Erikson and Piaget in Action - Essay Example

Piaget's preoperational stage and Erikson's Initiative Versus Guilt take place during the preschool years of ages three to six. Preoperational is Jean Piaget's second stage of development, which occurs during the preschool ages of three to six years. Three aspects of this stage are symbolic function, deferred imitation, and qualitative identity. "Symbolic function is the ability to use one thing as a symbol to represent something else." (Vasta et al 268). For example, the observed child used an empty laundry basket to represent driving a car.

The child also used words to represent being a cat by meowing and licking hands like a cat licks paws saying, "I am a Kitty." Symbolic function develops skills used in the learning process for academic work. The teacher can develop representation by associating words with pictures to increase vocabulary, which in turn will also help increase social skills as well as academics. Deferred Imitation is when a child observes an action by someone and then imitates that action sometime in the future.

For example, the caregiver of the child observed swept the floor yesterday and today the three year old is imitating her mother sweeping the floor. Deferred imitation proves not only the development of memory, but also the ability to learn by observation. Qualitative Identity is when a child knows that something does not changed even though it appears different. For example, crushing cheerios does not change them into another cereal: the cheerios are still cheerios. The sibling of the observed child ripped the three year olds' picture; the ripped picture was still her picture.

However, a lack of conservation is a limitation for preschoolers in the preoperational stage. Observing the child practicing counting gave an understanding of conservation. For example, the caregiver created two rows of beads spread evenly and asked the child if they had the same number and the child answered correctly. However, when the caregiver spread one row longer then the other, the child believed that longer row had more beads than the shorter row even though both rows had the same number.

The observed child focused only on the length of the line instead of counting the number of beads, which is an example of centration. Letting the child manipulate different objects, like clay, that can change shape and length without affecting quantity or volume can build conservation. Another cognitive skill that attribute to the academic work of preschoolers are egocentrism, class inclusion and serration. "Egocentrism is the inability to distinguish one's own beliefs from another's." (Vasta et al G-2).

Children assume that a listener has all the same information that they have and this view of the world makes it difficult to understand the child when they are telling someone about their day. The caregiver of the observed child discovered difficulty when the child got hurt. The child assumed the caregiver knew how she got hurt and it took some questioning before the answer of how was give. The child was constantly referring to everything as "mine"; for example, my toys, my book, my television program.

In the mind of a preschooler, the world is about them and nothing else is important. Despite the egocentric