, you do not need to be concerned about plagiarism because you listed your name when you signed up, and your posts can thus be proved to be your own. You can prove that you were the original author of the work.

thanks so much for your help once again and easing my worries about plagerism!