Concrete Operational Stage of Cognitive Development

Concrete Operational Stage of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development theory explains how a child constructs a mental model of the world (McLeod, 2015). Piaget disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a fixed trait, and regarded cognitive development as a process that occurs due to biological maturation and interaction with one’s environment (McLeod, 2015). Of the four stages, Sensorimotor; Preoperational; Concrete Operational; and Formal Operational; Concrete Operational is considered to be the major turning point in a child’s development because it marks the beginning of logical and operational thought (McLeod, 2010). Within this stage, a child is now mature enough to use logical thought or operations but they can only apply logic to physical objects (McLeod, 2010).

The concrete operational stage typically happens around the ages of seven to eleven but the mental changes children undergo in this stage are more noticeable than their physical changes (Oswalt, 2010). A child’s ability to consciously, thoughtfully, and pro-actively choose to pursue goals, rather than simply reacting to the environment, appears during this stage (Oswalt, 2010). It is in this stage of ‘middle childhood’ that children begin to master multiple operations including conservation, decentration, reversibility, hierarchical classification, seriation, and spatial reasoning (Oswalt, 2010). It is typical for most children to starting doing these things without having realized what they have done or accomplished.

The first operation that children begin to master in this stage is conservation. Conservation is realizing that the quantity or amount does not change when nothing has been added to or taken away from an object, despite changes in its form or arrangement (Swift). An example being that if you break a candy bar up into smaller pieces, it is still the same amount of candy as when the candy bar was whole (Cherry, 2017). Kids at this stage of development are able to understand this concept in contrast to younger children who believe that pouring the same amount of liquid into two cups means that there is more (Cherry, 2017).

Another key characteristic that is mastered during this stage is decentration and reversibility, which plays a critical role in the understanding of conservation (Cherry, 2017). The ability to conserve depends upon these two fundamental cognitive thinking skills (Oswalt, 2010). It is with decentration that children are able to pay attention to multiple attributes of an object or situation rather than being focused in to only one attribute (Oswalt,2010). When considering the two cups of liquid discussed above, a child’s ability to decentrate allows them to flexibly consider both the height and width of the glasses in arriving at their decision (Oswalt, 2010).

Reversibility is one of the most important developments of the concrete operational stage as it is the understanding and awareness that actions can be reversed (Swift). An understanding is gained in this stage that if an object’s state is altered through subtraction or addition, then its original state can be restored by reversing the alteration (Oswalt, 2010). This capability comes from the maturation of a child’s memory which enables their retention of awareness as well as their ability to retrace their mental steps (Oswalt, 2010). This allows for an entirely new level of reflection within the development of a child.

Hierarchical classification is also another ability gained during this stage of cognitive development. Classification is the ability to identify properties of categories, to relate categories or classes to one another, and to use categorical information to solve problems (McLeod, 2010). This ability becomes relevant as children began to apply it to their learning in school. For example, when taking science and social studies, children typically have to sort living creatures into different groups based on whether they are animals or plants (Oswalt, 2010).

Stemming from the ability of classification is seriation. Seriation is the ability to mentally arrange items along a numerical base, such as height or weight (McLeod, 2010). When thinking of numbers, you typically think in terms of the larger number representing a larger quantity (Oswalt, 2010). When testing for seriation, Piaget demonstrated