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Piaget's Stages of Cognition & Disney's "A Bugs Life"



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Disney's Pixar movie "A Bug's Life" was playing on TV. One part of the movie really go my attention! It was the part when Flick is trying to use a rock as a metaphor to explain how a small seed can grow into a tree. He is trying to explain it to this young ant, but she jus does not seem to understand it. Here is a short clip of the scene I found on YouTube:)


So what does this have to do with Piaget's Stages of Development?
The little young ant does not understand that Flick is using the rock as an abstract concept. He goes into this whole explanation about how this "seed" will eventually grow into a tree. The little ant argues that it is still a rock! I thought this was an example of one of Piaget's four stages of development. The little ant is at the concrete operational stage of cognitive development. She is able to make logical conclusions and know that it is a rock, but not yet able to make that abstract connection to a seed. This understanding of both concrete and abstract thinking is a characteristic of the formal operational stage of cognitive development.






Comments

  1. Dr. LombardiSeptember 16, 2014 at 3:01 PM

    Agreed. Sometimes we try to use analogies with children and they just don't work. Even in latter elementary (grades 3-4). In middle, they start to get the connection and can think more abstractly. But, even then, students have to understand the base analogy.

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