hopefully useful for the reader and can be used as an example to conduct the research in different object of course.
CHAPTER 1
A. Introduction
Teachers and parents can often judge very well
what their children can or cannot yet do or understand. Even though children
are all unique learners. They also show some characteristic in common with thir
peers. When parents of similar aged children talk together they often realize
that their children act similary ina range of situations. For example, parents
of five year olds find that their children use similar arguments in
conversations or enjoy very similary games, activities, and jokes. Children
does not same with adult who can thinking beyond the immediate context in more
abstract term. They are able to carry out logical operations such as deductive
reasoning in a systemic way. It is called formal oprational stage and for getting
the stage, children always past pre-oprational stage to get it. Where the
child’s thinking is largely reliant on perception but he or she gradually
becomes more and more capable of logical thinking. On the whole this stage is
characterized by egocentrism and a lack of logical thinking.
B. The purposes of observation
1. To prove the truth of the material with the
phenomena which occur in real life.
2. To discover new knowledge acquired from the
target of observation.
3. To study the characteristics of children in
the stage ‘pre-oprational’.
4. To know the proper way how to communicate with
children in this stage of the pr-oprational.
CHAPTER 2
Content
Of The Research
1.
The Basic Theory
Piaget’s second stage, preoperational
thought, features the flourishing use of mental representations
and the beginnings of logic (intuitive thought). Although logic is emerging, it
is based only on personal experience (Piaget called it intuitive). Also, as you
will see shortly, children still do not recognize that some logical processes
can be reversed.
preoperational
thought : Thought characterized by the use
of mental representations (symbols) and intuitive thought.
■ Flourishing Mental Representations. During
the preoperational stage children will practice, and even playfully exaggerate,
their new symbolic or mental representation abilities.
Let’s
look at the symbols they use in language, artwork, and play.
Symbols in Language. Talk to a
child who is just turning 2, and the conversation will
be pretty
simple and limited to objects and events currently present. Talk to a
4-year-old,
however,
and you’ll find yourself engaged in a real conversation! As we discuss in
Chapter 8,
there is
an explosive increase in children’s vocabulary and grammar (rules for putting
words
together)
after the age of about 18 months. At 18 months, the average vocabulary is about
22
words. By
2 years children use more than 250 words on average, and by 5 years their
vocabulary is more than 2,000 words (Anglin, 1993).What makes this rapid escalation
of linguistic skill possible? According to Piaget, language development is
based on children’s mental representational ability—their ability to let a
symbol (e.g., a word) stand for an object in the environment. This ability
gives children a way to communicate about the objects in the
environment,
even when the objects are not actually present. Children’s use of symbols also
allows
their thought to become faster and more efficient, because it no longer depends
on the
actual
physical manipulation of objects in the environment. If a child is upset, for
example,
the child
can name the problem, thereby increasing the likelihood that a parent or
caregiver
can help.
The process of construction is also evident in language, as children actively
filter
what they
hear and create their own inventive versions of words and phrases. A young
child may call a blanket a “winkie,” describe a person with short hair as
having “little
hair,” or
say that a criminal is “under arrested.”
Symbols in Artwork. Preoperational
children’s increasing ability to use mental representation is also seen clearly
in the artwork they produce. When one of our daughters was 3 years old, she
drew a heavy black horizontal line above a bright red horizontal line. “Look,
Mom, I made a picture of you!” she said. “See, there’s your head, and your hair
on top, and that’s your favorite red shirt!”What parent has not admired their
own child’s evidences of mental representation? To produce such artwork, the
child must have mental representations—not only of the mother’s face and hair,
for example, but also of her favorite red shirt. Though the initial scribbles
of 3-year-olds may not resemble any real object to an adult, they are evidence
that the child has developed mental representation.
In Figure
1.1 are drawings made by children
of
various ages; you can easily trace the development of more accurate and more
complex mental representations.
Symbols in Play. Watch
children engaged in play, and you will soon see clear evidence of symbol use.
