Piaget Theory Tasks

• Water In Two Containers procedure: two glasses with the same amount of water. One is poured into a longer glass. The child is asked which glass has more water
• Water in Two Containers tests the cognitive ability of conservation
• Conservation: the ability to understand that physical properties (volume, area. etc) do not change even when their shape changes. This is in the concrete operational stage
• Invisible Displacement procedure: Shows the child a toy, places it under a blanket and asks where the toy went.
• Invisible Displacement, the cognitive ability tested is object permanence
• Object permanence is the ability to understand that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight. This is in the sensorimotor stage.
• Three Mountain Task procedure: the child is placed in front of three different coloured mountains and is asked what they see. A doll is placed in a different position facing the mountains and the child I asked what the doll sees.
• The cognitive ability tested in the three mountains task is egocentrism.
• Egocentrism is the inability to understand that there are multiple perspectives in one situation. This is passed in the concrete operational stage.
• The Pendulum Task Procedure: The participant is asked to work out what governs the speed of an object swinging on a piece of string.
• The cognitive ability tested in the Pendulum task is logical thinking.
• participants are able to use hypothetic-deductive reasoning to systematically examine the variables of (length, weight, force and height) and hypotheses about future outcomes.