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Jean Piaget's Theory Of Child Development

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Child development is seen as a very important topic in today’s world. What’s right? What is going to harm my child? How can I protect them? These, and many more questions are raised by most parents on a daily basis. In order to know what is best for a child, it is crucial to know what developmental theories best match up with a parent's way of thinking. Psychological theorists have been working for a long time on discovering how children grow and learn. Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget are two theorists that have made a lot of headway in the child developmental field. With some similar and different concepts, these theorists made a huge impact in the psychology world. Born in Germany, Erickson never agreed with traditional schooling. He graduated …show more content…
from the University of Neuchâtel. (Smith, 2000). Piaget focused on the cognitive aspect of development; how both nature and nurture affect child development. He was the first psychologist to create a systematic study of cognitive development. (McLeod, 2009). Piaget didn’t believe that children weren’t capable of thinking on the level of adults, but that they had a different way of thinking. Unlike Erikson, Piaget only has 4 stages of …show more content…
He was curious as to how discriminative children were with quantities. He placed a row of candies on a table and a second row below it, more spaced out. His findings told him that, “Children between 2 years, 6 months old and 3 years, 2 months old correctly discriminate the relative number of objects in two rows; between 3 years, 2 months and 4 years, 6 months they indicate a longer row with fewer objects to have "more"; after 4 years, 6 months they again discriminate correctly”. Stated by (Berger, 2005) He found that children are equipped with cognitive thinking tools, like adults. They express their knowledge differently; they are not less capable. (Berger, 2005).
Likewise, Erik Erikson also had a very famous study published. This study has been copied numerous times, with results almost always the same. There are two cups with the same amount of juice in them. When one of the cups juice is poured into a different size cup, the child is asked which cup has more in it, or if they are even. For seven year olds, they almost always say that they have the same amount of juice because they witnessed the transfer. Younger children do not understand the idea of quantity, therefore leading them to state that they have different

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