Summing Up patterns of action that evolve as infants begin to coordinate sen-

sory input (seeing and mouthing an object) and motor re-

❚ Piaget’s theory focuses on how children acquire knowledge and sponses (grasping it). Because infants solve problems through
solve problems. He used the clinical method, a flexible ques- their actions rather than with their minds, their mode of thought
tion-and-answer technique to uncover how children think about is qualitatively different from that of older children.
problems.
❚ According to Piaget, intelligence is a basic life function that helps
an organism adapt to its environment. Substages of the Sensorimotor Stage
❚ Piaget believed that children progress through four stages of
cognitive development, creating more complex schemes or cog- The six substages of the sensorimotor stage are outlined in
nitive structures for understanding their world. • Table 7.1. At the start of the sensorimotor period, infants
may not seem highly intelligent, but they are already active
❚ Along with maturation and experience, two innate processes,
organization and adaptation, drive children’s new understand- explorers of the world around them. Researchers see increasing
ings. Adaptation involves the complementary processes of as- signs of intelligent behavior as infants pass through the sub-
similating new experiences into existing understandings and stages, because they are gradually learning about the world and
accommodating existing understandings to new experiences. about cause and effect by observing the effects of their actions.
They are transformed from reflexive creatures who adapt to
their environment using their innate reflexes to reflective ones
Critical Thinking who can solve simple problems in their heads.
The advances in problem-solving ability captured in the
1. In Piaget’s theory, how do children advance to higher levels of
six substages of the sensorimotor period bring many important
thinking and problem solving? What specific processes does
changes. Consider changes in the quality of infants’ play ac-
Piaget propose for cognitive growth?
tivities. During the first month, young infants react reflexively
2. Provide a unique example from your experiences of how the
to internal and external stimulation. In the primary circular
inborn processes of organization and adaptation operate.
reactions substage (1–4 months), they are more interested in
their own bodies than in manipulating toys. Moving their
tongues or fingers around is entertainment enough at this age.
7.2 The Infant Piaget named this substage primary circular reactions because
he observed infants repeating (hence, the term circular) actions
Piaget’s sensorimotor stage, spanning the 2 years of infancy, in- relating to their own bodies (i.e., primary to themselves) that
volves coming to know the world through senses and actions. had initially happened by chance. Piaget reports the example
The dominant cognitive structures are behavioral schemes— of his son, Laurent, at just over 1 month accidentally getting

• table 7.1 the substages and intellectual accomplishments of the sensorimotor period
substage description

1. Reflex activity (birth to 1 month) Active exercise and refinement of inborn reflexes (e.g., accommodate sucking to fit the
shapes of different objects)

2. Primary circular reactions (1–4 months) Repetition of interesting acts centered on the child’s own body (e.g., repeatedly suck a
thumb, kick legs, or blow bubbles)

3. Secondary circular reactions (4–8 months) Repetition of interesting acts on objects (e.g., repeatedly shake a rattle to make an interest-
ing noise or bat a mobile to make it wiggle)

4. Coordination of secondary schemes Combination of actions to solve simple problems (e.g., bat aside a barrier to grasp an object,
(8–12 months) using the scheme as a means to an end); first evidence of intentionality

5. Tertiary circular reactions (12–18 months) Experimentation to find new ways to solve problems or produce interesting outcomes (e.g.,
explore bath-water by gently patting it then hitting it vigorously and watching the results, or
stroke, pinch, squeeze, and pat a cat to see how it responds to varied actions)

6. Beginning of thought (18–24 months) First evidence of insight; solve problems mentally, using symbols to stand for objects and
actions; visualize how a stick could be used (e.g., move an out-of-reach toy closer); no longer
limited to thinking by doing

