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Stages of cognitive development theory jean piaget essay
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Framing the Current Toy Market with Piaget’s Theory
Childhood is an exciting time; during the formative years a plethora of children explore their world through their senses. Jean Piaget summarizes these developments through age groups and the stages that correlate with these age groups. Piaget defined the 0-2 years of age as Sensorimotor, the 2-7 as Preoperations, 8-12 as Concrete Operations and 12+ as Formal Operations. This analysis will be depicting the trends of the current toy market, representative of The Summit’s TOYS R US, and then displaying the correlations with toys available to the stages of Jean Piaget 's theory.
In The Summit’s TOYS R US, they have clear identifiers of the ‘Girls,’ and ‘Boys,’ sections. However, the toys shown in these sections seem to be geared toward the 8-12
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Although, the pictures illustrate that girls 'enjoy dresses ' and pink toys while boys enjoy active play toys, such as balls. Most of the toys in this store would seem to prepare girls to be princess and boys to be athletes. In contrast, there is a miscellaneous section that had gender neutral toys for an age group of kids 3-7; these toys had cooking sets, medical sets, and farming sets. Subsequently, it can be said that some of these gender-neutral toys could be preparing children for roles as farmers, doctors, and chefs. This section of gender-neutral toys seemed to be just randomly placed in the middle of the store, and the only other gender-neutral section seemed to be in the 1-5 age range. I didn’t see a ‘strategy of attraction’ for these gender-neutral toys. For this miscellaneous section, it seemed to be more of the predisposition of a child, for example, a child that may like horses might gravitate towards the gender-neutral farming set. For the 1-5 age, the attraction would be the sounds, touches, and movements of the toy. In this TOYS R US, it seemed to
The clothing for both boys and girls sections are close together. I noticed that there are articles of clothing that are similar for boys and girls, but they are called different names to make them more masculine or feminine. For example, shirts for girls are called fashion tops and just shirts for boys. Some patterns that I saw in the clothing/toys is that for almost each advertisement or label had a picture of a boy or a girl to indicate which toy or clothing is meant for which gender. I did find some things that I thought were unusual. One thing that I noticed for boys is that the majority of the boys toys were more expensive compared to the girls toys. For example, I did not realize how expensive Legos and other building toys were compared to some dolls for girls. A set of Legos could be up to sixty dollars just for one set! Another thing that I noticed about the boys toys was that there were a lot more choices in ratio to girl’s toys. For girls, one could either choose from dolls (Barbie’s), dress up clothes, or play make-up. As for boys, there is so much more to choose from, they have cars/trucks, sports equipment, Legos, guns, different trading cards (Pokémon, Yugioh, sports trading cards, etc.)
Part of the answer to this question might be that men are encouraged to play with hi-tech toys while girls are given a Barbi doll or a toy oven. The best time to see how these differences are encouraged by our society is during the Holiday season. The toys I have seen for boys are mainly Star Wars action figures or Nintendo 64 games. The toys advertised for girls were mostly easy bake ovens (that now makes M&M cakes) or Barbi dolls with various accessories.
Pike, J. J., & Jennings, N. A. (2005). The Effects of Commercials on Children’s Perceptions of Gender Appropriate Toy Use. Sex Roles, 52(1/2), 83-91. doi:10.1007/s11199-005-1195-6
Based on my observation, Walmart is one of the toy retailers labeled and categorized toys by gender. They placed “Girls” and “Boys” signs over their toy aisles. Initially, I studied the toys under
I noticed the girls’ toys engaged fine motor skills more than the boys’ toys did. The girls have several different types and sizes of dolls to choose from – however, this also makes dolls or items used with dolls (Barbie clothes, doll clothes, doll houses, Barbie cars, and doll furniture). Over half of all the products in the girls’ section. This shows the stereotypical attitude that all girls like to nurture and will someday be expected to be mothers and the primary care giver for their children. Other toys I noticed that were very stereotypical were the child size vacuum, broom, and kitchen set.
