In Piaget's theory of cognitive development, one of the key concepts is the idea of conservation, which refers to a child's ability to understand that certain properties of an object (such as its quantity or volume) remain the same even when its appearance changes. Conservation tasks are designed to assess this understanding in children.
A typical child's performance on Piaget's conservation tasks can be described as follows:
Preoperational Stage (2-7 years): In this stage, children often struggle with conservation tasks. They may focus on the most apparent, perceptual aspects of objects rather than abstract, logical properties. For example, if you show a child two glasses with the same amount of liquid and then pour one of them into a taller, thinner glass, they might think the taller glass now has more liquid simply because it looks taller. 🧡💙🧡