190 CHAPTER 7

Copyright 2009 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
his thumb in his mouth. It falls out. This happens again on sent another so that a cooking pot becomes a hat or a shoe be-
another day. Indeed, since the first accidental occurrence, comes a telephone—a simple form of pretend play made pos-
Piaget observes it happening over and over again. Increasingly, sible by the capacity for symbolic thought. It is also in this
a finger or thumb successfully makes it into the mouth, which stage, according to Piaget, that infants can imitate models no
pleases Laurent. He seeks opportunities to repeat this pleasant longer present, because they can now create and later recall
action involving his body (alas, Laurent was not to be a thumb- mental representations of what they have seen.
sucker for very long—by 2 or 3 months of age, Piaget had ban-
daged his son’s hands to bring this habit to an end).
By the third substage of secondary circular reactions (4–8
The Development of Object Permanence
months), infants derive pleasure from repeatedly performing Another important change during the sensorimotor period
an action, such as sucking or banging a toy. Now the repetitive concerns the infant’s understanding of the existence of objects.
actions are called secondary circular reactions because they According to Piaget, newborns lack an understanding of object
involve something in the infant’s external environment (i.e., permanence (also called object concept). This is the funda-
secondary to the self). In the fourth substage (8–12 months), mental understanding that objects continue to exist—they are
called coordination of secondary schemes, infants combine permanent—when they are no longer visible or otherwise de-
(i.e., coordinate) secondary actions to achieve simple goals tectable to the senses. It probably does not occur to you to won-
such as pushing an obstacle out of the way of reaching a de- der whether your coat is still in the closet after you shut the
sired object. closet door (unless perhaps you have taken a philosophy
Later, when they reach the substage of tertiary circular re- course). But very young infants, because they rely so heavily on
actions (12–18 months), infants experiment in varied ways with their senses, seem to operate as though objects exist only when
toys, exploring them thoroughly and learning all about their they are perceived or acted on. According to Piaget, infants
properties. In this stage, a true sense of curiosity and interest in must construct the notion that reality exists apart from their
novel actions appears. Piaget defined a tertiary circular reac- experience of it.
tion as “interest in novelty for its own sake” (Ginsburg & Piaget believed that the concept of object permanence de-
Opper, 1988, p. 57). Now it is interesting to the baby to repeat velops gradually over the sensorimotor period. Up through
an action with variations, for example, the infant who experi- roughly 4 to 8 months, it is “out of sight, out of mind”; infants
ments with all the many ways that oatmeal can land on the will not search for a toy if it is covered with a cloth or screen.
floor and walls when launched from a highchair in different By substage 4 (8–12 months), they master that trick but still
directions and at different velocities. rely on their perceptions and actions to “know” an object
With the final substage, the beginning of thought (about (Piaget, 1954). After his 10-month-old daughter, Jacqueline,
18 months), comes the possibility of letting one object repre- had repeatedly retrieved a toy parrot from one hiding place,
Piaget put it in a new spot while she watched him. Amazingly,
she looked in the original hiding place. She seemed to assume
that her behavior determined where the object would appear;
she did not treat the object as if it existed apart from her actions
or from its initial location. The surprising tendency of 8- to 12-
month-olds to search for an object in the place where they last
found it (A) rather than in its new hiding place (B) is called the
A-not-B error. The likelihood of infants making the A-not-B
error increases with lengthier delays between hiding and
searching and with the number of trials in which the object is
found in spot A (Marcovitch & Zelazo, 1999).
Some research suggests that task demands and physical
limitations of infants influence performance on the A-not-B
task (Lew et al., 2007). To evaluate this, Ted Ruffman and his
colleagues (2005) conducted a series of studies and concluded
that multiple factors do influence performance, but infants do
© Laura Dwight/Corbis

indeed have a conceptual problem when it comes to under-

standing that the object is located at B and not at A.
In substage 5, the 1-year-old overcomes the A-not-B error
but continues to have trouble with invisible displacements—as
At 5 months, almost everything ends up in Eleanor’s mouth. Ac- when you hide a toy in your hand, move your hand under a
cording to Jean Piaget, infants in the sensorimotor stage of devel- pillow, and then remove your hand, leaving the toy under the
opment learn a great deal about their world by investigating it pillow. The infant will search where the object was last seen,
with their senses and acting motorically on this information. seeming confused when it is not in your hand and failing to
look under the pillow, where it was deposited. Finally, by 18

COGNITION 191

Copyright 2009 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
 behind a second screen (right side of Figure 7.2)
without appearing in the open space between the
two screens (Aguiar & Baillargeon, 1999).
At this young age, however, understanding of
hidden objects is still limited. Consider the scenario
shown in è Figure 7.3. In the high-window condi-
tion, a toy is hidden as it moves along a track behind
a block that has a window located at its top. There is
nothing odd about this condition. In the low-
window condition, a toy should be visible as it moves
along a track behind a block that has a window lo-
cated at its bottom, but it is not. To someone who

Laura Dwight/PhotoEdit
understands the properties of object permanence,
this should strike them as odd. At 21⁄2 months, in-
fants do not show signs that they detect a difference
between an object moving along a track under the
Until an infant masters the concept of object permanence, objects that are out- high-window and low-window conditions. But, just
side of his visual sight are “out of mind.” 2 weeks later, 3-month-olds look longer at the low-
window event compared with the high-window
event (Aguiar & Baillargeon, 2002). Thus, by 3
months or so, the infant is capable of mentally representing months, infants have gained an understanding that objects
such invisible moves and conceiving of the object in its final have qualities that should permit them to be visible when noth-
location. According to Piaget, the concept of object perma- ing is obstructing them.
nence is fully mastered at this point. In an unusual study of toddlers’ advanced understanding
Does research support Piaget? Recent studies suggest that of object permanence, researchers compared healthy 2-year-
infants may develop at least some understanding of object per- olds with 2-year-olds with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA),
manence far earlier than Piaget claimed (Baillargeon, 2002; which is characterized by normal IQ but severe muscle prob-
Ruffman, Slade, & Redman, 2005). For example, Renee Bail- lems limiting children’s movement (Riviere & Lecuyer, 2003).
largeon and her colleagues have used a method of testing for Based on Piaget’s original reaching task, infants watch as a
object concept that does not require reaching for a hidden ob- hand picks up a toy and then “visits” three separate cloths, de-
ject, only looking toward where it should be. In one study, in- positing the toy under the second location before moving to
fants as young as 21⁄2 months seemed surprised (as demon- the last cloth. Healthy toddlers incorrectly searched under the
strated by looking longer) when a toy that had disappeared third cloth for the toy, whereas the SMA toddlers correctly
behind one screen (left side of è Figure 7.2) reappeared from searched under the second cloth. In a second study, research-
ers made healthy toddlers wait before they were allowed to
search, and with this delay, they too responded correctly by
searching under the second cloth. What explains this? Healthy
toddlers may quickly and impulsively search at the location
where an object is likely to be hidden (where the hand was last
seen), but when given more time to think about it, they can go
beyond their first impulsive response to search successfully.
SMA toddlers have this extra time “built in.” Because of their
muscle problems, SMA toddlers are slower at searching and
have less experience with manual searches than other children.
They are less likely to make an impulsive reach in the wrong
direction because of the time and effort required to reach. This
research suggests that success at object permanence tasks may
depend on more than a cognitive awareness of the properties of
objects: success also could be influenced by task conditions
è figure 7.2 Test stimuli used by Aguiar and Baillargeon such as the time interval between seeing something hidden
(1999, 2002). The doll moves behind the screen on the left and being able to search for it.
and reappears on the right side of the second screen without In general, then, it seems that babies sometimes know a
appearing in the space between the screens. good deal more about object permanence than they reveal
SOURCE: Aguiar & Baillargeon (2002), p. 271, part of Figure 1. Reprinted from through their actions when they are given the kinds of search
Cognitive Psychology, 45, Developments of young infant’s reasoning about occluded
objects, Aguilar & Baillargeon, 267–336 © 2002 with permission from Elsevier. tasks originally devised by Piaget (Baillargeon, 2002). Such
findings, however, are not necessarily inconsistent with Piaget’s

