1. The document summarizes Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development and the concrete operational stage. 2. During the concrete operational stage from ages 7-11, children develop logical and abstract thinking abilities like conservation, reversibility, classification, and seriation. 3. Piaget's theories have been critiqued by some researchers who found that cultural factors and schooling can influence cognitive development.

1. Universidad Autónoma de Chiapas
Facultad de Lenguas Tuxtla
Licenciatura en Enseñanza del Inglés
Materia: Aspectos psicológicos del aprendizaje de lenguas
Tema: Concrete operational stage
Semestre y grupo: 9° B
Alumno: Jaqueline Borraz
Fabián Coello
Rodrigo Gálvez
Lugar: Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas.
Fecha:2021

2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Warm-up activity
2. Who Jean Piaget was
3. 4 facts of concrete operational stage
4. Concrete operational stage
5. Abilities of the concrete operational stage
6. Conservation
7. Conservation with children of different ages
8. Presentation of a video about conservation
9. Detractors
10. Clasification
11. Decentration
12. Reversibility
13. Seriation
14. Critical evaluation
15. References
16. Post-activity

3. Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist and genetic
epistemologist. He is most famously known for
his theory of cognitive development that looked at
how children develop intellectually throughout the
course of childhood.
Prior to Piaget's theory, children were often
thought of simply as mini-adults.1 Instead, Piaget
suggested that the way children think is
fundamentally different from the way that adults
think.
(Cherry,2020)

4. Concrete Operational
Stage
1. The concrete operational stage is the third
stage in Piaget's theory of cognitive
development
2. This period starts around age 7 and
continues until age 11
3. Children become much more logical and
sophisticated in their thinking during this
stage of development.
4. Kids will learn how to think more abstractly
and hypothetically.
(Cherry, 2021)

5.  According to Piaget, children, in the concrete
operational stage, are good at the use of inductive
logic (inductive reasoning).Inductive logic involves
going from a specific experience to a general
principle.
 An example of inductive logic would be noticing
that every time you are around a cat, you have
itchy eyes, a runny nose, and a swollen throat. You
might then reason from that experience that you
are allergic to cats.
Cherry, 2021
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL
STAGE

6.  Also children gain different abilities
like conservation (number, area,
volume, orientation), reversibility,
seriation, transitivity and class
inclusion. Although children can
solve problems in a logical fashion,
they are typically not able to think
abstractly or hypothetically.
McLeod, 2014
ABILITIES OF THE
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL
STAGE

7. Conservation
 Conservation is the
understanding that something
stays the same in quantity even
though its appearance changes.
To be more technical
conservation is the ability to
understand that redistributing
material does not affect its mass,
number, volume or length.
McLeoad, 2014

8.  Piaget and Szeminska in 1952 showed that children below 7 years of
age often believed that lengthening rows of counters (by spreading
them out) increased the number and squashing balls of plasticine flat
reduced their volume.
 In Piaget’s standard procedure he asked the child a pre and a post
transformation question. He asked whether two instances (e.g. rows of
counters or beakers of liquid) were the same or different both before
and after a change was made to their physical appearance (e.g. by
spreading out the counters or pouring the liquid into a taller vessel).
 By around seven years the majority of children can conserve liquid,
because they understand that when water is poured into a different
shaped glass, the quantity of liquid remains the same, even though its
appearance has changed. Five-year-old children would think that there
was a different amount because the appearance has changed.
(McLeod, 2014)
Conservation with kids of different ages

9. Detractors
 Rose and Blank (1974) argued that when a child gives the wrong answer to a question,
we repeat the question in order to hint that their first answer was wrong. This is what
Piaget did by asking children the same question twice in the conservation experiments,
before and after the transformation. When Rose and Blank replicated this but asked the
question only once, after the liquid had been poured, they found many more six-year-
olds gave the correct answer.
 Another feature is that the adult purposely alters the appearance of something, so the
child thinks this alteration is important. McGarrigle and Donaldson (1974) devised a
study of conservation of number in which the alteration was accidental. The children
were between four- and six-years-old, and more than half gave the correct answer. This
suggests that, once again, Piaget's design prevented the children from showing that
they can conserve at a younger age than he claimed. McLeod, 2014

