Concrete Operational Stage (ages 7-11)

The concrete operational stage is considered by Piaget to be the most important stage in a child’s development. He believes this because this is the stage where most children start thinking in a more logical and operational way. While in this stage children develop ‘rules’, (called operations) or schemas for categorizing the world they live in. For example children start to understand that although an object may change in physical appearance it is still the same object.

This is the stage where they learn the rule of conservation. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA04ew6Oi9M

Before this stage the children would think that the taller glass had more water. 

However, two psychologists, McGarrigle and Donaldson (1974) criticized Piaget’s theory by conducting the Naughty Teddy Bear experiment. The psychologists laid out beads in rows. Then a puppet introduced to the children as the ‘Naughty Teddy Bear’ ‘accidently’ messed up  a row of beads. McGarrigle and Donaldson found that 63% of the children aged 4-6 years old managed to recognize that the number of beads in the messed up row stayed the same as previously. 

Sources Used:

McLeod, Saul. "Concrete Operational Stage." Simply Psychology. Simply Psychology,2010. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.

Law, Alan, Christos Halkiopoulos, and Christian Bryan-Zaykov. "Developmental          Psychology." Psychology: Developed Specifically for the IB Diploma. Oxford,                U.K.: Pearson Education, 2010. 187-88. Print.

Sensorimotor Stage

1. Sensorimotor stage

 

 

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Piaget described this stage from birth to approximately 2 years as a period of rapid cognitive growth.

Initially equipped with a set of reflex movements and a set of perceptual systems, an infant quickly begins to build up direct knowledge of world around her, by relating physical actions to perceived results of those actions.

Through the processes of assimilation and accommodation, these actions become progressively adapted to the world (e.g. grasping schema).

During the sensorimotor stage infants learn mostly through trial and error learning. Children initially rely on reflexes, eventually modifying them to adapt to their world.

Behaviors become goal directed, progressing from concrete to abstract goals. Objects and events can be mentally represented by the child (sometimes called object permanence).

→ Infancy is characterized by extreme egocentrism, where the child has no understanding of the world other than her own current point of view. The main development during this stage is the understanding that objects exist and events occur in the world independently of one's own actions

→ Object permanence means knowing that an object still exists, even if it is hidden. It requires the ability to form a mental representation (i.e. a schema) of the object.E.g. if you place a toy under a blanket, the child who has achieved object permanence knows it is there and can actively seek it. At the beginning of this stage the child behaves as if the toy had simply disappeared.

→ Watch:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCdLNuP7OA8

Substages of the Sensorimotor Stage:

:The sensorimotor stage can be divided into six separate substages that are characterized by the development of a new skill.

Reflexes (0-1 month):

The child understands the environment purely through inborn reflexes e.g. sucking and looking.

2. Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months):

Coordinating sensation and new schemas. E.g., a child may suck his or her thumb by accident and then later intentionally repeat the action.

3. Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months):

The child becomes more focused on the world and begins to intentionally repeat an action in order to trigger a response in the environment.

4 Coordination of Reactions (8-12 months):

The child starts to show clearly intentional actions. The child may also combine schemas in order to achieve a desired effect.

5. Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months):

Children begin a period of trial-and-error experimentation.

6. Early Representational Thought (18-24 months):

Children begin to develop symbols to represent events or objects in the world in the final sensorimotor substage. During this time, children begin to move towards understanding the world through mental operations rather than just actions.

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The Preoperational Stage

Piaget's Second stage of development is titled the Preoperational Stage. This stage allegedly applies for children from ages two through seven. The child in the preoperational stage has not yet discovered logic. Thereby Piaget argued that without logic the child is yet unable to use valid reasoning: induction, abduction, and deduction.

The child in the preoperational stage, despite a lack of induction, abduction, and deduction is able through the acquisition of language to represent the world through mental images and symbols. These images and symbols are individual interpretations of the world, the child's own perception by way of intuition.

In this stage the child is impelled by egocentricity, so the images, symbols, and people of the world despite being of interest are still viewed through a lens of the child's own perception.

The interest in the world initiates a stage of curiosity where the child questions and investigates the unknown and problems that he/she encounters. The child's own perception is deceived by a lack of experience and where the child encounters problems or questions he/she often makes up own explanations, which are often invalid or delineated by lack of experience and not supported by empirical evidence.

Formal operational stage

Summary

• Appears around age 11, Piaget believed that everyone reached the stage by age 20

• however, some argue that only about 1/3 of the population reach this stage

• Cognition can be more abstract and does not have to use objects as models for abstract things.

• e.g. if A>B>C then A>C

• Problem-solving does not have to use trial-and-error, but can done through thoughts, using logical thinking (Salkind, 2004).
• This logical way of thinking is called inferential reasoning- thinking about things you have not experienced and draw conclusions from this reasoning

Experiment conducted by Piaget

• Evaluated cognitive abilities of children (different ages)
• Task: balance scale by hooking weights to the two end of the scale
• Children have to use formal operational thought to realize two factors affect balance:
• Heaviness of weights
• Distance from center
• 3-5 years olds didn’t comprehend idea of balancing
• 7 year olds could balance the scale by placing weights on the ends, but they didn’t realize that it was important to vary the location
• 10 year olds could think about location, but used trial and error instead of logic
• 13-14 year olds (some) understood relationship between weight & distance

Videos

Super advanced and well-made video about the FOS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9BoAn9lRqE

Longer video for the super interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQtQ_p1fcsI