192 CHAPTER 7

Copyright 2009 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
 High-Window Event Low-Window Event

è figure 7.3 There is nothing to be surprised about in the high-window event, but in the low-window event, the doll should (but
does not) appear in middle space as it moves along the track.
SOURCE: Aguiar & Baillargeon (2002), p. 272, part of Figure 2.

findings (Haith & Benson, 1998). Indeed, Piaget contended inside and gropes to reach the chain, but fails completely. A
that looking behaviors were developmental precursors to the pause follows during which Lucienne manifests a very curious
reaching behaviors that he assessed. He did not believe, how- reaction. . . . She looks at the slit with great attention; then sev-
ever, that looking represented complete understanding of ob- eral times in succession, she opens and shuts her mouth, at first
slightly, then wider and wider! [Then]. . . . Lucienne unhesitat-
ject permanence (Fischer & Bidell, 1991; Haith & Benson,
ingly puts her finger in the slit, and instead of trying as before to
1998). An analysis of infants’ looking behaviors by Carolyn
reach the chain, she pulls so as to enlarge the opening. She suc-
Rovee-Collier (2001) suggests that Piaget was wise to distinguish ceeds and grasps the chain.
between infants’ looking and reaching. In some situations, look-
ing may developmentally precede reaching for an object, as Lucienne uses the symbol of opening and closing her
Piaget suggested. In other situations, however, infants’ actions mouth to “think” through the problem. In addition to permit-
may reveal a more sophisticated understanding of the world ting mental problem solving, the symbolic capacity will appear
than looking would indicate. Regardless of the specific measure in the language explosion and pretend play so evident in the
researchers use, infants gradually become more skilled at acting preschool years.
on their knowledge by searching in the right spot. They im- In all, children’s intellectual achievements during the six
prove their looking and reaching skills between 8 and 12 substages of the sensorimotor period are remarkable. By its
months, and by the end of the sensorimotor period, they are end, they have become deliberate thinkers with a symbolic ca-
masters of even very complex hide-and-seek games (Moore & pacity that allows them to solve some problems in their heads,
Meltzoff, 1999; Newman, Atkinson, & Braddick, 2001). and they have a grasp of object permanence and many other
concepts.

The Emergence of Symbols

The crowning achievement of the sensorimotor stage is inter-
nalizing behavioral schemes to construct mental symbols that
Summing Up
can guide future behavior. Now the toddler can experiment
❚ According to Piaget, infants progress through six substages of
mentally and can therefore show a kind of insight into how to
the sensorimotor period by perceiving and acting on the world;
solve a problem. This new symbolic capacity—the ability to they progress from using their reflexes to adapt to their envi-
use images, words, or gestures to represent or stand for objects ronment to using symbolic or representational thought to solve
and experiences—enables more sophisticated problem solv- problems in their heads.
ing. To illustrate, consider young Lucienne’s actions after she ❚ The symbolic capacity that emerges during infancy permits full
watches her father—Piaget—place an interesting chain inside mastery of object permanence, or the understanding that ob-
a matchbox (Piaget, 1952, pp. 337–338): jects continue to exist even when not perceived by the child.
[To open the box], she only possesses two preceding schemes: ❚ Basic object permanence emerges in substage 4 (8–12 months)
turning the box over in order to empty it of its contents, and slid- although infants are limited by making the A-not-B error, which
ing her fingers into the slit to make the chain come out. It is of they usually overcome in substage 5 at around 1 year of age.
course this last procedure that she tries first: she puts her finger

COGNITION 193

Copyright 2009 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
Critical Thinking ents may worry about such flights of fancy, they are normal. In
fact, imaginative uses of the symbolic capacity are associated
1. Suppose an infant fails to develop an understanding of object with advanced cognitive and social development, as well as
permanence. How would this deficit influence his or her behav- higher levels of creativity and imagery (Bouldin, 2006; Hoff,
ior and knowledge of the world? 2005b).
2. Trace the emergence of a behavior, such as producing a goal- Yet the young child’s mind is limited compared with that
directed behavior, through the six sensorimotor substages. of an older child, and it was the limitations of preoperational
thinking that Piaget explored most thoroughly. Although less
so than infants, preschoolers are highly influenced by their im-
mediate perceptions. They often respond as if they have been
7.3 The Child captured by, or cannot go beyond, the most perceptually sa-
lient aspects of a situation. This focus on perceptual salience,
No one has done more to make us aware of the surprising turns or the most obvious features of an object or situation, means
that children’s minds can take than Piaget, who described how that preschoolers can be fooled by appearances. They have dif-
children enter the preoperational stage of cognitive develop- ficulty with tasks that require them to use logic to arrive at the
ment in their preschool years and progress to the stage of con- right answer. We can best illustrate this reliance on perceptions
crete operations as they enter their elementary school years. and lack of logical thought by considering Piaget’s classic tests
of conservation (also see the Explorations box).

