Chapter 6
Cognitive Organizations After the Sensorimotor Period
As I noted in the beginning of chapter 2, Piaget divided cognitive development into four periods. So far, I have focused on the first of these —the Sensorimotor Period (0-2 years). In this chapter, I will discuss the other three. This chapter’s focus is the Preoperational Period (2-7 years), particularly the change in cognitive organization that begins with the onset of the Intuitive Phase (2-4 years). Delineation of this change anticipates chapter 7, where I will explain how complete myelination of the auditory tract would assist the cognitive reorganization that characterizes Intuitive-Phase cognition.
The descriptions of the three types of cognition that characterize the Preoperational Period and the Concrete Operational Period also prepare the reader for chapter 9. In chapter 9, I discuss the relationship between these three types of cognition in children to three types of social cognition that Ahern and I found in adults.
The Preoperational Period
Piaget’s Preoperational Period is divided into two phases, the Symbolic (or Preconceptual) Phase (2-4 years) and the Intuitive Phase (5-7 years). Toward the end of the Sensorimotor Period and continuing into the Symbolic Phase, children have the use of language, although their language is not as sophisticated as it begins to be in the Intuitive Phase. Once children use language, it becomes the primary vehicle that investigators use to understand the organization of children’s cognition. Investigators no longer need to rely solely on the interpretation of children’s behavior in order to understand the children’s cognitive processes.
The Symbolic Phase
Apparently, Piaget drew a clear distinction between Stage-6 cognition and Symbolic-Phase cognition —he located them in different periods of development. I question this distinction. I fail to see a qualitative difference between the cognitive organization of Stage 6 of the Sensorimotor Period and the cognitive organization of the Symbolic Phase of the Preoperational Period.
Children in the Symbolic Phase appear to continue to use lines and edges —shapes —to distinguish or define objects. For example, it is not unusual for a Symbolic-Phase child to explain that a person is a woman because she wears a dress or has long hair. When Piaget’s daughter Jacqueline was about 2 ½, she referred to a slug, 10 yards from a slug that she had just seen, as "the slug. " To Jacqueline, two animals with the same shape —a similar set of edges —were spoken of as if they were the same animal.
Piaget, a very astute investigator, could not quite tell whether his daughter thought that the two slugs were the same slug or not. He said that the question appeared to have no meaning for her. Probably he was unable to be certain because the Symbolic-Phase child draws no clear distinction between similar and the same.
At about the same age, Jacqueline explained that a picture of a cat was of a dog because it was grey. The attribute color defined an animal’s type. At almost 3, she was frightened when she looked at a picture of herself being carried on a hillside. She failed to distinguish fully her actual self from a picture of her self —a different object, a representation of herself that shared various attributes with her, including her shape.
Symbolic-Phase children define an object by a part or by an attribute of that object. The child’s definition of an object by a single attribute or part object —for example, shape, size, color, or hair length —and the failure to completely distinguish one’s self from a representation of one’s self —a picture —exemplify Symbolic-Phase cognition. The boundary between object and part object, attribute, or representation —picture, symbol, or word —is permeable. 52
Symbolic-Phase cognition is particle-to-particle. In particle-to-particle cognition, a part object, attribute, representation, symbol, or word may define an object. A change in any one of these particles may redefine that object.
When my twin grandchildren were 2, their older brother was almost 4. Everywhere the family went, people would ooh and ah over the twins. The children’s well-meaning parents wanted the older boy to feel important too. As his birthday approached, they repeatedly said how "grown-up" he would be, and what a "big boy" he would be, when he was 4. With great relief, on the morning of his birthday he declared that he was still himself. He was relieved that he was still a little boy. He had not wakened to find himself completely redefined or redesigned.
It is not likely that he had been afraid that he would be expected to contend with adult responsibilities. It was more likely that he was afraid that he would become a full-sized man overnight. His understanding of grown-up or big boy was not the same that of his parents. To them, these words meant more adultlike or more mature than his siblings, hence better than the twins were by this particular measure.