Although he identified himself as a genetic epistemologist, Jean Piaget was a psychologist from Switzerland. When he was just eleven years old Piaget started to take steps in starting his research career without even realizing it when he wrote a brief paper over an Albino Sparrow (Bringuier, 1980). He originally studied natural sciences and was involved in the branch of philosophy that was focused on origin, nature and the extents and limits of human knowledge. But as he progressed in his studies he realized that he was also interested in how thought develops and wanted to understand how genetics impacted the process (Mayer, 2005).
Toy stores are perfect places for a sociologist to use their sociological imagination. Gendering and racism is thought to be something that is socially constructed as opposed to biologically constructed. Gendering starts during infancy, and around 2 years old children start to internalize these gender differences. I argue that children’s toys help socialize children into gender specific roles. Toy stores, like Target and Toys R Us help us understand what types of toys help to gender children. I will explain how the toys in the toy aisles differ and compare. Not all toys are either male or female, some toys are gender neutral.
To begin with, toy stores play significant row when it comes to the gender socialization process in children. I recently visited a Toys R Us in a shopping center near downtown Redwood City. Although It is located on the east side of Redwood City the shopping center is fairly neat and seems to have a wide variety of shoppers. The store was rather big and neatly organized. The front of the store for the most part was gender neutral. It was easy to navigate through the story and find the girls and boys toys. For the most part, boys toys were in blue boxes, while girls toys were in predominantly pink boxes. On the one hand, the boys sections were dominated by darker colors like blue, yellow, and black. On the other hand, girls sections were lighter
Jean Piaget was a very important and influential person in this field during the 20th century. His views on how children learn made a huge impact on interaction design and children.
Gender Socialization plays a big part in a child’s life in shaping their femininty and masculinity. Every child is brought with to have played with at least one toy to have called their own. Now, the purpose of the research that has been conducted is to take a further look into how toys that is sold through stores and played by children. This will then give hindsight as to how what is considered the gender norm has a part in gender role stereotyping and the affect these toys have on children view of gender characteristics.
Piaget stated that children function in a concrete world and therefore are unable to use language in an abstract way until about eleven years old. Consequently language does not afford young children the structure for appropriate self-expression. Piaget believed that children design symbols to communicate their wishes, ideas and emotions. This system of symbols characterises symbolic play (Piaget & Inhelder,
Girls are supposed to play with dolls, wear pink, and grow up to become princesses. Boys are suppose to play with cars, wear blue, and become firefighters and policemen. These are just some of the common gender stereotypes that children grow up to hear. Interactions with toys are one of the entryway to different aspects of cognitive development and socialism in early childhood. As children move through development they begin to develop different gender roles and gender stereotypes that are influenced by their peers and caregivers.
Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky are two very well-known theorists who emphasized the development of cognition in their theories. In Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental theory, he claimed that children go through a series of stages, which he used to describe human development. In Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory of Learning, he believed culture and social interaction played a role in cognitive development. Although Piaget and Vygotsky both focused their theories on cognitive development they take different stances a series of developmental issues. This paper will look at the similarities and differences between these theorist’s views on critical developmental issues, such as view of human nature, mechanisms of development, and their
The Critique of Piaget's Theories Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980) was a constructivist theorist. He saw children as constructing their own world, playing an active part in their own development. Piaget’s insight opened up a new window into the inner working of the mind and as a result he carried out some remarkable studies on children that had a powerful influence on theories of child thought. This essay is going to explain the main features and principles of the Piagetian theory and then provide criticism against this theory. Cognitive development refers to way in which a person’s style of thinking changes with age.
Piaget described this stage to be where the infant is making sense of the world and during this stage the infant's knowledge is limited. This is where the main senses come into play, such as touch, taste, smell etc. At this stage sport to an infant is a sensory experience, with the use of a ball for example for exploration. Object permanence was highlighted by Piaget as one of the most important accomplishments of the sensorimotor stage. Object permanence is an infant's understanding that objects exists even if the object can not be heard or seen. For example with the game Hide and Seek, a younger infant will simply believe that the person hiding has completely vanished and will be shocked once that person is visible again whereas an older infant who understands object per...