10. Classification
There are two parts to classification.One is sorting things into
categories.Your child already groups flowers and animals into two
separate categories.
At this stage, they can go one step further.They understand that
there are sub-classes within a group, like yellow and red flowers or
animals that fly and animals that swim.
Classification is a child's ability to classify objects based on size,
color, shape, etc. Children in this stage can identify the properties
that make the items the same or different. They use this
categorical information to solve problems.
The main ability of classification is the ability to group objects based on a quality they share. Children can
also identify subgroups within the main group of items. (Lehman, 2021)

11. Decentration
This new ability that children acquired means that they are able to
focus on more than one feature of a problem at a time. Now the
child can attend to two things at once quite purposely.
(Educational Psychology, nd)
Decentration is tied to conservation. Children need to figure out
decentration so that they can conserve correctly. It’s all about
concentrating on several factors at the same time. A row of five
paper clips is a row of five paper clips, no matter how far apart you
space them. At this stage, children realize this because they can
manipulate number and length at the same time.
(Lewis, 2020 )

12. REVERSIBILITY
Reversibility is the ability to think about the steps of a process in any order. This skill
is very helpful on any task involving multiple steps.
An example of this could be an activity in which the teacher tell students: “First
make a list of words in the story that you do not know, then find and write down
their definitions, and finally get a friend to test you on your list.” These directions
involve repeatedly remembering to move back and forth between a second step
and a first—a task that concrete operational students—and most adults—find easy,
but that preoperational children often forget to do or find confusing.
(Educational Psychology, nd)

13. SERIATION
Seriation involves the ability to put things in order based on quantity or
magnitude. When we count numbers in order, we are demonstrating our ability
to seriate.
We are counting numbers in such a way as to arrange them so that the number
we name immediately after another number will always represent a larger
quantity of things than the previous number did.
In the laboratory, Piaget tested children's seriation by showing that they could
arrange sticks of different lengths into order from the smallest to the largest.
However, children might also demonstrate their mastery of seriation by
spontaneously arranging their stuffed animals or army toys from smallest to
biggest on their bedroom shelf.
(Mental help, nd)

14. Critical Evaluation
 Dasen (1994) showed that different cultures achieved different operations at different ages
depending on their cultural context.
 Dasen (1994) cites studies he conducted in remote parts of the central Australian desert with 8-14
year old Aborigines. He gave them conservation of liquid tasks and spatial awareness tasks. He
found that the ability to conserve came later in the aboriginal children, between aged 10 and 13 ( as
opposed to between 5 and 7, with Piaget’s Swiss sample).
 However, he found that spatial awareness abilities developed earlier amongst the Aboriginal
children than the Swiss children. Such a study demonstrates cognitive development is not purely
dependent on maturation but on cultural factors too – spatial awareness is crucial for nomadic
groups of people.
 Greenfield (1966) that schooling influenced the acquisition of such concepts as conservation.
(McLeod, 2014)

15. References
 Cherry, K. (2020). Jean Piaget biography. Very well mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/jean-
piaget-biography-1896-1980-2795549
 Cherry, K. (2021). The concrete operational stage of cognitive development. Very well mind.
https://www.verywellmind.com/concrete-operational-stage-of-cognitive-development-
2795458
 Educational Psychology (nd). Cognitive Development: The Theory of Jean Piaget. Lumen
Learning. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/educationalpsychology/chapter/cognitive-
development-the-theory-of-jean-piaget/
 Lehman, C. (2021). Concrete operational stage of child development. Study.com.
https://study.com/learn/lesson/piagets-concrete-operational-stage-and-logical-principles.html
 Lewis, R. (2020). The concrete operational stage of cognitive development. Healthline.
https://www.healthline.com/health/childrens-health/concrete-operational-stage#takeaway
 McLeod, S. A. (2018). Concrete operational stage. Simply Psychology.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/concrete-operational.html
 Mental help (nd). Cognitive Development: Piaget Part III. Mentalhelp.net.
https://www.mentalhelp.net/cognitive-development/piaget-part-iii/