Piaget's Pre-operational Stage in Children: A Comparative Study, Schemes and Mind Maps of Cognitive Development

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Piaget’s Pre-operational Stage in Children: A Comparative Study

Syeda Dishari Bashrin

ID: 14163012

Department of English and Humanities

August 2015

BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Piaget’s Pre-operational Stage in Children: A Comparative Study

A Thesis

Submitted to the Department of English and Humanities

of

BRAC University

by

Syeda Dishari Bashrin

ID: 14163012

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement

for The Degree of

Masters of Arts in English

August 2015

ii

Dedication

This paper is dedicated to my parents who have given me a life full of blessings. I am always thankful to them for their unconditional love and support throughout my life.

iii

Acknowledgement

At first I would like to express my cordial gratitude to the Almighty Allah for giving me the strength and the ability to finish the research paper within the scheduled time. I am deeply thankful to my supervisor Ms. Shenin Ziauddin for believing in me and for her constant support and inspiration throughout my thesis. I would like to thank the school authorities to give me permission and the teachers who gave me the opportunity do my survey properly. My sincere thanks to the parents who participated in my survey which was required for the successful completion of this paper.

My special thanks go to Professor Dr. Firdous Azim, Chairperson, Department of English and Humanities, Mr. Mahmudul Haque, Mr. Mohibul Hasan, Ms. Mahmuda Akhter, Ms. Asifa Sultana Liza from whom I have learnt many things throughout my post graduation period. I would like to thank my friends who have helped me by giving suggestions during my thesis.

Last but not the least, I would like to express my gratitude to my husband for his unconditional support and encouragement towards my studies.

Syeda Dishari Bashrin ID: 14163012 August, 2015.

v

• Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION……….……………………………………………………….1- Table of Contents
  • 1.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………….
  • 1.2 Objective of the Study…………………………………………………………….
  • 1.3 Significance of the Study………………………………………………………….
  • 1.4 Research Question…………………………………………………………………
  • 1.5 Limitations of the Study……...……………………………………………………
• Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………………………………4-
  • 2.1 Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development………………………………………..
  • 2.2 The Pre-operational Stage…………………………………………………………
    • 2.2.1 Memory and Intellectual Development…………….………………………
    • 2.2.2 Egocentrism…………………………………………………………………
    • 2.2.3 Animism…………………………………………………………………….
    • 2.2.4 Spatial Reasoning and Make-believe Play………………………………….
    • 2.2.5 Conservation……………………………………………………………….
    • 2.2.6 Logical Thought……………………………………………………………
  • 2.3 Language Acquisition…………………………………………………………….
    • 2.3.1Cooing, Babbling and the One-word Stage………………………………..
    • 2.3.2 The Two-word Stage/ The Telegraphic Stage……………………………..
    • 2.3.3 The Advanced Stage ………………………………………………………
  • 2.4 Defining Autism …………………………………………………………………
  • 2.5 Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)………………………………………………
    • 2.5.1 Types of Autism Spectrum Disorders……………………………………..
    • 2.5.2 Symptoms of Children with Autism………………………………………
  • 2.6 Theory of Mind and Social Cognition………………………………………….. vi
  • 2.7 Autism in Bangladesh……………………………………………………………
  • 2.8 Intelligence……………………………………………………………………….
  • 2.9 Behaviorism………………………………………………………………………
  • 2.10 Innatism…………………………………………………………………………
  • 2.11 Role of Teachers in Cognitive Development…………………………………...
  • 2.12 Role of Parents in Cognitive Development…………………………………….
• Chapter 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY……………………………………………..29-
  • 3.1 Introduction…………….…………………………………………………………
  • 3.2 Data Collection Procedure……………………………………………………….
  • 3.3 The Participants…………………………………………………………………..
  • 3.4 Instrumentation…………………………………………………………………...
  • 3.5 Data Analysis procedure………………………………………………………….
  • 3.6 obstacles Encountered……………………………………………………………
• Chapter 4: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION……………………………….33-
  • 4.1 Findings from Questionnaire……………………………………………………..
    • 4.1.1 Imaginative………………………………………………………………...
    • 4.1.2 Make-believe Play…………………………………………………………
    • 4.1.3 Animism…………………………………………………………………...
    • 4.1.4 Egocentrism………………………………………………………………..
    • 4.1.5 Logical Thinking…………………………………………………………..
    • 4.1.6 Spatial Reasoning………………………………………………………….
    • 4.1.7 Memory……………………………………………………………………
    • 4.1.8 Conservation………………………………………………………………
  • 4.2 Findings from Parents and Teachers interviews…………………………………. vii
  • 4.3 Findings from Home and Classroom observation………………………………..
    • 4.3.1 Home Observation…………………………………………………………
    • 4.3.2 Classroom Observation……………………………………………………
  • 4.4 Answer to the Central Research Question………………………………………..
• Chapter 5: CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………....60-
  • 5.1 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….
  • 5.2 Recommendation…………………………………………………………………
• REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………..62-
• APPENDIX…………………………………………………………………………………69-
• Table 1: Response to the questionnaire…………………………………………………..….33- LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES & CHARTS
• Figure 1: The inspiration web above illustrates Piaget’s four developmental stages…………….
• Figure 2: Triad of Impairment…………………………………………………………………...
• Figure 3: Noam Chomsky’s representation of children’s first language acquisition……………
• Figure 4: Vertical diagram of knowledge- teacher- student relationship……………………….
• Chart 1: Comparison of imaginative thinking in normal and autistic children…………………
• Chart 2: Comparison of make-believe play in normal and autistic children……………………
• Chart 3: Comparison of animistic characteristics in normal and autistic children………………
• Chart 4: Comparison of egocentrism in normal and autistic children…………………………..
• Chart 5: Comparison of logical thinking process in normal and autistic children………………
• Chart 6: Comparison of spatial reasoning in normal and autistic children…………………….. viii
• Chart 7: Comparison of memory in normal and autistic children……………………………….
• Chart 8: Comparison of conservation in normal and autistic children…………………………
• Chart 9: Major findings from data analysis and comparison……………………………………

