CONCRETE & FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE

CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE Predicted to happen around 7-11 years old To be able to carry out mental operations but need to see the object being concretely manipulated. I.e. understanding what happens in the conservation test and why objects remain the same in spite of changing form.

ISABELLE’S BIT

MCGARRIGLE AND DONALDSON (1974) A study of conservation of number in which the alteration was accidental. Two identical rows of sweets were laid out and the child was satisfied there were the same number in each tow. A 'naughty teddy' appeared. Whilst playing around, the teddy actually messes up one row of sweets, making it seems shorter, and thus to have less number of sweets. Once he was safely back in a box the children were asked if there were the same number of sweets.

MCGARRIGLE AND DONALDSON (1974) Most children between 4 and 6 will say there is a same number of sweets in both row. It suggests that children are capable of conservation at an earlier age than Piaget predicted (4-6 as opposed to 7-11)

FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE 11 years and onwards At this stage, the child’s mental structures are so well developed that ideas and problems can be manipulated mentally without the need for physical objects. Children can think about possible occurrences and imagine themselves in different roles without the need for dolls or play-acting.

FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE They can also think about hypothetical problems and abstract concepts they have never encountered before, such as: A > B > C, then A > C (where > means ‘is greater than’) Piaget believed everyone reached this stage by the age of 20.

FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE By the end of this stage, adolescents or adults can use formal, abstract logic. This means they can think about what could happen or what would ever happen. They will also approach problem solving in a systematic way.

FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE STUDIES Bradmetz (1999) Badmetz studied the cognitive development of 62 children from the age of 7 until they were 15 years old, regularly giving them a battery of tests, including the Inhelder and Piaget science task, designed to measure formal thinking. Only one of the 62 young people proved capable of formal thinking- less than 2%. Of course, if they were tested again at the age of 20 many more may demonstrate formal operational thinking, but Bradmetz’s results do at least show that formal thinking tends to develop later than Piaget believed. Piaget (1958) gave Swiss school children some science questions and gave them the task of devising hypotheses and carrying out experiments to test these. One such task was to investigate the pendulum problem. Children were given pendulums of different weights and string of different lengths. Their task was to determine whether the speed of the pendulum depends on its weight or the length of the string. It was found that most 11 to 15 year olds were capable of setting up and carrying out this and similar tasks.