Picture this: You are a child receiving a cookie from your parents. Your sibling also receives the sweet treat but cut in half. You become frustrated because you believe that they were given two cookies while you were given a single one, when really, that is not the case. This phenomenon is called conservation, established by psychologist Jean Piaget.
According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, the preoperational stage of development in children involves cognition errors. Children between the ages of four and seven are said to make conservation errors, not being able to understand that altering a substance’s appearance (like cutting the cookie in half) does not change its basic properties (it being a single cookie). Instead, children in this stage of development focus on centration; focusing their attention on a single characteristic of a situation (the amount of cookies seen) and disregarding others (the cookie being cut in half).
Importantly, children’s developmental milestones differ greatly, and not every child will go through these developmental stages as is stated. However, Piaget’s discovery of the preoperational stage serves as a basis for common logical mistakes made by children aged four to seven.
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Nolyette Verastegui
Research Assistant, UConn KIDS