Jean Piaget: The concrete operations stage
Toward the end of childhood, most individuals enter Piaget’s third stage of cognitive development: concrete operations. Formal operations, the last stage of cognitive development, is considered to begin at early adolescence.
Concrete Operational Stage
Piaget’s third major stage of cognitive development, the concrete operational, generally spans ages 7 to 11. Many experts believe that children attain concrete operations once they have gained the ability to conserve. Thus, a major characteristic of this stage is the enhanced ability to decenter attention from one variable in a problem-solving situation. As mentioned earlier in the discussion of conservation, this ability to decenter attention can have important implications for motor development. Also in this stage of development, children and young adolescents gradually attain the ability to mentally modify, organize, or even reverse their thought processes. Piaget used the term concrete operational because the child at this level of cognitive development faces a major limitation. Although this stage is a major advancement over the preoperational one, the concrete operational child is still limited to pondering objects, events, or situations that are real or based on experience. This, of course, impedes efforts to examine hypothetical or abstract situations mentally. On the positive side, the child who has attained this level of cognitive ability is now capable of mentally representing objects or a series of actions or events. This mental capability has obvious implications for motor development. For example, the child can facilitate many movement activities by formulating strategies for or expectations about an opposing player’s or team’s possible intent. By being able to ponder probable events or actions, the child can anticipate and has a chance to successfully counter the opponent’s tactics.
Seriation
Piaget considered seriation another characteristic common to children at this level of development. Seriation is an ability to arrange a set of variables by a certain characteristic. As emphasized throughout this chapter, there is a constant, reciprocal, mutually beneficial relationship between cognitive development and motor development. Piaget indirectly referred to this phenomenon throughout his theory; the concrete operational stage is no exception. In this stage, Piaget stressed that learning can be facilitated by doing or by actions. That is, such cognitive skills as seriation can best be taught by having children manipulate objects of various lengths and widths into series. Piaget recommended that one of the best modes of teaching such concepts as space or distance was having the child “do” by instructing the child to move through the space or the distance under consideration. In Piaget’s mind, movement in the form of doing, or action, was a critical component in the development of cognitive ability. Source:«Human Motor Development”-A Lifespan approach (Greg Payne, Larry Isaacs) Recent Articles
