Developmental psychology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Developmental psychology - Essay Example In the preoperational stage, the child is in a later stage of development, early childhood, and they tend to be more and more focused on the world around them. In the concrete stage, â€Å"accommodation increases. The child develops an ability to think abstractly and to make rational judgements about concrete or observable phenomena, which in the past he needed to manipulate physically to understand† (Piaget, 2010). And the stage of formal operations can be roughly equated to adolescence. There are various tasks that Piaget attributes to each stage; for example, in the conservation task of the concrete stage, â€Å"They also see that when one of the vessels is emptied into a taller and thinner receptacle, the level of liquid is higher in the thinner vessel than in the other original vessel. Pre-Concrete Operations stage children conclude that there is more liquid in the thinner vessel† (Conservation, 2008). The results of this task may be that the child is not able to d ifferentiate between different volumes in vessels of different shapes. Although, as mentioned, some argue that there are confounding variables, Piaget has general support in today’s society. Piaget’s concepts of assimilation and accommodation are important to consider in the construction of a childs schema. Accommodation is the tougher concept, in terms of the cognitive effort that the child has to put forth. In assimilation, it is basically like the child taking in new information that fits into a sort of pre-fabricated place in their brain—it is new information that fits seamlessly with old information. Accommodation, however, is more about conflict and compromise. â€Å"In accommodation, the internal world has to accommodate itself to the evidence with which it is confronted and thus adapt to it, which can be a more difficult and painful process.   In the database analogy, it is like what happens when you try to put in information which does not fit the