The Preoperational Stage Lack of Conservation

The preoperational stage of cognitive development extends One of the many lessons about the physical world that children
from roughly 2 to 7 years of age. The symbolic capacity that must master is the concept of conservation—the idea that cer-
emerged at the end of the sensorimotor stage runs wild in the tain properties of an object or substance do not change when
preschool years and is the greatest cognitive strength of the pre- its appearance is altered in some superficial way (see è Figure
schooler. Imagine the possibilities: The child can now use 7.4). So, find a 4- or 5-year-old and try Piaget’s conservation-of-
words to refer to things, people, and events that are not physi- liquid-quantity task. Pour equal amounts of water into two
cally present. Instead of being trapped in the immediate pres- identical glasses, and get the child to agree that she has the
ent, the child can refer to past and future. Pretend or fantasy same amount of water. Then, as the child watches, pour the
play flourishes at this age: blocks can stand for telephones, water from one glass into a shorter, wider glass. Now ask
cardboard boxes for trains. Some children—especially first- whether the two containers—the tall, narrow glass or the
borns and only children who do not have ready access to play shorter, broader one—have the same amount of water to drink
companions—even invent imaginary companions (Hoff, or whether one has more water. Children younger than 6 or 7
2005a). Some of these imaginary companions are humans, and will usually say that the taller glass has more water than the
some are animals; they come with names like Zippy, Simply, shorter one. They lack the understanding that the volume of
Fake Rachel, and Sargeant Savage (Taylor et al., 2004). Their liquid is conserved despite the change in the shape it takes in
inventors know their companions are not real. Although par- different containers.
© Laura Dwight/Corbis

© Laura Dwight/Corbis

In this conservation-of-area-task, Rachel first determines that the yellow boards have the same amount of space covered by blocks. But after
the blocks are rearranged on one of the boards, she fails to conserve area, indicating that one board now has more open space.

194 CHAPTER 7

Copyright 2009 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
 e x p l o r at i o n s
can there really be a santa claus?
Many young children around the world more likely to believe than children whose adds up to the logical, concrete-operational
believe in Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, the parents do not (Harris et al., 2006; Woolley thinker. With their focus on static endpoints,
Tooth Fairy, or a similar magical being. et al., 2004). After all, children normally trust preschool-age children may not have a prob-
Children whose parents endorse and their parents and accept their statements about lem imagining presents for all the children in
promote Santa or another mythical being are Santa at face value. the world (or at least, those on the “nice” list)
At what point, and why, do sitting at the North Pole waiting to be delivered
their beliefs in these figures and then sitting under decorated trees Christ-
begin to waiver? Research mas morning. But once children understand
with 5- and 6-year-old children transformations, they are confronted with the
shows that they are already problem of how all those presents get from the
somewhat less confident about North Pole to the individual houses in record
the existence of Santa and the time. The logical thinker notes that the gifts
Tooth Fairy than they are about under the tree are wrapped in the same paper
two invisible but scientifically that Mom has in her closet. Some children
proven entities—germs and question why gifts sport certain brand labels if
oxygen (Harris et al., 2006). Santa and his elves spent the year making gifts
According to Piaget’s theory, in their workshop.
children would begin to seri- As adults, we can resolve some of these
ously question the existence of inconsistencies for children to help maintain
Santa Claus when they acquire children’s beliefs in Santa Claus. We can, for
concrete-operational thought. example, point out that Santa has many help-
With their ability to reason ers and that reindeer native to the North Pole
logically, they may begin to ask are unlike those ever seen in the wild or in a
questions such as, “How can zoo. Some parents who want to perpetuate
Santa Claus get around to all the Santa myth get tough and simply tell their
those houses in one night?” children that nonbelievers will not get any pres-
“How can one sleigh hold all ents. So the level of cognitive development and
those gifts?” “Why haven’t I the surrounding culture play roles in whether
© Creasource/PictureQuest

ever seen a reindeer fly?” and or not children believe in Santa Claus and for
“How does Santa get into how long.
houses without chimneys?”
What made sense to the
preoperational child no longer

How can young children be so easily fooled by their percep- would overflow the glass if it were poured back. Indeed, one
tions? According to Piaget, the preschooler is unable to engage young child tested by a college student shrieked, “Do it again!”
in decentration—the ability to focus on two or more dimensions as though pouring the water back without causing the glass to
of a problem at once. Consider the conservation task: the child overflow were some unparalleled feat of magic.
must focus on height and width simultaneously and recognize Finally, preoperational thinkers fail to demonstrate con-
that the increased width of the short, broad container compen- servation because of limitations in transformational thought—
sates for its lesser height. Preoperational thinkers engage in the ability to conceptualize transformations, or processes of
centration—the tendency to center attention on a single aspect change from one state to another, as when water is poured
of the problem. They focus on height alone and conclude that from one glass to another (see Figure 7.4). Preoperational
the taller glass has more liquid; or, alternatively, they focus on thinkers engage in static thought, or thought that is fixed on
width and conclude that the short, wide glass has more. In this end states rather than the changes that transform one state into
and other ways, preschoolers seem to have one-track minds. another, as when the water is sitting in the two glasses not being
A second contributor to success on conservation tasks is poured or manipulated.
reversibility—the process of mentally undoing or reversing an Preoperational children do not understand the concept of
action. Older children often display mastery of reversibility by conservation, then, because they engage in centration, irrevers-
suggesting that the water be poured back into its original con- ible thought, and static thought. The older child, in the stage
tainer to prove that it is still the same amount. The young child of concrete operations, has mastered decentration, reversibil-
shows irreversibility of thinking and may insist that the water ity, and transformational thought. The correct answer to the

