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Piaget's Development Observed in a Child

In: Psychology

Submitted By trueskeptic
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Observing children at an early age can be fascinating. A female child who was 5.9 years old was observed for the purposes of this project. She had already started first grade and therefore although she was only of pre-school age, she had started showing developmental signs of a school-age child. Figure 1 in Appendix I shows the weight-for-age percentile and the red dot indicates the age and corresponding weight of the child. Figure 2 in Appendix 1 indicates the combined weight and length versus age percentiles and the two red dots plotted indicated the physiological characteristics of the child. It is clear from this graph that the child is in the 95th percentile for weight (60lbs) and a little over the 95th percentile for length (4 feet 2 inches) for her age. She is a healthy and energetic child. The psychological theorist who will be used in this paper is Jean Piaget and his theory of cognitive development will be used as a guide to evaluate the psychological development of the child. Piaget’s cognitive development theory involved the idea that as the brain grows, it matures through environmental input (Tucker, 2008). The different stages of development in Piaget’s Cognitive Development model are senorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations and formal operations. Sensorimotor stage describes the stage in a child’s life when he/she begins to recognize a cause and effect relationship between their motor coordination and the environment and this is usually between birth and 2 years of age. The preoperational stage child is able to perform symbolic functioning such as make-believe play behavior. Adolescents, of 7-11 years of age, are in the concrete operations stage in which they progress to logical and hypothetical thought processes that are action oriented. Young adults of 11-15 years of age are in the formal operations stage where they proceed to true logical

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