Jean Piaget outlined a series of developmental stages that children go through as they mature. These stages are: Sensorimotor stage (birth-2 years); Preoperational stage (2-6 years); Concrete operational stage (7-11 years); and Formal operational stage (12 years into adulthood). For this assignment I was asked to observe a child who was in either the sensorimotor, preoperational, or concrete operational stages of development. The child whom I chose to observe was my little cousin Nicholas, or Nick for short. Nick is currently 7 1/2 years old which puts him under the concrete operational stage of development.
The concrete operational stage of development is defined by our textbook as "the stage of cognitive development (from about 6 or 7 years to 11 years of age) during which the children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events"(page 131). When broken down, this definition basically means that during the ages of 7 through 11, ch
According to Piaget, my little cousin would be going along in the perfect order of development. He is mentally right where he should be and displayed many of the characteristics known to his current stage of development. By watching and paying attention to him and the way he interacted allowed me to first hand see some of the characteristics of Piaget's stages of development.
Also, the fact that Nick was able to understand my father's point of view on the many little piles of leaves verse the one big pile of leaves illustrated that he was no longer thinking egocentrically. He was now able to grasp these concepts in others points of views. This is also a characteristic of concrete operational stage.
In observing these behaviors, I did not see anything that stood out of the ordinary for a child of his age group. I was also paying attention to the way that Nicholas seemed to be thinking. He seemed to be trying to figure out problem in his head. To me it se
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