Case of Study

Jean Piaget was born on August 9, 1896, in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Over the course of his career in child psychology, he identified four stages in childhood. He also developed new fields of scientific study, including cognitive theory and developmental psychology.

Stages established by Jean Peaget:

• Sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years)
• Pre- operational stage (2 to 7 years)
• Concrete operational ( 7 to 11 years)
• Formal operational (11 to adulthood) 

The purpose of my project is to prove the theory about the Pre- operational stage by Jean Peaget by trying two different experiments.

Pre- operational Stage

The child in the preoperational stage is not yet able to think logically. With the acquisition of language, the child is able to represent the world through mental images and symbols, but in this stage, these symbols depend on his own perception and his intuition. This stage may be the age of curiosity; preschoolers are always questioning and investigating new things. Since they know the world only from their limited experience, they make up explanations when they don’t have one.

Child’s Profile
Name:	Sheila Abigail Ayala Arias
Age:	6 years old
School life:	“Preparatoria”
Favorite games:	Jump the rope
Favorite activities at school:	Paint, create shapes with clay.

OBJECTIVE

The main objective of both experiments was to confirm the stage the child in this project is in. In this case Pre – operational stage. As well, I wanted to confirm yje theory: A child at this stage (Pre-operational stage) is not able to think in logic way and their thinking is influence by perception.

METHOD

In this project, I used two different experiments:

Experiment 1: I showed to the child two glasses with the same quantity of water. I asked her if the two glasses had the same quantity. Then, I take one of the glasses and I put the water in other glass with a different shape. After that, I asked what of the glasses had less water in it. 

EVIDENCE

Experiment 2: I showed her two lines of matches. The two lines matches had the same number of matches (5 matches each line). However, I let more space among each of matches in the first line. Then, I asked the child to count the matches for each of the lines.  I also asked her what of the lines had more matches, I asked her to count the matches again. Finally, I asked what of the lines had more matches.

EVIDENCE

FINDINGS

In the first experiment, when I asked her what of the glasses had less quantity of water in it. She responded that in fact both of the glasses had the same quantity. However, when I emptied the water into the third glass which was different, she answered the glass which was different to the first two glasses had less quantity of water in it. Moreover, the results for the second experiment had almost the same relevance to the first one. In this case, although she counted the matches for both lines, she answered the line which had more space between each match had more matches.

To conclude, both experiments successfully confirmed the Pre – operational Stage theory by Jean Peaget. Children at this stage are not able to think logically. According to the experiments applied in this project, it demonstrates that children are influence because of their own perception. In other words, they think and process information in the way they perceive objects or images. In the experiments, even though the quantity of water in the three glasses was the same, the child said that one of the glasses had less quantity of water because that is the way she perceived the image. As well, in the experiment with matches she argued that one of the lines had more matches because at simple sight for her that line it was longer than the other even though had the same quantity of matches.  Finally, it is important for teacher to integrate into the lesson plan different activities that encourage our students at the Pre- operational stage to develop cognitive skills.