In symbolic play children use one object to stand for another,
such as
when they
pretend that a blanket is a magic carpet or a banana is a telephone. Children
of 18 months seldom show such symbolic play; for example, they’ll pretend to
talk on a telephone
only when
they have in hand a quite realistic-looking toy telephone. By the age of 2,
children will use objects far less similar to the real item (such as using a
banana for a tele-phone). Finally, by 5 years
children are capable of using practically anything as a pretend “telephone.” The ability to form mental
representations allows these children to use fantasy and symbolism in their
play. Using mental symbols, children can escape the reality of the here and now
and pretend to be superheroes on exciting adventures in far-off places. Their ability to mentally
represent objects has progressed to the point that the symbol no longer has to bear any
resemblance to the real thing (Corrigan, 1987; O’Reilly, 1995).
Preoperational children also use symbols in fantasy play, in
which they pretend to be
something
they are not (like a tiger or a superhero) or to engage in activities that are
impossible (like having their teddy bear read them a story). And in make-believe
play children use toys as props to carry out some procedure, such as using
a kitchen set and dishes to pretend to cook dinner, or using a doll to pretend
to feed and rock a baby. All these kinds of play require that the child be able
to allow one thing to represent another. For Piaget, these types of play
indicate children’s degree of mental representation. It also allows them to
practice and become more skillful in mental representation.
■ Emergence of Intuitive Thought:“It Seems
That. . . .” Another important
development
during
the preoperational stage is the emergence of intuitive thought, or
reasoning
based on
personal experience rather than on any formal logical system. Children reason
according to what things “seem like,” according to their personal experience
with the objects and events involved. For example, on the way to preschool one
foggy morning, our son, who was about 3½ years old, said, “Better turn your
lights on—it’s really froggy out.”When asked what he meant, he explained
that he had noticed a lot of this cloudy stuff in the air whenever we drove by
ponds. “I know that frogs live in water, so when all the frogs breathe out,
they make the air froggy.” An admirable attempt, to be sure, but our son’s
intuitive explanation would not pass the objective tests of true logic.
Evidence of intuitive thought can be seen in several characteristics of
thinking that are common during the preoperational period, including
egocentrism, animism, and artificialism.
Piaget used the term egocentrism to refer to the young
child’s inability to take another
person’s
perspective. To young children it does seem that they are the center of the
universe, and it seems that everyone must think about things just the way they
do. Preoperational children are not able to understand that other people’s
perspectives might be different from
their own.
The classic demonstration of egocentrism is the three-mountain task. As
pictured
in Figure
1.2, experimenters show children a model of three mountains that have landmarks
placed among them. A child sits at one location in relation to the mountains,
and a doll sits at another location. The experimenter then asks the child to
describe what the doll would see from its location. Preschool children
typically describe the scene as they view it from their own location. Further,
when given photographs depicting the views from each location around the table,
children select the photos showing the view from their own locations, not the
doll’s (Piaget & Inhelder, 1948/1956). In other words, children select
views based on their own personal and intuitive experience with the scene. They
don’t yet take into account the logical necessity that someone viewing the
scene from a different place will have a different perspective.
Source: H. Bee & D. Boyd. (2002). Lifespan development, 3rd ed.
Boston: Allyn & Bacon, p. 158.
Animism—the idea that inanimate
objects have conscious life and feelings—is typical of the preoperational stage
(Piaget, 1929, 1930, 1951). For example, children may say that the sun is
shining brightly because it is happy, or they may put their pencil down because
“it is tired.” Artificialism is the notion that natural events or
objects (e.g., the sun, moon, hurricanes, droughts) are under the control of
people or of superhuman agents. A child might say that the sun went down
because someone switched it off, or that the moon isn’t shining because someone
blew it out. As children’s cognitive structures encounter more and more
instances in which animism and artificialism do not satisfactorily explain
events, they begin to move away from these modes of intuitive thought and
gradually move toward explanations based on physical facts and on a more
objective logic.
■ Conservation Problems. The most
famous examples of preoperational thought come from children’s answers to
Piaget’s conservation problems. Piaget used the term conservation to refer to the
concept that certain basic properties of an object (e.g., volume, mass, and weight)
remain the same even if its physical appearance changes (Ginsburg & Opper,
1988; Piaget, 1952b, 1969, 1970; Piaget & Inhelder, 1974). For example,
look at the liquid conservation problem shown in Figure 5.4. An experimenter
fills two identical beakers with liquid to the same level, as shown on the
left. The experimenter asks the child, “Do these two have the same amount of
liquid, or does one have more?” The child says that they have the same amount.
