The mother of a young child who didn't like to drink milk was trying to coax him to drink some. Taking the glass of milk, she poured it all into a smaller cup and said, "There! Now you won't have to drink so much." She would never have fooled the child, if he had not been in the ________ stage.
A) concrete-operational
B) formal-operational
C) preconventional
D) preoperational

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The preoperational stage is the second stage of development according to Piaget's theory where a child's thinking is still dominated by perceptions and intuition rather than logic and reasoning. In this stage, children struggle with the concept of conservation, which means that they cannot understand that the amount or quantity remains the same even if the appearance changes. In this scenario, the mother poured the milk into a smaller cup, and the child believed that the quantity of milk had changed, which is an example of a lack of conservation. Therefore, the child must be in the preoperational stage.

The Mother of a Young Child Who Didn't Like to Drink