Development of Concept of Transitivity in Pre-Operational Stage Children

Piaget’s Theory gives a general overview on the cognitive development of a child from infancy to adulthood. There have been many arguments for and against the proposed timescale of cognitive learning versus the age of the child. We plan, via this work, to explore the learning capabilities of a child in pre-operational stage. The abstract concept of transitivity, which is not understood well by children of the age of 3-5 years of age, was induced in a group of children using physical analogy of a train system. It was then shown that the physical analogies (contrary to abstract ones) provide better insight and help children understand transitivity related concepts.