why is reversibility an important characteristic of children

Solution

According to Piaget\'s theory of cognitive development human development involves a series of stages and each stages prepare the chid for succeeding level.

The four stages are:

1) The Sensorimotor stage: During this period infants are buzy discovering in relationship between there body and enviornment. The child has well developed sensory ability and with help of touching, seeing, sucking, feeling learn things by themselves in the enviornment.

2)The Preoperational stage: In this stage child thought is transductive means,  \"Child will make inferences every identical things with same thing. as All round things with boll.

then from age of 4-7 years child go through Intutive period ( egocentrism; perception dominated and intutive thought)

2a) egocentrism: in this stage child thinks that every one feels as they do and share there feeling.

eg: the conversation of 2 child

rohit: i love trees

nisha: i am going to school.

rohit: tree is green in color

nisha: i will go with my mom.

Here they are talking but no one is bothered what other is saying. they are just sharing there feeling.

In this stage the child also begins to develop the use of symbols (but can not manipulate them), and the child is able to usethe language and words to represent the new things not visible.

By the age of 4 children are developing a more complete understanding of concepts and have stopped reasoning tranductively.

The pre-operational child can not classify things.

for example, a child has a pile of toy vehicles which are then split into trucks and cars. Next the child is asked \'Tell me, are there more trucks than vehicles, or less, or the same number?\' the child will almost always say there are more trucks than vehicles!

In the latter stage of the preoperational period, the child begins to understand between reality and fantasy.

3)The Concentrate operational stage:

During this time, children begins to reason logically, and organize thoughts. In this stage there is loss of egocentric thinking.

In this stage the child is able to coordinate two dimensions of an object simultaneously can arrange structures in sequence also transpose differences between items in a series. Now child is capable to concrete problem-solving. Categorical labels such as \"number\" or \"animal\" are now available to the child.

One of the most important development at this stage is an understanding of reversibility, or awareness that actions can be reversed.

For example, a child might be able to recognize that his or her doll is a barbie, that a barbie is a doll, and that a doll is a toy.

A large portion of the defining characteristics of the stage can be understood in terms of the child overcoming the limits of stage two, known as the pre-operational stage.

Now in the pre-operational child has a number of cognitive barriers which are broken down.

In concrete operational stage the new ability gained is reversibility. This refers the ability to mentally trace backwards, and enormously helps child in both their problem solving and knowledge.  

For example, the change made could be reversed to regain the original properties.

4)The formal operational stage: This is the final stage of congnitive ability it begins 11 to 12 years of age.