COGNITION 195

Copyright 2009 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
 Liquids: Two identical beakers are filled to Contents of one beaker are Conserving child recognizes that
the same level, and the child poured into a different- each beaker has the same amount
agrees that they have the same shaped beaker so that the to drink (on average, conservation
amount to drink. two columns of water are of of liquids is attained at age 6–7
unequal height. years).

Mass Two identical balls of playdough One ball is rolled into the Conserving child recognizes that
(continuous are presented. The child agrees shape of a sausage. each object contains the same
substance): that they have equal amounts of amount of dough (average age,
dough. 6–7).

Number: Child sees two rows of beads and One row of beads is Conserving child recognizes that
agrees that each row has the same increased in length. each row still contains the same
number. number of beads (average age, 6–7).

Area: The child sees two identical sheets, The blocks on one sheet Conserving child recognizes that
each covered by the same number are scattered. the amount of uncovered area
of blocks. The child agrees that remains the same for each sheet
each sheet has the same amount (average age, 9–10).
of uncovered area.

Volume Two identical balls of clay are One ball of clay is taken from Conserving child recognizes that
(water placed in two identical beakers the water, molded into a the water levels will be the same
displacement): that had been judged to have the different shape, and placed because nothing except the shape
same amount to drink. The child above the beaker. Child is of the clay has changed — that is,
sees the water level rise to the asked whether the water level the pieces of clay displace the
same point in each beaker. will be higher than, lower than, same amount of water (average
or the same as in the other age, 9–12).
beaker when the clay is
reinserted into the water.

è figure 7.4 Some common tests of the child’s ability to conserve.

SOURCE: From R. Gelman, The nature and development of early number concepts, H.W. Reese (ED.), Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 7. Copyright © 1972 by Academic
Press. Reprinted with permission of Elsevier.

Copyright 2009 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
conservation task is a matter of logic to the older child; there is wholes and parts (Siegler & Svetina, 2006). è Figure 7.5 illus-
no longer a need to rely on perception as a guide. Indeed, a trates the class inclusion problem. Given a set of furry animals,
9-year-old tested by another of our students grasped the logic so most of which are dogs but some of which are cats, preopera-
well and thought the question of which glass had more water so tional children do fine when they are asked whether all the ani-
stupid that she asked, “Is this what you do in college?” mals are furry and whether there are more dogs than cats. That
is, they can conceive of the whole class (furry animals) or of the
two subclasses (dogs and cats). However, when the question is,
Egocentrism “Which group would have more—the dogs or the animals?”
Piaget believed that preoperational thought also involves many 5-year-olds say, “dogs.” They cannot simultaneously relate
egocentrism—a tendency to view the world solely from one’s the whole class to its parts; they lack what Piaget termed the
own perspective and to have difficulty recognizing other points concept of class inclusion—the logical understanding that the
of view. For example, he asked children to choose the drawing parts are included within the whole. Notice that the child cen-
that shows what a display of three mountains would look like ters on the most striking perceptual feature of the problem—
from a particular vantage point. Young children often chose the dogs are more numerous than cats—and is again fooled by ap-
view that corresponded to their own position (Piaget & pearances. Performance on class inclusion tasks increases
Inhelder, 1956). Similarly, young children often assume that if steadily throughout childhood, as shown in è Figure 7.6.
they know something, other people do, too (Ruffman & Olson,
1989). The same holds for desires: the 4-year-old who wants to
go to McDonald’s for dinner may say that Mom and Dad want Did Piaget Underestimate the Preschool Child?
to go to McDonald’s, too, even if Mom does not like burgers or Are preschool children really as bound to perceptions and as
chicken nuggets and Dad would rather order Chinese takeout. egocentric as Piaget believed? Many developmentalists believe
that Piaget underestimated the competencies of preschool
children by giving them very complex tasks to perform
Difficulty with Classification (Bjorklund, 1995). Consider a few examples of the strengths
The limitations of relying on perceptions and intuitions are also uncovered by researchers using simpler tasks.
apparent when preoperational children are asked to classify ob- Rochel Gelman (1972) simplified Piaget’s conservation-
jects and think about classification systems. When 2- or 3-year- of-number task (refer back to Figure 7.4) and discovered that
old children are asked to sort objects on the basis of similarities, children as young as 3 have some grasp of the concept that
they make interesting designs or change their sorting criteria number remains the same even when items are rearranged spa-
from moment to moment. Older preoperational children can tially. She first got children to focus their attention on number
group objects systematically on the basis of shape, color, func- by playing a game in which two plates, one holding two toy
tion, or some other dimension of similarity (Inhelder & Piaget, mice and one with three toy mice, were presented; and the
1964). However, even children ages 4 to 7 have trouble think- plate with the larger number was always declared the winner.
ing about relations between classes and subclasses or between Then Gelman started introducing changes, sometimes adding
100
Percentage of Correct Answers

80

60

40

20

0
5 6 7 8 9 10
Age

è figure 7.6 Between the ages of 5 and 10, children

è figure 7.5 A typical class inclusion problem in which steadily improve on class inclusion problems. At age 5, only
children are asked whether there are more dogs or more ani- 30% of children answer correctly, but by age 9 and 10, nearly
mals in the picture. all the children “get” the class inclusion problem.
SOURCE: From R.S. Siegler & J. Svetina, What leads children to adopt new strate- SOURCE: Siegler, R. S. and Svetina, J. (2006). What leads children to adopt new
gies? A microgenetic/cross-sectional study of class inclusion, Child Development, 77, strategies? A microgenetic/cross-sectional study of class inclusion, Child Develop-
pp. 997–1015. Copyright © 2006, Blackwell Publishing. Reprinted with permission. ment, 77, 997–1015.