Then, with the child watching, the experimenter pours the contents of one
beaker into a taller and skinnier beaker.When asked if the two beakers “have the
same amount, or does one have more?” younger children typically claim that the
taller beaker has more liquid than the shorter beaker.When asked why, they
usually point to the height of the liquid surface: “See, this one is taller, so
it has more.” Children using preoperational thought don’t seem to understand
that the volume of liquid is conserved (remains the same) even though the shape
of the container changes. Children give similar responses for tasks involving
number and mess.
Centration in their thinking. Centration
is the tendency to focus on only one aspect of a situation at a time instead of taking several aspects into
consideration. In the liquid problem, for example, children tend to focus on the height of the liquid, instead of
considering that the greater width of one beaker compensates for the taller height of the other. Second, young children focus on the static
endpoints of the transformation (how things look before and after) rather than considering what happened in the
transformation itself. Children look at the beginning state then at the ending state (one level is
higher on the right side), and they conclude that the higher level must have
more. They fail to consider the transformation itself—the act of pouring could
show that the amount of liquid did not change. And finally, children at this
stage lack a grasp of reversibility. That is, they do not imagine what
would
happen if
they reversed the transformation; they don’t visualize pouring the liquid back
into its original container to demonstrate that the amount would still be the
same.When children focus on the height of the liquid, pay attention only to the
static endpoints of the problem, and don’t imagine pouring the liquid back, you
can see why they usually obtain such an intuitive answer as “this one is
taller, so it has more.” Piaget saw the lack of mental reversibility as an
important hallmark of preoperational thought. To be fully logical, our
cognitive structures need to be reversible. Think about the logic of math, for
example. If we have 4 and take 2 away, we need to understand that we can return
to 4 by adding 2 back. Piaget gave a special name to cognitive structures that
are reversible. He called them operations—actions performed mentally
that are reversible (Ginsburg & Opper, 1988). Piaget believed that these
dynamic mental operations were necessary for true logical thought. This is why
he called the second stage preoperational thought—it is thought that is not
yet reversible, not yet truly operational. With continued experience
with the environment, children realize that their intuitive thought does not
adequately explain the events around them. As they realize the reversibility of
many transformations and their thought structures become operational, we have
the beginnings of the next stage of cognitive development.
Piaget
titled the stage following the sensorimotor stage the preoperational
stage. Piaget believed that children in this stage were not capable of
understanding certain cognitive schemes labeled operations.
The cognitive schemes/tasks that children at the
preoperational stage cannot perform, according to Piaget's theory, follow.
1.
Conservation tasks
The recognition that properties of an object or
substance do not change when its appearance is altered in some superficial way.
2.
The 3 - mountain task
A three-dimensional mountain is placed in front
of a child. A house is set on one of the mountains. Next, the
conductor sets "Dolly" at a certain angle, usually opposite the
child, and asks the child what view Dolly sees. Child will respond with
the view he/she sees.
3.
Seriation
Understanding less than and more than.
Children in the preoperational stage do not understand; therefore, they cannot
arrange objects by sequence.
4.
Class inclusion
Children in the preoperational stage cannot think
of an object simultaneously belonging to both a subclass and superordinate
class.
5.
Transitive inference
Transitive inference is using logic to find the
missing piece. For example, "a" is greater than "b"
and "b" is greater than "c." Children in the
preoperational stage don't understand that "a" is also greater than
"c."
The preoperational stage is also characterized by
the deficiencies in logical thinking children at this stage display.
1. Egocentrism
Children in the preoperational stage have trouble
viewing the world from a perspective different from their own. The
3-mountain task tests the child's egocentrism
2. Centration
This
is a tendency to focus on a single aspect of a problem rather than looking at
the whole picture.
3. Intuitive
Children at the preoperational stage make choices
based on salient features, no logic.
4. Perceptually-oriented
Children at the preoperational stage have the
tendency to focus on the perceptual aspect of a task and not the logical aspect.
5. Animism
Giving life-like
characteristics to inanimate objects.
