Stages Of Piaget's Theory Of Cognitive Development

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Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development My interviewee, Alphonso Johnson, is a 19-year-old, African-American, recent high school graduate, and has experienced all stages of Piaget’s Stages of Development. I asked him to detail what he could about each stage from his memory and this is what he told me. For his sensorimotor stage, he remembers fairly little since he was at such a young age and so much time as passed; although he does remember times of misconstruing object permanence, he remembered a time where his mother would play peak-a-boo with him and when she put her hands in front of her face, it was like he disappeared from existence. For the preoperational stage, he remembers this stage vividly as this was the time where he had an invisible …show more content…

He also remembers being scolded for showing signs of egocentric like saying things were his went they really were not, which is natural for this stage. For the conservational stage, he actually remembers taking the water in a glass test for a child-psychologist who wanted to see what stage of development he was at. At first he definitely thought the tall glass had more water than the wide one, then he began to question himself, then over time he realized that the glasses had the same about of water. This simple test is a good way to see the development of a child through the conservation of continuous quantities, it requires higher level thinking outside of the box that it is no wonder a child of preoperational stage can fail the test with their small world thinking. Crain (2011, p. 128) states; the child is so struck by a single perceptual dimension – the way it looks – that he or she fails to understand that logically the liquid must remain the same. For the formal operational stage, he began to think about others and develop ideals of moral reasoning. He can remember understanding the difference between right and …show more content…

The story involves his cousin stealing from a Walmart, and he knowing about it and not telling anyone. He knew that if he got caught, that he would also get in trouble for keeping quiet, but if he ratted out his cousin, he might not get discipline for speaking up. For the first stage of Obedience v Punishment in Pre-Moral, he knew what his cousin was doing was wrong and was considering telling to follow the rules and avoid punishment. For the second stage of Individualism & Exchange in Pre-Moral, he put himself in his cousin’s shoes and thought about how he would feel if he found out his cousin told on him, and he did not want his cousin to be upset at him. For the third stage of Good Boy & Good Girl in Conventional, Kohlberg states that Alphonso would not tell on his cousin to follow the rules, but to have people like him for being good; this is something that he said he considered and he would rather have everyone love him and his cousin hate him than visa versa. In the fourth stage of Law & Order in Conventional, Alphonso would immediately tell the Walmart security or the police because he respects the rules and does not want to disrespect the order of things in society. Crain (2011, p. 162) states; at stage 4, in contrast, the respondent becomes more broadly concerned with society as a whole. Now the emphasis of on obeying laws, respecting authority,

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