Question

Discussion A) 2 1/2 year-old brother

• Your younger brother is 2 ½ years old. You are trying to teach him some new words. Using Piagetian ideas like assimilation and accommodation, what approach would you take and what would you expect to happen. Give some examples of words you would teach him and how you would do it. Describe the achievements and limitations of your brother's stage of cognitive development.

Answer 1

Jean Piaget developed a theory on cognitive development, which is about the nature of the development of intelligence and deal with the kind of knowledge itself and how human beings start acquiring, creating, and using knowledge.

Piaget's assimilation and accommodation ideas are beneficial in cognitive development in children. Piaget defined 'schema' as the basic building block of a cognitive model, and enable a person to create a mental depiction of the world around. Use of an existing schema to deal with a new object or scenario is labeled as assimilation. Accommodation happens when a current schema like knowledge does not work and requires to be modified to deal with a further object or a scenario.

Now, let me explain the words, which I have tried to teach my brother.

1. ZEBRA
When I have shown the picture, my brother started calling it 'horse.' Instead of correcting the name as ZEBRA, I have initially attempted to modify his information as Horse with stripes. Also, I have pointed out differences in appearance, height, and tail, and finally my brother accommodated the new information 'ZEBRA.'

2. CAT
We got a pet dog, and my brother sometimes ask 'where is Tinky?' and he believed all four-legged creatures are dogs. So when we got a new Persian cat, he called the cat dog. Instead of giving further attributes, I have corrected him and told it is a CAT. To my brother's surprise, I have added a few more information like Dog will bark, and CAT will make mew mew ! and his knowledge about four-legged animals got accommodated to restrict the word DOG to only certain four-legged creatures.

As my brother is in the Preoperational stage, language, mental imagery, and symbolic thoughts represent knowledge. Here are a few achievements and limitations found during his cognitive development.

Achievements

• Symbols play a vital role and very helpful in schema development.
• Greatly helped by a simple explanation of a thing or object or a scenario.

Limitations

• Difficulty in seeing an object or scenario from others’ point of view.
• Lack of reversibility is another roadblock in schema development.