COGNITION 197

Copyright 2009 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
or subtracting mice but sometimes just bunching up or spread- operations missing in the preoperational stage—becoming
ing out the mice. Young children were not fooled by spatial able to perform mental actions on objects, such as adding and
rearrangements; they seemed to understand that number re- subtracting Halloween candies, classifying dinosaurs, or ar-
mained the same. However, they showed their limitations ranging objects from largest to smallest. This allows school-age
when given larger sets of numbers they could not count. children to think effectively about the objects and events they
Similarly, by reducing tasks to the bare essentials, several experience in everyday life. For every limitation of the preop-
researchers have demonstrated that preschool children are not erational child, there is a corresponding strength of the con-
as egocentric as Piaget claimed. In one study, 3-year-olds were crete-operational child. These contrasts are summarized in
shown a card with a dog on one side and a cat on the other • Table 7.2.
(Flavell et al., 1981). The card was held vertically between the
child (who could see the dog) and the experimenter (who
Conservation
could see the cat). When children were asked what the experi-
menter could see, these 3-year-olds performed flawlessly. Given the conservation-of-liquid task (refer again to Figure
Finally, preschool children seem to have a good deal more 7.4), the preoperational child centers on either the height or
understanding of classification systems than Piaget believed. the width of the glasses, ignoring the other dimension. The
Sandra Waxman and Thomas Hatch (1992) asked 3- and 4- concrete-operational child can decenter and juggle two dimen-
year-olds to teach a puppet all the different names they could sions at once. Reversibility allows the child to mentally reverse
think of for certain animals, plants, articles of clothing, and the pouring process and imagine the water in its original con-
pieces of furniture. The goal was to see whether children knew tainer. Transformational thought allows the child to better un-
terms associated with familiar classification hierarchies—for derstand the process of change involved in pouring the water.
example, if they knew that a rose is a type of flower and is a Overall, armed with logical operations, the child now knows
member of the larger category of plants. Children performed that there must be the same amount of water after it is poured
well, largely because a clever method of prompting responses into a different container; the child has logic, not just appear-
was used. Depending on which term or terms the children for- ance, as a guide.
got to mention (rose, flower, or plant), they were asked about Looking back at the conservation tasks in Figure 7.4, you
the rose: “Is this a dandelion?” “Is this a tree?” “Is this an ani- will notice that some forms of conservation (for example, mass
mal?” Often, children came up with the correct terms in re- and number) are understood years earlier than others (area or
sponse (for example, “No, silly, [it’s not an animal] it’s a plant!”). volume). Piaget maintained that operational abilities evolve in
Even though young children typically fail the tests of class in- a predictable order as simple skills that appear early are reorga-
clusion that Piaget devised, then, they appear to have a fairly nized into increasingly complex skills. He used the term hori-
good grasp of familiar classification hierarchies. zontal décalage for the idea that different cognitive skills re-
Studies such as these have raised important questions lated to the same stage of cognitive development emerge at
about the adequacy of Piaget’s theory and have led to a more different times.
careful consideration of the demands placed on children by
cognitive assessment tasks. Simplified tasks that focus young-
sters’ attention on relevant aspects of the task and do not place Seriation and Transitivity
heavy demands on their memories or verbal skills tend to re- To appreciate the nature and power of logical operations, con-
veal that young children develop sound understandings of the sider the child’s ability to think about relative size. A preopera-
physical world earlier than Piaget thought. Yet Piaget was right tional child given a set of sticks of different lengths and asked
in arguing that preschool children, although they have several to arrange them from biggest to smallest is likely to struggle,
sound intuitions about the world, are more perception-bound awkwardly comparing one pair of sticks at a time. Concrete-
and egocentric thinkers than elementary school children are. operational children are capable of the logical operation of
Preschool children still depend on their perceptions to guide seriation, which enables them to arrange items mentally along
their thinking, and they fail to grasp the logic behind concepts a quantifiable dimension such as length or weight. Thus they
such as conservation. They also have difficulty applying their perform this seriating task quickly and correctly.
emerging understanding to complex tasks that involve coordi- Concrete-operational thinkers also master the related con-
nating two or more dimensions. cept of transitivity, which describes the necessary relations
among elements in a series. If, for example, John is taller than
Mark, and Mark is taller than Sam, who is taller—John or
Sam? It follows logically that John must be taller than Sam,
The Concrete Operations Stage and the concrete operator grasps the transitivity of these size
About the time children start elementary school, their minds relationships. Lacking the concept of transitivity, the preopera-
undergo another transformation. Piaget’s third stage of cogni- tional child will need to rely on perceptions to answer the ques-
tive development extends from roughly 7 to 11 years of age. tion; she may insist that John and Sam stand next to each other
The concrete operations stage involves mastering the logical to determine who is taller. Preoperational children probably

