Conservation tasks used by Piaget, James Mc Garrigle and Margaret Essay

Conservation tasks used by Piaget, James Mc Garrigle and Margaret Donaldson - Essay ExampleThe results raise that whether baby birdren conserve or not does not depend on either of the two tasks used but rather on their mastery of identity.This study aims at exploring Piagets Task on preservation in children and critically evaluating it in the light of the more recent procedure described by (McGarrigle and Donaldson, 1975). Conservation is defined as the realization that number of items, measure or length is not related to arrangement or look of the objects or items. An examle is when a child is presented with a glass in full of water, will they be able to deduct that if that uniform water is transferred to a broader but plumper cup, then will it conserve the quantity and be the same Piaget argues that during the early childhood stage (below 6 twelvemonths), childrens ability to perform logical mental operations is inadequate. In his research, Piaget identified four stages in cogn itive education namely Sensorimotor stage (Infancy), Pre-operational stage(2-7 years), Concrete operational stage (7-11 years) and Formal operational stage (Adolescence through adulthood). ... Children in pre operational stage disregard the the show of conservation because their thinking process does not comprehend the three principles of reversibility, compensation and identity. This has been interpreted to mean that before certain ages children are not able to see things in certain ways. The theories have found wide usage especially in developing school curricula, however other psychologists have disagreed with them. They have argued that conservation tasks do not necessarily reveal an essential limitation in the childs appreciation of quantity. Below are some of the arguments as to why children may fail to conserveThat the subjects may be distracted by the procedure.They may think that the experimenter wants them to answer in a certain way especially if the question is repeat ed.That the child may forget if the experimenter interfered with the information stored in Short Term Memory. Porpodas (1987).The children may not understand the relational terms.That the conservation task being artificial would normally make no sense to a child. Lenz (2003) argues that Piaget does not take into account matters of simplicity or complexity of the task and that if a task is simple decorous the child may perform correctly but if complex, even an older child may make pre-operational mistakes. Indeed, in an effort to illustrate that children younger than in Piagets typical age can conserve, many researchers have modified Piagets original procedure. For instance McGarrigle and Donaldson (1975) assert that if the transformation is bought about accidentally then the number of 5-6 year olds conserving will go up.This study is to