Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development (III) PDF

Esther Mercado Garrido [email protected]  Concrete Formal Sensorimotor Preoperation Operational Stage Operation Stage al Stage (7 – 11 years) al Period 7 – 11 years. In this stage...

Esther Mercado Garrido [email protected]  Concrete Formal Sensorimotor Preoperation Operational Stage Operation Stage al Stage (7 – 11 years) al Period 7 – 11 years. In this stage, the child not only uses symbols as representation, but can manipulate those symbols logically. In this period, children’s increased understanding of reversibility and a decrease in the tendency toward centration and egocentrism enable them to become more flexible in their thinking. Logic and objectivity increase, and children begin to think deductively. In essence, the concrete operational period is the period for Piaget where the child begins to overcome many of the limitations in their thinking that were fundamental to their pre-operational performance.  Children in the concrete operational stage are capable of mental seriation → the ability to mentally arrange items along quantifiable dimension such as height and weight Children at this stage have also mastered the concept of transitivity, which describes the necessary relations among elements in a series  Concrete, not abstract! Concrete operational = problems with abstraction Arnold is smaller than Bart. Bart is smaller than Charlie. Who is the biggest? A. Arnold B. Bart A is smaller than B. B is smaller C. Charlie than C. Who is the biggest? Note that whilst the concrete operational child can seriate mentally, it appears that the objects necessary for problem solving need to be physically present  Although we have talked as if concrete operations were a set of skills that appeared rather abruptly over a brief period, this was not Piaget’s view. Piaget maintained that operational abilities develop gradually and sequentially as the simpler skills that appear first are consolidated, combined and reorganized into increasingly complex mental structures (remember the idea of assimilation and accommodation) According to Piaget, 6-7 years of age is the time when children are acquiring the cognitive operations that enable them to comprehend arithmetic, think about language and its properties, classify animals, people, objects and understand relations between things. Interesting to note that many societies begin formal schooling at this time. Context influences the performance: 6 to 9-year-old Brazilian children that sell in the street demonstrated poor performance on formal class inclusion tasks, but outperformed children attending school in tasks relevant to their vending performance.  Concrete Formal Operational Sensorimotor Preoperational Stage Stage Operational Period (11 – 12 years Stage and beyond)  11-12 years and beyond. Reasons in abstract terms, often in idealistic ways Can deal with hypothetical situations Can generate hypotheses (engage in inductive reasoning) Critical for most forms of mathematics beyond simple arithmetic Formal-operational thinking is rational, systematic and abstract Materials: Strings of two different lengths (long and short) Metal balls of two different weights (light and heavy) to attach to string at one end and a hook to hang string at the other end. Problem: Discover which factor or factors influence how fast the pendulum oscillates. Factors at play: Length of string, weight of object, height from which object is released, force applied to initial motion of metal ball. Key to problem solving: vary one factor at a time while holding other factors constant, which formal operational thinkers do. Concrete operational children may develop reasonable hypotheses (e.g., “Maybe it’s the length of the string that matters”) but may fail to control for weight when testing and thus conclude that both length of string and weight influence rate of oscillation.  Piaget never identified a stage of reasoning beyond formal operations, and he believed that most people show at least some signs of this highest level of intellect by ages 15 to 18. Other investigators find that adolescents are much slower to acquire formal operations than Piaget had thought.  Edith Neimark’s (1979) → a sizable percentage of American adults do not often reason at the formal level, and apparently in some cultures— particularly those where formal schooling is rare or nonexistent—no one solves Piaget’s formal- operational problems. Why do some people fail to attain formal operations? Cross-cultural research provides one clue: they may not have had sufficient exposure to the kinds of schooling that stress logic, mathematics, and science—experiences that Piaget believed help the child to reason at the formal level.  Basic processes definitions are vague and tend to be describe rather than explained. Failed to distinguish between competence and performance. Culture and schooling → Adults and teachers are scaffolding the children’s learning.  Concept of stage? Some researchers challenge Piaget’s time frame. Undue emphasis on logic? → Day to day cognition driven by heuristics. Questions regarding the universality of stages → A child might use concrete-operational thinking on one task and use preoperational thinking on another.  Robbie Case also interpreted cognitive change as four stages: Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years) Interrelational stage (2-5 years) Dimensional stage (5-11 years) Vectorial stage (11-19 years) However, he attributed change to increases in working memory capacity.  Robert S Siegler suggested that when children are attempting to solve tasks, they may generate a variety of strategies. When they are learning how to solve a task, children will use strategies that compete with each other (overlapping waves). They will identify and experiment with different strategies until they realise that some are more effective that others.