Exploring Cognitive Development

On Thursday, our Upper Sixth Psychology pupils spent the afternoon in the Prep School, putting Piaget’s theory of cognitive development to the test with pupils in Year One and Year Three. Through a series of carefully designed tasks, they investigated two of Piaget’s key concepts: conservation, the understanding that a quantity stays the same even when its appearance changes, and egocentrism, a young child’s difficulty in seeing the world from someone else’s point of view.

The Prep pupils threw themselves into the activities with great enthusiasm, and their responses offered a fascinating window into how children’s thinking develops with age. For our Upper Sixth pupils, it was a valuable opportunity to see psychological theory play out beyond the textbook. They will now analyse their data and write up their findings as a formal psychological report.