198 CHAPTER 7

Copyright 2009 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
 • table 7.2 comparison of preoperational and concrete-operational thinking
preoperational thinkers concrete-operational thinkers

Fail conservation tasks because they have: Solve conservation tasks because they have:

• Irreversible thought—Cannot mentally undo an action • Reversibility of thought—Can mentally reverse or undo an action

• Centration—Center on a single aspect of a problem rather than • Decentration—Can focus on two or more dimensions of a
two or more dimensions at once problem at once

• Static thought—Fail to understand transformations or processes • Transformational thought—Can understand the process of change
of change from one state to another from one state to another

Perceptual salience. Understanding is driven by how things look Logical reasoning. Children acquire a set of internal operations that
rather than derived from logical reasoning. can be applied to a variety of problems.

Transductive reasoning. Children combine unrelated facts, often Deductive reasoning. Children draw cause–effect conclusions logi-
leading them to draw faulty cause–effect conclusions simply cally, based on factual information presented to them.
because two events occur close together in time or space.

Egocentrism. Children have difficulty seeing things from other Less egocentrism. Children understand that other people may have
perspectives and assume that what is in their mind is also what thoughts different from their own.
others are thinking.

Single classification. Children classify objects by a single Multiple classification. Children can classify objects by multiple
dimension at one time. dimensions and can grasp class inclusion.

have a better understanding of such transitive relations than

Piaget gave them credit for (Gelman, 1978; Trabasso, 1975), Summing Up
but they still have difficulty grasping the logical necessity of
transitivity (Chapman & Lindenberger, 1988). ❚ In Piaget’s preoperational stage (ages 2–7), children make many
uses of their symbolic capacity but are limited by their depen-
dence on appearances, lack of logical mental operations, and
Other Advances egocentrism. They fail to grasp the concept of conservation be-
The school-age child overcomes much of the egocentrism of cause they engage in centration, irreversible thinking, and static
the preoperational period, becoming increasingly better at rec- thought, although recent research suggests that preschool chil-
dren’s capacities are greater than Piaget supposed.
ognizing other people’s perspectives. Classification abilities
improve as the child comes to grasp the concept of class inclu- ❚ School-age children enter the stage of concrete operations (ages
sion and can bear in mind that subclasses (brown beads and 7–11) and begin to master conservation tasks by using their
newly acquired mental abilities of decentration, reversibility, and
white beads) are included in a whole class (wooden beads).
transformational thought. They can think about relations, grasp-
Mastery of mathematical operations improves the child’s abil-
ing seriation and transitivity, and they understand the concept of
ity to solve arithmetic problems and results in an interest in class inclusion.
measuring and counting things precisely (and sometimes in
fury if companions do not keep accurate score in games). Over-
all, school-age children appear more logical than preschoolers Critical Thinking
because they possess a powerful arsenal of “actions in the
head.” 1. Compare the concrete-operational thinker to the preoperational
But surely, if Piaget proposed a fourth stage of cognitive thinker. What tasks can the concrete-operational child do that
development, there must be some limitations to concrete op- the preoperational child cannot solve? What cognitive skills ac-
count for these differences?
erations. Indeed, there are. This mode of thought is applied to
objects, situations, and events that are real or readily imagin-
able (thus the term concrete operations). As you will see in the
next section, concrete operators have difficulty thinking about
abstract ideas and unrealistic hypothetical propositions.

COGNITION 199

Copyright 2009 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
7.4 The Adolescent operations often appear). In their drawings, all the 9-year-olds
placed the third eye on their foreheads between their existing
Although tremendous advances in cognition occur from in- eyes; many thought the exercise was stupid. The 11- and 12-
fancy to the end of childhood, other transformations of the year-olds were not as bound by the realities of eye location.
mind are in store for the adolescent. If teenagers become intro- They could invent ideas contrary to fact (for example, the idea
spective, question their parents’ authority, dream of perfect of an eye in a palm) and think logically about the implications
worlds, and contemplate their futures, cognitive development of such ideas (see è Figure 7.7). Thus, concrete operators deal
may help explain why. with realities, whereas formal operators can deal with possibili-
ties, including those that contradict known reality.
Formal-operational thought is also more abstract than
concrete-operational thought. The school-age child may define
The Formal Operations Stage the justice system in terms of police and judges; the adolescent
Piaget set the beginning of the formal operations stage of cog- may define it more abstractly as a branch of government con-
nitive development around age 11 or 12 and possibly later. If cerned with balancing the rights of different interests in society.
concrete operations are mental actions on objects (tangible Also, the school-age child may be able to think logically about
things and events), formal operations are mental actions on concrete and factually true statements, as in this syllogism: If you
ideas. Thus the adolescent who acquires formal operations can drink poison, you will die. Fred drank poison. Therefore, Fred
mentally juggle and think logically about ideas, which cannot will die. The adolescent can do this but also engage in such if–
be seen, heard, tasted, smelled, or touched. In other words, then thinking about contrary-to-fact statements (“If you drink
formal-operational thought is more hypothetical and abstract milk, you will die”) or symbols (If P, then Q. P, therefore, Q).
than concrete-operational thought; it also involves adopting a
more systematic and scientific approach to problem solving
(Inhelder & Piaget, 1964).
Problem Solving
Formal operations also permit systematic and scientific thinking
about problems. One of Piaget’s famous tests for formal-
Hypothetical and Abstract Thinking operational thinking is the pendulum task (see è Figure 7.8).
If you could have a third eye and put it anywhere on your body, The child is given several weights that can be tied to a string to
where would you put it, and why? That question was posed to make a pendulum and is told that he may vary the length of the
9-year-old fourth-graders (concrete operators) and to 11- to 12- string, the amount of weight attached to it, and the height from
year-old sixth-graders (the age when the first signs of formal which the weight is released to find out which of these factors,

