Why Do Skittles Affect Cognitive Development?

I started with the conservation of number task by lining up two rows of Skittles with five skittles in each row. The concept of this activity is to rearrange the Skittles in each row so that one appears longer than the other due to the increased amount of space between each Skittle. Based on the child’s response the observer is able to ascertain the child’s level of cognitive development. The first child that I sat down and talked with was Lela. Lela was a blonde three year old with brown eyes and a violet coat. She liked me right away because my purple sweatshirt matched her coat. After showing me how well her yellow socks, pants and shirt matched, and after she made me watch her do a summersault we started the activity. Lela’s age indicated that she was in the preoperational
I went in order from top to bottom. Chase looked confused after I read most of the sentences (except for a few) and wasn’t able to interpret them, sometimes telling me that he had never heard that before. When I said “A cloud is like a marshmallow” he disagreed which surprised me. His disagreement might have been influenced by the appearance of clouds that particular day. It was a gloomy day and most of the clouds were gray and not very puffy. The next sentence that got a reaction other than confusion was “Anger ate him up”. Chase reasoned that anger couldn’t “eat” anything because “anger is inside of us”. The other sentence that produced a response other than utter confusion was “It’s raining cats and dogs”. Chase responded “My teacher has said that before. It means that it’s raining really hard”. I believe that his recognition of this example of nonliteral language was influenced by the contextual clue “raining” and by his familiarity with the phrase. He knew that when it rains, it rains water, and he remembered his teacher’s explanation of the