2. Analyzing of Research
Reisya Sabila is four year old, and she is at Piaget's preoperational
stage. According to Piaget's description of the preoperational stage children,
they cannot understand his conservation tasks. This preoperational stage,
"children can use representations (mental images, drawings, words,
gestures) rather than just motor actions to think about objects and events.
Thinking now is faster, more flexible and efficient, and more socially shared.
Thinking is limited by egocentrism, a focus on perceptual states, reliance on appearances
rather than underlying realities, and rigidity (lack of reversibility)"
(Flavell, miller, 1993). The young children do not have abilities to have
"operations mental actions that obey logical rules. Instead, their
thinking is rigid, limited to one aspect of a situation at a time, and strongly
influenced by the way things appear at the moment" (Berk, 1999). According
to Piagetian conservation tasks, preoperational stage: 2-7 years old children
lacked the knowledge to conserve. Conservation means, " the understanding
that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when
their outward appearance changes" (Berk, 1999). Piaget's test for
conservation of number is described as two rows with same number of things
(examples: coins, fruits, and candies that are equally spaced. Initially, young
children knew these two rows had same number. If one row is shortened, children
failed to notice that the two rows are the same. Piaget said young children did
not realize these two rows are still the same number because they confused and
did not see what adults see that help them to understand the task. Piaget said
the ability to understand this task is " in the face of a perceptual
change," and the "young child tends to be fooled by the misleading
perceptual appearance" (Flavell, miller, 1993). On the Piaget's task for
conservation of length, he described this task as showing young children the
two pencils, two pens, or two sticks with the equal length and children knew
they were the same length. If showed them by moving one stick longer than the
other one, they failed to know they were the same. Then Piaget's task for
conservation for liquid, he described this task as showing young children the
same amount of water or juice in the two identical glasses and very fast they
knew the two glasses of water or juice were the same. If poured one glass into
a longer and thinner glass, children could not identify this glass had
contained the same amount of water or juice as the original two identical
glasses. According to Piaget's explanation, children's thinking is
"perception bound" in preoperational stage and also they could not
focus their attention on two aspects of the new glass, they were attentive only
to one aspect which is that one glass is taller than the other two; they did
not realize the taller glass had the same amount of liquid.
My subject
is a four-year-old girl named Reisya Sabila. She was born in Kuningan. I have
known her since she was baby because I am her aunt. In this opportunaty I have
to observe her because I want to prove the knowledge of materials
'Pre-oprational stage' that have been studied, by comparing it directly through
the phenomena that occur in real life children aged 2-7 years. and the children
who be my focus is a child 3 years old. In determining and analyzing whether
the right children at this age are able to think logically because it was past
the sensory-motor stage. I use the question as gauges, and the method I used is
talk openly, directly and not too formal. It is tailored to the circumstances
and the child's responses. The following list of questions and answers that I
got :
1.
What is this? (I gave part of body material in the
situation)
: Reisya could
answered almost questions I gave.
2.
What is this ? (I gave some new vocabulary to this
children, such as Doll, Ballon and introducting)
: Reisya
needed abit of time to memorize it and finally she got it.
3.
If you were hungry, so what do you do?
Eating
4.
If you were thirsty, What should you do?
Drink
5.
Where is the fish live?
In Pond
6.
What should we use when rainning?
Pail
7.
Where is the house of bird?
In Aviary
8.
what is your ideals?
I want to be
a princess
9.
Can I put off
your clothes?
No, you
don’t.
-
Why?
I’ll cry.
And my mom will be angry to you.
I also have two
videos that showed my conversation between me and the children. I used two
glasses that tea in the glasses. They knew the two glasses of tea were the
same. If poured one glass into a longer and thinner glass, children could not
identify this glass had contained the same amount of tea as the original two
identical glasses. According to Piaget's explanation, children's thinking is
"perception bound" in preoperational stage and also they could not
focus their attention on two aspects of the new glass, they were attentive only
to one aspect which is that one glass is taller than the other two; they did
not realize the taller glass had the same amount of liquid.
Beside that,
I ordered Reisya to draw a picture and she produced an art even looked little
bit abstract.