To his parents, grown-up or big boy was a desirable social attribute. But the child’s understanding of big boy or grown-up referred to a completely redefined scheme of an object —a total transformation of one object into another. A self could be changed by the parents’ word — big boy or grown-up —or by a particular birthday or age.
Piaget recounted a number of examples of particle-to-particle cognition during the Symbolic Phase. When his 3-year-old daughter Jacqueline behaved as her cousin had, she became "Clive jumping, Clive running, Clive laughing" (Piaget, 1962, p. 125). Attributes of her cousin redefined her. She insisted that her sister was not her sister when her sister was wearing unusual clothes. Clothes, a part object, defined her sister. At the same age, she asked for an orange and was told that oranges were green, meaning unripe. Later that day, when she saw some camomile tea, which was yellow, she said, "Camomile isn’t green. Give me some oranges. " The boundaries are all permeable: between objects —camomile and oranges; between words, symbols, and attributes —greenness and ripeness; between the attributes of different objects —the color of camomile and the color of oranges. "A little girl who while on vacation had asked various questions about the mechanics of the bells observed on an old village church steeple, now stood stiff as a ramrod by her father’s desk, making a deafening noise. [Her father said,] ’You’re bothering me, you know. Can’t you see I’m working?’ ’Don’t talk to me,’ replied the girl. ’I’m the church. ’" The same child had been impressed at seeing a plucked duck on the table and that evening lay motionless on the sofa. Piaget thought that she might be ill. At first, she did not respond to questions. Then, in a faraway voice, she said, "I’m the dead duck!" (Piaget & Inhelder, 1969, pp. 59-60).
Some investigators insist that a 2- to 4-year-old distinguishes real from make- believe. That is, they insist that the child who is wearing a sheriff’s badge knows that he is not really the sheriff. That is true at times. Certainly a Symbolic-Phase child who pretends to eat a plastic slice of pizza and does not bite it, is distinguishing real from make-believe in that instance. However, anyone who tries to take away the little sheriff’s badge is likely to regret it.
Particularly between the ages of 2 and 4, but extending through the Preoperational Period, it is not always clear whether children are pretending, or truly believe, that they are the sheriff. The child does not fully separate a part object, the clothes, or a symbol —for example, a badge —from a person, and certainly not from the person’s role. Millar (1968) wrote that, when her 2-year-old daughter scribbled on paper, she said that she was a writer. And why shouldn’t she? Why should she think that her marks on paper were any different from her mother’s marks on paper? Does a child understand signs and symbols, the writing profession, or book publishing?
In the Symbolic Phase, words are treated in the same way that part objects are treated. Sharp, a word or sound, may be part of a particular pair of scissors, just as clothes were part of —even defined —Jacqueline’s sister. During this same phase, to the child, objects that share an attribute may be the same object. Jacqueline referred to a garden that was similar to her uncle’s garden as "Uncle Alfred’s garden. "
To summarize: Part object, symbol, word, attribute, and object are not fully differentiated from one another in Symbolic-Phase thought. In the Symbolic Phase, identity of self or of an object may be based on one or several insufficient attributes or part objects. Similar and the same are not distinct. If two objects share an attribute, they may become the same object. If an attribute of an object changes, the object may become a different object. As in the Sensorimotor Period, the boundaries continue to be blurred. They are blurred between one object and another — the child’s self and the sheriff; the badge and the sheriff; the child and whatever grown-up or big boy meant to the 4-year-old; Jacqueline and the picture of Jacqueline; Jacqueline and her cousin; Jacqueline’s sister and another child; camomile tea and oranges. And the boundaries are blurred between objects, part objects, symbols, words, and attributes — the badge and the sheriff; the appearance of slugs and a particular slug; jumping and being someone else; the sister and her clothes; the color of one object and the color of another object; color as an attribute of an object and color as a word for ripeness; grown-up meaning more mature or older and grown-up meaning being totally changed overnight. When the boundary between an object and its attributes is blurred, there is necessarily a blurring between objects, since distinctions between objects depend upon differences in sets of attributes. In the Symbolic Phase, words, objects, part objects, and attributes are often treated as if they were equivalent to each other.
