psychology samuel and bryant study conservation

samuel and bryant study: conservation

cogvitive abilities differ with age. the older you become the more you can comprehend ideas.in the 17th century children were classed as minature humans and were therefore punished for behaviour that in todays society would seem like normal child-like behaviour. the belief of a true behaviourist is that all behaviour is learnt and that we are born with a clear slate known as tabula rasa (meaning blank slate).we no longer think of children as minature adults and spend lots of time and money on education because of a man called jean piaget. piaget's theory focuses on th idea that development is maturational (to do with increasing maturity of the child) age related and universal across cultures.

piaget's theory

piaget was not a psychologist but a zoologist and biologist and was interested in how animals adapted to their environment. he went to paris to work for alfred binet, who was responsible for developing the first intelligence tests for the french education department, as a way of identifying children with learning difficulties. they compared the children to their inate abilities. piaget noticed that children of the same age group were giving similar wrong answers. this suggested that intelligence was related to age. this led to piaget's theory about intelligence which suggests that it was a kind of biological adaptation. as to wheather intelligence is fixed at birth or can be altered according to experiences are unknown.

at a young age, a child is dependent on their parents or caregivers and therefore does not require any intellect at that stage. as they begin to interact with their surroundings, that will begin complec thought processes. piaget realized that the development of mental abilities was not simply the result of child maturing. children have an inate ability to want to interact with thier environment. and so teachers were classed as facilating the learning instead of directing the learning. children can learn for themselves. this changed the clasroom completly by allowing children to work in small groups and interact with their environment instead of sitting on desks.

piaget realized that a childs learning develops in stages. the older they got, the more likley they were to realize what they were doing wrong and also the realization of them interacting with their environment showed the stages at different ages. they had to have passed the previous stage for them to go on to the next stage.

these are the stages that piaget thought that children go through

1. the sensorimotor stage 0-2 years old

2. the pre-operational stage 2-7 years old

3. the concreate operational stage 7-11 years old

4. the formal operational stage 11+ years old

he understood that the ages given were averages and that children would go through these stages at different speeds depending on their experiences.piaget said that children will explore the environment and objects on their own accord with no need for further intervention as they are keen to understand the world around them.

the pre-operational stage

…