Piaget’s Pre-operational Stage in Children: A Comparative Study 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction: In the field of developmental psychology Jean Piaget (1996-1980) is a legendary name. Developmental Psychology is the study of age-related changes in behavior, examines the psychological processes of development, which means it describes the sequence of biological, cognitive, and socio emotional changes that humans undergo as they grow older. It describes the growth of humans, which consists of physical, emotional, intellectual, social, perceptual, and personality development, from birth to death. Also, it investigates the processes that lead to age- related changes and transitions between successive developmental states. Developmental psychology was initially concerned with the children, gradually expanding to adolescents and the aging individual (Blake and Pope, 2008, p. 59). As Piaget was mostly concerned with child psychology so, he developed his own theory on child’s cognitive developmental processes and described four stages which every child undergoes after birth. Piaget’s “Theory of Cognitive development” and the four stages are universally recognized and admired. According to Piaget, the four major developmental stages which every child passes are: sensorimotor (ages: birth - 2); the pre-operational (ages 2 - 7); concrete operational (ages 7 - 11), and the stage of formal operations (age 12 - adult). The stages are sufficiently open ended to allow for the fact that children show different levels of ability, knowledge, and skill as a function of the rate, quality, and continuity of the experiences they encounter (Heatherly, 1974, p.3).

Though Piaget said that every child will undergo these same stages according to his proposed age division but there is not concrete evidence of the transaction from one stage to the later one. Smith (1991) said that, Piaget’s stages are fixed with age limitation but in reality the

Piaget’s Pre-operational Stage in Children: A Comparative Study 3 1.4 Research Question:

How do the cognitive abilities differ between normal and autistic children in Piaget’s pre- operational stage?

1.5 Limitations of the Study:

• In Bangladesh there are few special schools for autistic children so, it is difficult to get permission to do surveys and observe classrooms.
• The parents of autistic children do not want to disclose their identities. They do not want to talk about their children’s development.
• That is why the researcher took interviews of teachers of autistic children. The questionnaires on autistic children were also filled by the teachers.
• Normal children’s parents do not want to share their children’s problems and lacking. Most the parents only talked about the positive points of their children. So, it was difficult for the researcher to find out the inabilities in normal children’s cognition process.

Piaget’s Pre-operational Stage in Children: A Comparative Study 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development: Piaget believed that, children think differently than adults and he stated that, they go through 4 universal stages of cognitive development. Development is therefore biologically based and changes as the child matures. Cognition therefore develops in all children in the same sequence of stages (McLeod, 2009, p.2).

According to Piaget, the major stages in the development of reasoning ability are: the sensorimotor (ages 0 to 2 years); the pre-operational (2 years to 7 years); the concrete- operational (7 to 11 years); and the formal operational (12 years to adult) (Wadsworth, 1996, p.32).

Figure 1. The Inspiration web above illustrates Piaget's four cognitive development stages; sensorimotor (birth- years), pre-operational (2 - 7 years), concrete operational (7 -11 years), and formal operational (adolescence - adulthood). (Tiffany Davis, Meghann Hummel, and Kay Sauers (2006) )

Piaget’s Pre-operational Stage in Children: A Comparative Study 6 More complex concepts, such as cause and effect relationships, have not been learned. Intelligence is egocentric and intuitive, not logical (Wood, Smith & Grossniklaus, 2001, p.4) The pre-operational stage is divided into two sub stages. According to Wadsworth (1977), the first sub stage is labeled egocentric (2-4 years) and the second sub stage is called intuitive (5-7 years) (p.68). Crain (2005) stated that, children in egocentric sub stage cannot understand another person’s point of view (p. 26) and the intuitive sub stage is based on children’s thinking and their perception (Cowan,1978, p.55). The central task of the preoperational child is to develop rational solutions to concrete problems (Wadsworth, 1977, p.102).