She explained that the picture is a man who has two
eyes and two feet.
Almost
questions can be answered with the correct and appropriate by the children.
However, when considered there are some questions answered, but not in
accordance with the answers should be.
Based on the research conducted to Reisya, starting from giving the
material part of the body to granting of new vocabulary, Reisya is able to
absorb all the material quickly and it means that the age of a child is easy to
master new material. Not only in the first but in a foreign language though,
such as English, Arabic or the other.
In terms of the calculation, I am able to draw the conclusion that children
in pre-oprational age is unable to think in both ways, children can count
numbers 1-10 well in the first language (Indonesian) and the English, but when
it should be sorted them of 10 -1 the child really unable to to do it. This is
related to and can be evidenced from the questions that I asked you to Reisya,
then I asked about her name using English, the first stage he did not know what
to say, but after being given instructions and understanding if there was a
question like that, she must answer by saying her name. But when she had
introduced with the English,s he can not do it, even when asked about the
meaning of the question "what is your name?" she did not know, just
know what the answer should be given when there is a question as such.
Whereas about question on number 6 and 7 , it is enough funny for me as observer
but actually that is right answer for the question. She answered that bird
lives in aviary because she never known about other knowledge in the external
environment, because she was rarely allowed to play out. So It does not give additional knowledge about the life that
happens in their environment. She does not know that
the bird used to live in nests and on trees. It is also caused in her life she always
see that her father put the bird in a bird cage and feed him. then formed a
limited knowledge based on and influenced by life experiences that are nearby. And
about pail, she often hear that her grandmother always give an instruction to
her children to put pail to keep the wall affected of water splashing gutters
located outside the home. The situation in psycholinguistics called
underextensions. Underextension is the application of a word to a smaller set
of objects than is appropriate for mature adult speech. Though less commonly
observed than overextensions, careful study reveals that underextension are at
least equally frequent in the language of children. The psychologist Katherine
Nelson has observed that children before the age of two years form
underextensions because they have trouble distinguishing the essential features
of common objects from the accidental. For example, a child may call a ball ball only when it happens to be under the sofa. The
child who underextends the word ball in this fashion must eventually realize that
the word can be used with the appropriate object, regardless of its location.
Regarding the ability to memorize, already proven in this research I have
done that a child is able to memorize quickly and remember well the new things she
learned and she got than adults. The situation, is influenced by the ability
and brains are still fresh, and also influenced by a sense of high interest to
something new, coupled with motivation from others and giving reward to a
child. In addition the use of instructional media and methods will make the
child more attractive and longer to
concentrate and unconscious that the child is learning.
children in the pre-opratioanal have the ability to imagine well, even they
often think the story contained in the book of fairy tales and movies are true
stories and happening, it often affects the formation of a child's interest,
although probably only lasted a few short years . It can also be seen from a
question I asked about the ideals desired by reisya, when she replied that
originally wanted to be a princess, such as her favorite move, Barbie. Therefore,
Giving the example, the media and the
other should really paid attention well, since it has a big enough impact on
the child's psychological and the mindset.
CHAPTER 3
A.
Conclusion
In this
life, when we examine more deeply about the thought processes that occur in
human beings. We will know the way it turns out there is diversity of thought
that emerged at each level of a person's age or school level. A child certainly
would not immediately be able to think logically like an adult, not because
they are stupid, but because they have not been able to be in the adult stage
have. The stage where children still think based on the adoption of environment
is called 'Sensory Motor stage' and the stage after it is the ‘pre-oprational
stage’, where the child has begun to think logically but from research it was
found out the child in this stage is still adheres to the idea that sometimes
exists in stage before, It is underextension. Finally, after finding that young
learners have the potential and opportunity to gain new thing very well,
therefore, Maximize for giving good sciences in the ages, because this stage
has large effect for the formation of children, both in terms of attitude and
the mindset. Children in this age very rapidly to imitate, so as much as
possible then give a good example to avoid deviations in the development
process of both psychological and physical.
B.
Suggestion
In this
paper, the authors recognize that there are many flaws that the author did well
in the description as well as the observation phase is missing. Therefore, the
authors suggest to readers who want to do further studies to strengthen the material
and the observation that the author has done.
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