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Piaget preoperational stage — MRCPsych Paper A MCQ

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EasyPsychologyPiaget preoperational stageMRCPsych Paper A

A 4-year-old child agrees that two identical glasses contain equal amounts of juice. The child then watches the juice being poured into a tall, thin glass and a short, wide glass. Although no juice is added or removed, the child says that the tall glass contains more. What is the most likely explanation?

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Correct answer: C — Preoperational thought with absent conservation

The correct answer is C. In Piaget's model, a 4-year-old is typically in the preoperational stage. The child focuses on the salient height of the liquid and does not yet conserve quantity—that is, recognise that the amount remains unchanged despite alteration of the container's shape. Concrete operational thought develops later and permits conservation through reversibility and attention to more than one dimension. Object permanence is acquired during the sensorimotor stage in infancy and is not being tested here. Formal operational reasoning involves abstract and hypothetical reasoning emerging in adolescence. Post-conventional morality belongs to Kohlberg's theory of moral development and is unrelated to this perceptual reasoning task.

Reference: Shabnam M, Lone N, Sidiq M. Revisiting Piaget's Cognitive Principles among 4-7-year-old Children in the Kashmiri Population. International Journal of Clinical Pediatric Dentistry. 2025;18(7):766–771. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41041422/