The Impact Logical Thinking Assessments Has on a Child's Development

The impact logical thinking assessments has on a child's development

In 1896, Jean Piaget coined the theory of cognitive development during childhood and this was assessed to be a major paradigm in understanding the complex procedure of mental progression through different levels of critical thinking and analytical understanding. Based on this theory, Piaget educated individuals on the cognitive processes of young children and allowed them to realize that children are not immature versions of that of an adult instead they have their own developing mind. Due to his informative theory, he can be recognized to play a vital role in both general psychology and contemporary education. Several assessments tasks are used to help improve cognitive development in children. These are conservation of numbers, AR test, Give N Task test and Compare set test (Bakken 2001, Deák 2006, Rothenberg 1968, Sarnecka 2013). Cognitive development in a child solely depends on their potential to manipulate his or her physical environment and their capability to perform in active environments. Bakken's main purpose for conducting his research is to analyze the cognitive pre operational reaction and to determine if there was a shift to operational level performance of the children after their participation in various experiences. Throughout his study he made reference to Piaget's theory of cognitive development similarly to Sarneka 2013 study. Despite the fact that they used two different assessment methods, Bakken 2001 used conservation of numbers Sarnecka 2013 used Compare set and Give-M task. They both had similar goals of study which is to evaluate the accuracy of Piaget's theory. On the hand, Rothenberg 1968 used similar assessment method to Bakken 2001, she used Methler and Bever study as reference to her study. They both used the conservation of numbers to test whether or not hands on experiences allows a child to develop operational-level performances (Bakken 2001) and to examine whether a child's age affects their ability to react to things (Rothenberg 1968). However, Deák 2006 study differed from all the other studies despite the fact that his main focus throughout his study was child development. He examined whether children had the ability to respond to a series of questions using the AR test but he made no reference to a theory. The results of all the studies displayed a significant difference and some even contradicted their hypothesis. This implies that some researchers did not achieve their expected results. In Sarnecka 2013 study for instance, she misinterpreted the results of the experiment this allowing her to think that the task was too difficult to determine the attention span and memory capacity of children. Deak 2006 on the other hand failing to support his hypothesis came to the conclusion that young children understood the concept of appearance versus reality but after answering one question they had no idea that the other questions did not relate to the same topic. On the contrary side, the studies that used similar assessment methods sufficiently supported their hypothesis. Bakken 2001 and Rothenberg 1968 noted that that children who actively participate in logical thinking activities helps to improve their mental development. The results from Bakken 2001 study showed that there was a growth in their cognitive thinking which further allowed them to use their concrete logic. Children with pre operational level thinking experienced a significant shift to operational level. Rothenberg 1968 stated that age does affect the development process of children. It was gathered from the results that between the ages of 2-6 were able to react to the conservation of numbers on a operational level.

Method

A child's development process will improve by the continuous participation in hands on experiments. Piaget's theory can be seen to be relatively accurate mainly because it has been tested and verified on numerous occasions and the results always reflect Piaget's conclusion. It shows that a child's cognitive development will improve by allowing the he/she to participate in assessment tasks so that their performance will change from pre-operational to operational. Despite the fact that this theory has been tested numerous times the researcher decides to carry out their own experiment.