In pre-operational stage, children are able to form stable concepts as well as mental reasoning and magical beliefs. In spite of that, children are still not able to perform operations; tasks that the children can do mentally rather than physically. In this stage their thinking process is egocentric. Children have difficulty to understand the viewpoint of others (Piaget, 1967, p.391).

There are some specific characteristics of Piaget’s Pre-operational stages. They are discussed below:

2.2.1 Memory and Intellectual Development: “Jean Piaget’s theory of intellectual development is considered a leading theory on cognitive development. Piaget’s theory asserts that intellectual development is a direct continuation of inborn biological development.” (Flavell, 1963, p.234). That is the child is born biologically equipped to make a variety of motor responses, which provide them with the

Piaget’s Pre-operational Stage in Children: A Comparative Study 7 framework for the thought processes that follow. That is, the ability to think springs from the physiological base (Simatwa, 2010, p.365). During pre-operational stage memory and thinking process progresses systematically and logically. At the earlier phase of pre-operational stage (3-4.5 years) children only understand the two concepts ‘presence’ or ‘absence’ of any objects; gradually they understand not only presence or absence but also the quantity of objects. So, their memory and thinking process progresses to comparative from absolute (Siegler, 1978, p.36-37).

According to Chi (1976), it is discovered that children have deficiencies in memory abilities, particularly those pertaining to short-term memory. For example: children of age 2.5- years have relatively short term memory, children of age 5 can usually recall only 4 digits in a digit-span task and children of age 7 can recall about 5 digits (p.569).

2.2.2 Egocentrism: Smith (1981) noted that, an important characteristic of pre-operational thought is egocentrism. Children view the world from their own perspective. This egocentrism can lead to misinterpretations of natural phenomena (p.5). Chittenden (1970) cites an example used by Piaget of the young child who claims that the sun moves when he moves, "When one walks, it follows. When one turns ‘round it turns round’ too (p. 11)." So, a pre-operational child looks at any object from his/her own point of view rather than the others. Egocentrism occurs when a child is unable to distinguish between their own perspective and that of another person's. At this point they tend to pick their own view of what they see rather than the actual view shown to others (Piaget, 1967, p.13).

Piaget’s Pre-operational Stage in Children: A Comparative Study 9 Mountain Problem” experiment. He designed this experiment to support his theory that children possess egocentrism characteristics of thought during the pre-operational period of cognitive development. Piaget wanted to show that children have a self-centered perception of the world at this age. And he was also successful to prove that children of this stage do not have the understanding from other person’s point of view (Svoboda, 1973, p.29).

2.2.4 Spatial Reasoning and Make-believe Play: According to Norman (1980), spatial reasoning is the capacity to understand and remember the spatial relations among objects. This ability can be viewed as a unique type of intelligence distinguishable from other forms of intelligence, such as verbal ability, reasoning ability, and memory skills. Spatial ability is made up of numerous sub skills, which are interrelated among each other and develop throughout a person’s life (p. 289). Both Piaget and Vygotsky noted the characterization of make-believe as a means through which children practice representational schemes. Vygotsky emphasized that young children have difficulty severing thinking or the meaning of words from objects; they do so only gradually. Indeed, such research reveals that object substitutions become more flexible as children get older. In early pretense, toddlers use only realistic objects for example, a toy telephone to talk into or a cup to drink from. Around age 2.5, children use less realistic toys, such as a block for a telephone receiver. By this time, a play symbol no longer has to resemble the object or behavior for which it stands (Bretherton et al. 1984, p. 272). According to Vygotsky (1990), helping children separate meaning from objects, the pretending of early childhood serves as vital preparation for the much later development of abstract thought, in which symbols are manipulated and propositions evaluated without referring to the real world. And in detaching

Piaget’s Pre-operational Stage in Children: A Comparative Study 10 meaning from behavior, make-believe also helps teach children to choose deliberately from among alternative courses of action. This capacity to think in a playful, self-regulatory fashion is also strengthened by the rule-based nature of play (Berk, 1994, p.32-33).

2.2.5 Conservation:

Piaget (1952) points out that until the child has developed a one to one correspondence, he does not have the foundation for learning the concept of number. The child must grasp the principle of conservation before he can comprehend the concept of number. The understanding of number is based on the awareness that cardinal numbers are invariant regardless of the other factors (Simatwa, 2010, p. 368). A child develops an awareness of the conservation of mass, weight and volume gradually in pre-operational stage. This is illustrated by the experiments in which children watch someone pouring colored water back and forth between a 200 ml beaker and a 500 ml beaker. A four year old may be totally unconcerned about the fact that the water level differs in the two containers. He/she will simply maintain that the beaker with a higher level has more colored water. (Simatwa, 2010, p.367). By age five, most children are able to comprehend that even though the shape is different; the mass is the same (O’Bryan and Boersma, 1971, p.163).

2.2.6 Logical Thought: According to Stendler (2008), in pre-operational stage children gradually become more internalized. It is in the stage we found most kindergarten and first grade children, some second grade ones; these children do not use logical operations in thinking (p.332). Piaget (1950) characterizes mental process at the pre-operational stage as: