Research: Characteristics of Concrete Operational Learning Stage

The concrete operational stage is the third of four stages from Piaget's theory of cognitive development. This stage, which follows the preoperational stage, occurs between the ages of seven and 11 years,^[18] and is characterized by the appropriate use of logic. During this stage, a child's thought processes become more mature and "adult like". They start solving problems in a more logical fashion. Abstract, hypothetical thinking has not yet developed, and children can only solve problems that apply to concrete events or objects. Piaget determined that children are able to incorporate inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning involves drawing inferences from observations in order to make a generalization. In contrast, children struggle with deductive reasoning, which involves using a generalized principle in order to try to predict the outcome of an event. Children in this stage commonly experience difficulties with figuring out logic in their heads. For example, a child will understand that "A is more than B" and "B is more than C". However, when asked "is A more than C?", the child might not be able to logically figure the question out in their heads.

Milestones of the concrete operational stage

The primary milestones of a child's concrete operational stage are:

·         Ability to distinguish between their own thoughts and the thoughts of others: children recognize that their thoughts and perceptions may be different from those around them.

·         Increased classification skills: children are able to classify objects by their number, mass, and weight.

·         Ability to think logically about objects and events.

·         Ability to fluently perform mathematical problems in both addition and subtraction.

Important processes

Important processes during the concrete operational stage include:

·         Classification: the ability to name and identify sets of objects according to appearance, size or other characteristic, including the idea that one set of objects can include another. Hierarchical classification refers to the ability to sort objects into classes and subclasses based on similarities and differences among groups.

·         Conservation: the understanding that, although an object’s appearance changes, it still stays the same in quantity. Redistributing an object does not affect its mass, number, or volume. For example, a child understands that when you pour a liquid into a different-shaped glass, the amount of liquid stays the same.

·         Decentering: the child now takes into account multiple aspects of a problem to solve it. For example, the child will no longer perceive an exceptionally wide but short cup to contain less than a normally wide, taller cup.

·         Reversibility: the child now understands that numbers or objects can be changed and then returned to their original state. For example, a child understands that his or her favorite ball that deflates is not gone and can be filled with air and put back into play again. Another example would be when the child realizes that a ball of clay, once flattened, can be made into a ball of clay again.

·         Seriation: the ability to sort objects in an order according to size, shape, or any other characteristic. For example, different-shaded objects may make a color gradient.

·         Transitivity: transitivity, which refers to the ability to mentally sort objects and recognize relationships among various things in a serial order. For example, when told to put away his books according to height, the child recognizes that he starts with placing the tallest one on one end of the bookshelf and the shortest at the other end.

Two other important processes in the concrete operational stage are the elimination of egocentrism and logic.

Egocentrism is the inability to consider or understand a perspective other than one's own. During this stage, the child acquires the ability to view things from another individual's perspective, even if they think that perspective is incorrect. For instance, show a child a comic in which Jane puts a doll under a box, leaves the room, and then Melissa moves the doll to a drawer, and Jane comes back. A child in the concrete operations stage will say that Jane will still think it's under the box even though the child knows it is in the drawer. (See also False-belief task.)

Children in this stage can, however, only solve problems that apply to actual (concrete) objects or events, and not abstract concepts or hypothetical tasks. Understanding and knowing how to use full common sense has not yet been completely adapted.

Piaget determined that children in the concrete operational stage were able to incorporate inductive logic. On the other hand, children at this age have difficulty using deductive logic, which involves using a general principle to predict the outcome of a specific event. This includes mental reversibility. An example of this is being able to reverse the order of relationships between mental categories. For example, a child might be able to recognize that his or her dog is a Labrador, that a Labrador is a dog, and that a dog is an animal, and draw conclusions from the information available, as well as apply all these processes to hypothetical situations.

The abstract quality of the adolescent's thought at the formal operational level is evident in the adolescent's verbal problem solving ability. The logical quality of the adolescent's thought is when children are more likely to solve problems in a trial-and-error fashion. Adolescents begin to think more as a scientist thinks, devising plans to solve problems and systematically test opinions. They use hypothetical-deductive reasoning, which means that they develop hypotheses or best guesses, and systematically deduce, or conclude, which is the best path to follow in solving the problem. During this stage the adolescent is able to understand such things as love, "shades of gray," logical proofs and values. During this stage the young person begins to entertain possibilities for the future and is fascinated with what they can be.

Adolescents also are changing cognitively by the way that they think about social matters. Adolescent egocentrism governs the way that adolescents think about social matters, and is the heightened self-consciousness in them as they are, which is reflected in their sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility. Adolescent egocentrism can be dissected into two types of social thinking, imaginary audience that involves attention-getting behavior, and personal fable, which involves an adolescent's sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility. These two types of social thinking begin to affect a child's egocentrism in the concrete stage. However, it carries over to the formal operational stage when they are then faced with abstract thought and fully logical thinking.

Testing for concrete operations

Piagetian tests are well known and practised to test for concrete operations. The most prevalent tests are those for conservation. There are some important aspects that the experimenter must take into account when performing experiments with these children.

One example of an experiment for testing conservation is an experimenter will have two glasses that are the same size, fill them to the same level with liquid, which the child will acknowledge is the same. Then, the experimenter will pour the liquid from one of the small glasses into a tall, thin glass. The experimenter will then ask the child if the taller glass has more liquid, less liquid, or the same amount of liquid. The child will then give his answer. The experimenter will ask the child why he gave his answer, or why he thinks that is.

·         Justification: After the child has answered the question being posed, the experimenter must ask why the child gave that answer. This is important because the answers they give can help the experimenter to assess the child's developmental age.

·         Number of times asking: Some argue that if a child is asked if the amount of liquid in the first set of glasses is equal then, after pouring the water into the taller glass, the experimenter asks again about the amount of liquid, the children will start to doubt their original answer. They may start to think that the original levels were not equal, which will influence their second answer.

·         Word Choice: The phrasing that the experimenter uses may affect how the child answers. If, in the liquid and glass example, the experimenter asks, "Which of these glasses has more liquid?", the child may think that his thoughts of them being the same is wrong because the adult is saying that one must have more. Alternatively, if the experimenter asks, "Are these equal?", then the child is more likely to say that they are, because the experimenter is implying that they are.