Cognitive Development

The concrete operational child

Space and causality

- Spatial relationships
- Know how far it is from one place to
another.
- Remember routes and landmarks
- Experience plays a role
• Ability to use maps and models improve
with age.
• Balance task - The child tries to take both
distance and weight into account
simultaneously
Categorization
• Seriation – ability to order items along a
dimension
• Transitive inference –understanding the
relationship between 2 objects by knowing
the relationship between each of them and a
3rd object.
• Susan is taller than Joan
• Joan is taller than Ruby
• Who is tallest Susan, Joan or Ruby?
• Class inclusion – the ability to see the
relationship between a whole and its parts

• Bunch of 10 flowers – 7 roses and 3

carnations

More roses or flowers ?

• Preoperational child – more roses
• Compare the roses with the carnations
rather than the whole bunch
• Concrete – roses are a subclass of flowers,
therefore there cannot be more roses than
flowers
Inductive reasoning
• Type of reasoning that moves from
particular observations about members of a
class to a general conclusion about that
class
• Class of people, animals, objects or events
• My dog barks.
• So does Terry’s dog and Melissa’s dog
• So it looks like as if all dogs bark
Deductive Reasoning
• Type of logical reasoning that moves from a
general premise about a class to a
conclusion about a particular member or
members of the class
• All dogs bark
• Spot is a dog
• Spot barks
Conservation
• Horizontal decalage –Inability to transfer
learning about one type of conservation to
other types, which causes a child to master
different types of conservation at different
ages
• Neurological maturation
Children who achieved conservation of
volume showed different brain wave
patterns
• Culturally defined personal experience
- Mexican children who make pottery
understand clay ball  coil, has same
amount of clay. Develop this earlier than
other types of conservation.
- Understand conservation of substance
earlier than children who do not make
pottery
Moral Reasoning
• Once upon a time there were two little boys,
Augustus and Julian. Augustus noticed one day
that his father's inkpot was empty, and he decided
to help his father by filling it. But in opening the
bottle, he spilled the ink and made a large stain on
the tablecloth.
• Julian played with his father's inkpot and made a
small stain on the tablecloth. Piaget then asked,
'Which boy is naughtier and why?'
• Children under 7 - Augustus – bigger stain
• Older children – Julian, doing something he
should not have been doing
• Immature moral judgments – degree of
offence
• Mature moral judgments - intent
Three stages of moral development
First stage
• 2- 7 yrs, preoperational stage
• Obedience to authority
• Think rigidly about moral concepts
• Rules cannot be changed
• Behavior is either right or wrong
• Any offence deserves punishment
Second stage
• Ages 7 or 8 to 10 or 11, concrete operations
• Develop their own sense of justice based on
fairness or equal treatment for all
• Develops as a result of cooperative peer
relationships
Third stage
• Around age 11 or 12
• Specific circumstances into account
• 2 year old who spilled ink on the tablecloth
compared to a 10 year old who did the same
thing