3 - CONCRETE OPERATIONS
1 - Experience: test the conservation of liquids.
Step 1: A transfer of a glass in a glass or thinner B in a glass C wider. Ask the child to observe and describe what happens.
For children aged 4 to 6, the liquid amount increases or decreases. Young subjects seem not reason about the states or configurations neglecting the transformations: the water is higher in B than in A, then it increased in quantity, regardless of whether it's the same water that simply decanted. At this age the child is dependent on its perception (high water) and can not take into account the changing size of the container.
Level of concrete operations, however the child will say "this is the same water", "nothing was added or removed" (or simple additive identities); "we can deliver (B to A) as c was before "(reversibility by inversion) or above" what is above but it is thinner, so it makes as much "(compensation or reversibility by reciprocity relations). Thus, for the older child, the states are now subject to transformations and these, being off-center of the action itself to become reversible, should report to both changes in their variations and offset implied by the invariant reversibility.
Always to understand the world, the child is truly past action in the operation. The child is able to structure its representations in a stable and unchanging. He is said to acquire the concepts of reversibility, conservation and invariant.
Step 2: the same device with a glass To start, a thinner glass B and glass C larger. It then asks the child to predict the result of transfer from A to B and C before and do indicate that such levels are reached by water.
Results: The preoperative subjects (5-7 years) expect a kind of general conservation which is actually a "pseudoconservation": same amount to drink but also same levels as A, B and C. It is then, when they see that the water rises higher in B than A and less C, they begin to deny any retention amounts. At this age, the child is unable to conclude "above X = thinnest same amount for" lack of understanding of compensation.
2 - Training Operations "concrete"
There are 3 levels of the passage of the action in Operation:
- The sensorimotor level of direct action on the real up to 18 months-2 years.
- An intermediate level, progress on immediate action, but the child is not yet able to give a perfect representation of his actions.
- The level of operations, from 7-8 years, who are finally internalized actions and grouped into coherent systems and reversible (together and separate, add and subtract, multiply and divide ... etc.)
Examples: From 1 1/2 to 2 years, the child is in possession of a group practice of travel that allows him to navigate, with returns and turns in his house or garden (sensorimotor stage).
At 4-5 years, you can ask a child to a single 10-minute ride from home to school and vice versa. But if asked to represent the route using a small set of three-dimensional objects made of cardboard (home, church, street, etc ...) or to indicate the school plan as we sees through the main entrance, it can not reconstruct the topographic relations he uses constantly in action. At this age, his memories are like engines and do not lead to a correct reconstruction (preoperative stage).
It was around 4-5 years a child will designate his hand "right" and his hand "left", who can use these concepts on his body, he will 2 or 3 more years to understand that a tree seen on the right way to go is on the left to return, or the right hand of a person sitting in front of the child lies on its left to him. And it will put even more time to admit that an object B located between A and C can be both right and left of A to C.
To gradually move the action to the operation the child must mentally reconstruct what was already acquired in action. Thus, it rose from an initial state where everything is centered on the body and action-specific state of decentration by which he can imagine and anticipate the objects and events detected in the universe.
Finally, it is language that will allow the child to talk not only to communicate but also their representations (verbal language and gestures, symbolic games ...).
The level of operations, from 7-8 years, also provides transformations of reality, but by actions internalized and grouped into coherent systems and reversible (together and separate). The child at this age, becomes able to understand that an operation is never isolated but coordonnable in overall system (the meeting is the dissociation, the addition subtraction, etc ...). These operations are more specific to an individual, but common to all individuals. The child improves his reasoning as in decentering morally and socially.
At this stage, the child is still learning a lot through play and what changes is the introduction of rule sets (balls, hopscotch ...) which are transmitted socially from child to child and thus increase the importance with the progress of the social life of the child. Finally, from the symbolic play develop construction sets that tend eventually to create genuine adaptations (engineering etc ...) or problem solving and intelligent creations.
4 - FORMAL THOUGHT
This is the stage of pre-teens between 11 and 15 years.
The child manages to emerge from the concrete and the real place in a set of possible transformations. This is the age of the great ideals of the early theories or, in addition to these simple adaptations to the real world. Intellectual development is followed by a transformation of thought becomes more abstract.