è figure 7.7 Where would you put a third eye? Tanya (age 9) did not show much inventiveness in drawing her “third eye.” But Ken
(age 11) said of his eye on top of a tuft of hair, “I could revolve the eye to look in all directions.” John (also 11) wanted a third eye in his
palm: “I could see around corners and see what kind of cookie I’d get out of the cookie jar.” Ken and John show early signs of formal-
operational thoughts.

200 CHAPTER 7

Copyright 2009 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.
 The child is shown how four factors can be varied.

A
A

A pendulum is made by B
hanging a weight at the end 2 4 6
C
of a string fixed at the other
end. If released from A, it
swings at a regular rate. Length of string Weight Point of release Amount of impetus

Find out which of these factors makes the pendulum go faster or slower.

è figure 7.8 The pendulum problem.

SOURCE: From E. Labinowicz, The pendulum problem, The Piaget primer, p. 83. Copyright © 1980 Pearson Education. Reprinted with permission.

alone or in combination, determines how quickly the pendulum to formal operations as taking place gradually over years. Many
makes its arc. How would you go about solving this problem? researchers have found it useful to distinguish between early
The concrete operator is likely to jump right in without and late formal operations. For example, 11- to 13-year-olds just
much advanced planning, using a trial-and-error approach. entering the formal operations stage are able to consider simple
That is, the child may try a variety of things but fail to test differ- hypothetical propositions such as the three-eye problem. But
ent hypotheses systematically—for example, the hypothesis that most are not yet able to devise an overall game plan for solving
the shorter the string is, the faster the pendulum swings, all a problem or to systematically generate and test hypotheses.
other factors remaining constant. Concrete operators are there- These achievements are more likely later in adolescence.
fore unlikely to solve the problem. They can draw proper con- Consider the findings of Suzanne Martorano (1977), who
clusions from their observations—for example, from watching gave 80 girls in grades 6, 8, 10, and 12 a battery of 10 Piagetian
as someone else demonstrates what happens if a pendulum with tasks. Among them were the pendulum problem; a task requir-
a short string is compared with a pendulum with a long string. ing students to identify all the possible combinations of chemi-
What will the formal-operational individual do? In all like- cals that could produce a particular chemical reaction; and
lihood, the child will first sit and think, planning an overall analyzing how the behavior of a balance beam is affected by
strategy for solving the problem. All the possible hypotheses the heaviness of weights on the beam and their distances from
should be generated; after all, the one overlooked may be the the fulcrum, or center. The 6th- and 8th-graders (ages 11–12
right one. Then it must be determined how each hypothesis and 13–14) accomplished only 2 or 3 of the 10 tasks on the
can be tested. This is a matter of hypothetical-deductive rea- average; the 10th- and 12th-graders (ages 15–16 and 17–18)
soning, or reasoning from general ideas to their specific impli- accomplished an average of 5 or 6. Similarly, 10th- and 11th-
cations. In the pendulum problem, it means starting with a graders (ages 16–17) demonstrate more advanced scientific
hypothesis and tracing the specific implications of this idea in reasoning than 7th- and 8th-graders (ages 13–14) when asked
an if–then fashion: “If the length of the string matters, then I to consider evidence and evaluate theories regarding religion
should see a difference when I compare a long string with a and social class (Klaczynski, 2000). Still, the responses of older
short string while holding other factors constant.” The trick in adolescents contain biases similar to those shown by younger
hypothesis testing is to vary each factor (for example, the length adolescents. Both age groups more readily accept evidence
of the string) while holding all others constant (the weight, the consistent with their preexisting beliefs than evidence inconsis-
height from which the weight is dropped, and so on). (It is, by tent with these beliefs (Klaczynski & Gordon, 1996a, 1996b;
the way, the length of the string that matters; the shorter the Kuhn, 1993). Thus, although reasoning skills improve over the
string, the faster the swing.) adolescent years, adolescents do not consistently show formal
In sum, formal-operational thought involves being able to operations and logical scientific reasoning skills on all tasks
think systematically about hypothetical ideas and abstract con- (Klaczynski & Narasimham, 1998).
cepts. It also involves mastering the hypothetical-deductive ap- Contrary to Piaget’s claim that intuitive reasoning is re-
proach that scientists use—forming many hypotheses and sys- placed by scientific reasoning as children age, the two forms
tematically testing them through an experimental method. of reasoning—intuitive and scientific—seem to coexist in
older thinkers (Klaczynski, 2000, 2001). Being able to shift be-
tween intuitive and scientific reasoning provides flexibility in
Progress toward Mastery problem-solving situations as long as the thinker can effectively
Are 11- and 12-year-olds really capable of all these sophisticated select the appropriate strategy. However, like children (and
mental activities? Anyone who has had dealings with this age adults), adolescents often seem to adopt an intuitive strategy,
group will know that the answer to this question is usually not. leading them to conclusions inconsistent with scientific judg-
Piaget (1970) described the transition from concrete operations ment (Klaczynski, 2001). With age, however, adolescents are

COGNITION 201

Copyright 2009 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part.