Essay On Piaget's Theories Of Cognitive Development

To test children 's ability to see other people’s intentions and use perspective taking a story is told to the child and then a series of questions asked. This test is to see what stage of development children are in according to Piaget’s theories of cognitive development. This test was completed on a five year old, kindergarten girl at Tye River Elementary School. The first task completed was telling a story about girl named Holly and her dilemma of either disobeying her father to help Shawn’s kitten or following her father’s orders. The student listened intently to the story while it was being told but once the questions were asked, she seemed to lose some focus on the activity. The questions dealt with interpreting the feelings of other people. She seemed to answer the first question very well stating that Shawn would feel very sad that his kitten was up in a tree, showing that she somewhat understood others feelings. However like with the majority of the questions she could not answer the “why?” portion very easily. Like with the first question asked she answered the second very easily stating that Holly’s father would be very mad and would tell her to get down. When asked why she thought Holly’s father would be mad, she shrugged her shoulders and then repeated what she had stated previously. …show more content…
The third question, which asked how Holly thinks her father will feel if he finds she climbed the tree, was not answered easily. At first she stated “I don’t know”, and after asking again she just said that “she wouldn 't be able to go outside anymore”. With this response it shows some understanding of others perspectives because she knew that Holly’s father might punish his daughter for disobeying him but she could not name the exact emotion that he would feel. The last question about this story proved the most difficult for her. It was a question about what she would chose to do if she was Holly. She repeated a lot of her earlier answers to the questions and never truly said if she would help the kitten or follow her father’s orders. This may show that she is not cognitively developed enough to truly put herself in others shoes and make choices about a situation she is not currently involved in. Overall the student showed that she is gradually moving from the pre operational stage and moving into the concrete operational stage. She showed that she was still in the pre operational stage by not being able to put herself in Holly’s shoes and decide what she would do in that situation which means the student is still considered egocentric. However the student showed that she was beginning to become somewhat aware of others feelings by answering the other questions. The student showed that she was rapidly progressing into the next state of Piaget’s theory. The second task was adopted from Piaget’s work and include a pair of stories of two people causing damage one intentionally and the other by accident. As with the first task the student’s attention was fully devoted to the stories and then she lost some interest as the questions started to be asked. She seemed to struggle a little bit more the questions asked after the second set of stories. The