Perhaps it is necessary to add a comment that applies to this section and to the following one. An intellectual analysis of the cognitive structures that typify these phases has a bloodless quality. It should be emphasized, however, that the child is truly sensing the world as Piaget described. The child experiences her sister as a different person when in different clothes. She knows that a color — just an attribute to adults — defines whether the four-legged animal is a cat. In the next section, attributes begin to separate from objects, but when the child believes that a hamburger patty is more to eat than when it is in the form of a meatball, the issue is not just a matter of choice of words, but it is how she experiences amount or other attributes such as redness or speed.
The Intuitive Phase
Piaget thought of the two divisions of the Preoperational Period —the Symbolic and the Intuitive —as phases rather than as stages, because Intuitive cognition does not replace Symbolic cognition (Inhelder, conversation with the author, November, 1985). Throughout the Intuitive Phase, children continue to manifest particle-to-particle cognition, although they do so less frequently than they did during the Symbolic Phase .
Unlike Piaget, as I explained in chapter 3, I believe that Stage 4, not Stage 6, of the Sensorimotor Period marks the beginning of a major shift in cognitive organization. In addition, I believe that the Intuitive Phase of the Preoperational Period marks the beginning of another major shift. Here again, I differ with Piaget. He thought that the major shift was not during the Intuitive Phase, but during the Concrete Operational Period, when children usually master seriation and classification.
Intuitive-Phase children, however, begin to understand both seriation and classsification. They begin to understand seriation —that objects may be ordered along the dimension of an attribute. For example, they begin to arrange sticks by length. Also, they begin to understand that objects may be classified, based on whether or not they share an attribute. For example, they begin to cull blue squares from an assortment of differently colored objects. Because children begin to understand both seriation and classification in the Intuitive Phase, I argue that the Intuitive Phase marks the beginning of a major shift in cognition.
Intuitive-Phase children’s understanding of the seriation and classification of attributes is flawed (Inhelder & Piaget, 1969). These children may arrange a few sticks by length. But then they falter. They have only a notion of what seriation is. When collecting blue squares, they may cull out several blue squares from an assortment of objects. But then they may shift to collecting all blue objects. They have only a notion of what classification is.
But my point is that Intuitive-Phase children show beginning understanding of both seriation and classification. Symbolic-Phase children showed no such understanding. When asked to arrange objects, they made a design —they arranged the objects to form a circle or a train.
However, Intuitive-Phase children tend to assess an attribute by a current, striking dimension. Generally, they say that the car that finishes a race first is the fastest car, regardless of the route that it took. They insist that they have more candies to eat if the candies are spread out. They are certain that they have more juice to drink if the juice comes to the brim of the glass, or if the juice is poured from a wide glass into a narrow glass and so rises higher. When asked to arrange sticks according to length, Intuitive-Phase children may do so by creating steps of a staircase in which the bottoms of sticks form a horizontal line. But then, as they continue the staircase pattern, they may ignore the lengths of the sticks. They do not notice that the bottoms of the sticks are all uneven. One view —the staircase pattern —becomes their focus. Their understanding of dimensions of an attribute is intuitive, not systematic. For example, they do not understand transitivity —that if A is longer than B, and if B is longer than C, then A is longer than C.
In the course of grouping objects by attributes or combinations of attributes —that is, classifying —Intuitive-Phase children may change criteria. As I just mentioned, they may cull several blue squares from an assortment of objects and then add differently shaped blue objects to their collection. It is as if they were captured by blueness, just as they were captured by staircaseness. Their beginning understanding of classification, like their understanding of seriation, is intuitive. It is not systematic. Intuitive-Phase children do not understand that class includes subclass. For example, if they are shown a collection of blue objects constituted primarily of blue squares, they will say that there are more blue squares than blue objects.
