COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Once again, researchers’ perspectives on this period have been influenced strongly by Piagetian theory – but once again, this is not to say that all researchers accept the details of Piaget’s account. The period of concrete operations Early in the school years, at around age six or seven, children undergo another major stage transition, entering what Piaget called the concrete operations period. [concrete operations period the third major phase of cognitive development, according to Piaget, lasting from approximately seven to 11 years, when the child’s problem solving is more logical but his/her reasoning is largely dependent on application to immediate physical entities and tasks] The child can now handle the kinds of intellectual problems that the preoperational child struggled with (such as perspective taking). For example, the concrete operational child is capable of decentration, i.e. taking into account more than one aspect of a problem. He is likely to dismiss scornfully the kinds of responses that a preoperational child gives to a conservation task; for example, on the beaker task the concrete operational child can explain readily that the amount of liquid remains the same, despite changes in visual appearance. The concrete operational child is able to draw upon logical abilities that Piaget thought were unavailable during the preoperational stage. With respect to the liquid conservation task, these include the ability to: n reverse the operation mentally (reversibility) – ‘If the water filled this much of the first beaker, it must fill the same amount when it is poured back’; n maintain identity (identity) – ‘Nothing has been added or removed, so it must be the same amount’; and n compensate to take account of combined changes (compensation) – ‘It’s higher, but it’s also thinner – these changes cancel each other out, so there’s no change in amount.’ The ability to deal with experimenters asking you how much liquid there is in different shaped beakers may in itself seem to be of limited value. However, w hat is much more important is the breadth of applicability of the underlying cognitive changes mediating performance on these tasks. Conservation ability is fundamental to many other intellectual tasks, and children’s education would not proceed far without it. For instance, the achievement of reversibility, identity and compensation underpins much of elementary mathematical and scientific understanding. Consider, for example, how these skills could be used in relation to tasks such as simple numerical operations (e.g. comprehending that if 3 × 2 = 6, then 6 ÷ 3 = 2), and investigating the interaction of key variables (e.g. comparing the eventual progress of two moving objects, one moving very fast for a short time and the other moving very slowly for a long time). Other developments and some limitations There are many other advances during these concrete operational years, too. Children now have greater facility in classifying objects and sorting them into sets and subsets. They appreciate that the same objects could be sorted differently if different criteria were applied (e.g. boys and girls, or blue-eyed and brown-eyed children). They find easy the kinds of seriation (or ordering) tasks that thwarted preschoolers. Their improved grasp of cause–effect relations enables them to comprehend a greater range of phenomena in the natural and social environments. Their greater ability to take other perspectives into account means that they can produce and understand spatial representations, such as maps and diagrams. All of these cognitive skills afford the child new means of acting upon the world to build greater understanding. But there are still some important limitations. In particular, Piaget saw the concrete operational child’s newfound intellectual organizational abilities as restricted to readily accessible (i.e. concrete) contexts, such as immediately present objects and events or easily imagined circumstances. According to Piaget, dealing with abstract ideas and contemplating alternative explanations in the absence of practical examples came later, in the formal operational period.
Once again, researchers’ perspectives on this period have been influenced strongly by Piagetian theory – but once again, this is not to say that all researchers accept the details of Piaget’s account. The period of concrete operations Early in the school years, at around age six or seven, children undergo another major stage transition, entering what Piaget called the concrete operations period. [concrete operations period the third major phase of cognitive development, according to Piaget, lasting from approximately seven to 11 years, when the child’s problem solving is more logical but his/her reasoning is largely dependent on application to immediate physical entities and tasks] The child can now handle the kinds of intellectual problems that the preoperational child struggled with (such as perspective taking). For example, the concrete operational child is capable of decentration, i.e. taking into account more than one aspect of a problem. He is likely to dismiss scornfully the kinds of responses that a preoperational child gives to a conservation task; for example, on the beaker task the concrete operational child can explain readily that the amount of liquid remains the same, despite changes in visual appearance. The concrete operational child is able to draw upon logical abilities that Piaget thought were unavailable during the preoperational stage. With respect to the liquid conservation task, these include the ability to: n reverse the operation mentally (reversibility) – ‘If the water filled this much of the first beaker, it must fill the same amount when it is poured back’; n maintain identity (identity) – ‘Nothing has been added or removed, so it must be the same amount’; and n compensate to take account of combined changes (compensation) – ‘It’s higher, but it’s also thinner – these changes cancel each other out, so there’s no change in amount.’ The ability to deal with experimenters asking you how much liquid there is in different shaped beakers may in itself seem to be of limited value. However, w hat is much more important is the breadth of applicability of the underlying cognitive changes mediating performance on these tasks. Conservation ability is fundamental to many other intellectual tasks, and children’s education would not proceed far without it. For instance, the achievement of reversibility, identity and compensation underpins much of elementary mathematical and scientific understanding. Consider, for example, how these skills could be used in relation to tasks such as simple numerical operations (e.g. comprehending that if 3 × 2 = 6, then 6 ÷ 3 = 2), and investigating the interaction of key variables (e.g. comparing the eventual progress of two moving objects, one moving very fast for a short time and the other moving very slowly for a long time). Other developments and some limitations There are many other advances during these concrete operational years, too. Children now have greater facility in classifying objects and sorting them into sets and subsets. They appreciate that the same objects could be sorted differently if different criteria were applied (e.g. boys and girls, or blue-eyed and brown-eyed children). They find easy the kinds of seriation (or ordering) tasks that thwarted preschoolers. Their improved grasp of cause–effect relations enables them to comprehend a greater range of phenomena in the natural and social environments. Their greater ability to take other perspectives into account means that they can produce and understand spatial representations, such as maps and diagrams. All of these cognitive skills afford the child new means of acting upon the world to build greater understanding. But there are still some important limitations. In particular, Piaget saw the concrete operational child’s newfound intellectual organizational abilities as restricted to readily accessible (i.e. concrete) contexts, such as immediately present objects and events or easily imagined circumstances. According to Piaget, dealing with abstract ideas and contemplating alternative explanations in the absence of practical examples came later, in the formal operational period.
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