The Concrete Operational Stage of Cognitive Development

What is the concrete operational stage?

The concrete operational stage is the third stage in Piaget's theory of cognitive development. This period spans the time
of middle childhood—it begins around age 7 and continues until approximately age 11—and is characterized by the
development of logical thought.1

Hint: Concrete means physical things and operational means a logical way of operating or thinking.

Putting it all together, your child is beginning to think logically and rationally, but they tend to be limited
to thinking about physical objects.

Thinking still tends to be very concrete, but children become much more logical and sophisticated in their thinking during
this stage of development.

While this is an important stage in and of itself, it also serves as an important transition between earlier stages of
development and the coming stage where kids will learn how to think more abstractly and hypothetically.

Kids at this age become more logical about concrete and specific things, but they still struggle with abstract ideas.

CHARACTERISTICS OF CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE

1. Classification – in this stage a child already know how sort or classify things according to their
characteristics.

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.

2. Conservation

This is an understanding that something can stay the same in quantity even though it looks different.
That ball of play dough is the same amount whether you squash it flat or roll it into a ball.

Kids at this stage understand that if we pour orange juice from a normal glass into a taller glass the
amount of juice is still the same. This is a contrast to younger children who often believe that pouring
the same amount of liquid into two cups means that there is more. 
A child who is in the concrete operational stage will understand that both glasses has the same amount
in it, whereas a younger child will believe that the taller glass has more orange juice that to a normal
glass.

3. DECENTRATION

This is tied to conservation. Your child needs to figure out decentration so that they can conserve
correctly. It’s all about concentrating on several factors at the same time.

Piaget determined that children in the concrete operational stage were fairly 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.

On the other hand, children at this age have difficulty using deductive logic, which involves using a
general principle to determine the outcome of a specific event.

For example, a child might learn that A=B, and B=C, but might still struggle to understand that A=C.

4. Reversibility
One important development in this stage is an understanding of reversibility or awareness that actions
can be reversed.
 An example of this is being able to reverse the order of relationships between mental categories.

An example of reversibility is that a child might be able to recognize that his or her dog is a Labrador,
that a Labrador is a dog, and that a dog is an animal.

5. Seriation

It’s all about mentally sorting a group of things into some sort of order. Now your child can sort from the
tallest to the shortest, or the thinnest to the widest.

6. SOCIOCENTRIC

This is the characteristic that you’ve been waiting for! Your child is no longer egocentric and fully
focused on themselves.
The concrete operational stage is also marked by decreases in egocentrism. While children in the
preceding stage of development (the preoperational stage) struggle to take the perspective of others,
kids in the concrete stage are able to think about things the way that others see them.

In Piaget's Three-Mountain Task, for example, children in the concrete operational stage can describe
how a mountain scene would look to an observer seated opposite them. 4

In other words, kids are not only able to start thinking about how other people view and experience the
world, they even start to use this type of information when making decisions or solving problems. 

They’re able to understand that Mom has her own thoughts, feelings, and timetable.

Yes, Mom wants to leave the park now. Not after those last five rounds on the slide.

Observations
One of the key characteristics of the concrete-operational stage is the ability to focus on many parts of
a problem. While kids in the preoperational stage of development tend to focus on just one aspect of a
situation or problem, those in the concrete operational stage are able to engage in what is known as
"decentration." They are able to concentrate on many aspects of a situation at the same time, which
plays a critical role in the understanding of conservation.
This stage of cognitive development also serves as an important transition between the preoperational
and formal operational stages.1 Reversibility is an important step toward more advanced thinking,
although at this stage it only applies to concrete situations.

While kids at earlier stages of development are egocentric, those in the concrete operational stage
become more sociocentric. In other words, they are able to understand that other people have their
own thoughts. Kids at this point are aware that other people have unique perspectives, but they might
not yet be able to guess exactly how or what that other person is experiencing.

This growing ability to mentally manipulate information and think about the thoughts of others will play
a critical role in the formal operational stage of development when logic and abstract thought become
critical.