During the Intuitive Phase, children do not understand the distinctions among a lot, more, and most. My 4-year-old grandson insisted that when he became 22, he would be older than his 6-year-old cousin would be. His cousin insisted that this could never be, but then reassured him by saying that since he was younger, she would die before he would. To the boy, if he is so remarkably old —that is, 22 —then he must be the older one. He is judging by a prominent dimension —the number 22. The boy thought that being very old meant being older. His distinctions among old, older, and oldest were blurred. His 6-year-old cousin, although she understood the distinction between very old and older, blurred the attribute age with the attribute death, a failure in classification. Both children were in the Intuitive Phase.
Because their understanding of seriation is not systematic, Intuitive-Phase children may fail to coordinate covarying dimensions of attributes. When they look at juice in a glass, they think that they have more to drink when the juice is poured from a wide glass into a narrow one. The children focus on the height of the juice and ignore the change in width. When they look at a model of three mountains, Intuitive-Phase children assert that their current view would be unchanged if they looked at the model from another position (Inhelder & Piaget, 1967). They will also say that another child would have the same view as theirs if that child looked at the model from another position. Measured by this task, Intuitive-Phase children have difficulty seeing things from a point of view that is not their own current point of view.
Although Intuitive-Phase children do not fully understand seriation and classification, they are beginning to understand both. In the Concrete Operational Period, children generally become experts at seriation and classification (Inhelder & Piaget, 1969).
The Concrete Operational Period
At some time during the Concrete Operational Period (8-11 years), children generally develop a comprehensive understanding of the seriation and classification of attributes. They arrange objects in terms of any attribute’s dimension. For example, they arrange sticks according to their length. They coordinate different dimensions in judging attributes —for example, height with width when judging amount. They also become expert at separating objects based on any combination of attributes. For example, they cull all blue squares from an assortment of objects. During the Concrete Operational Period, seriation and classification are mastered for some attributes earlier than for others. For example, children master seriation based on color before they master seriation based on amount, and they master amount before they master weight.
When ordering objects along the dimensions of an attribute, Concrete Operational children start with a plan and carry it through. For example, when ordering sticks according to size, a child may start with the smallest, find the one that is the next smallest, and so on. They have a true grasp of the meaning of seriation. These children also comprehend transitivity —that if A is longer than B, and B is longer than C, then A is longer than C. They learn to coordinate covarying dimensions into their understanding of attributes. For instance, they realize that if candies are spread out, or if juice is poured into a differently shaped glass, there is no change in amount. They may explain that the increased height of the juice is offset by the change in width, that nothing has been added or taken away, or that the juice may be returned to its original container. Their assessments are no longer captured by a current, striking dimension. They coordinate different dimensions or past and current dimensions into their understanding of an attribute. They also understand that a change in one’s position alters one’s view of a model of three mountains. 53
Concrete-Operational children classify objects in terms of one or more attributes, such as shape or shape and color. They cull only and all the blue squares from an assortment of objects. They learn that class includes subclass, that there are more blue objects than blue squares. They have a true grasp of the meaning of classification. They distinguish some from all;more from most; and fast, faster, and fastest from one another.
The final stage of cognitive development is the Formal Operational Period. This is the most controversial of Piaget’s four periods, as will be evident from what follows.
The Formal Operational Period
Piaget’s Formal Operational Period (12 years to adolescence or early adulthood) is characterized by hypothetico-deductive reasoning (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). Hypothetico-deductive reasoning involves posing possible explanations of events, and then mentally combining and separating possible variables in a systematic way in order to see if the explanations hold. Some authors argue that cognition continues to develop beyond formal operations, but Piaget, who saw equilibration as a driving force, regarded formal operations as an end stage, because logical equilibrium is achieved in formal operations. 54
Formal Operational reasoning is tested by how a person approaches understanding the operation of complex mechanisms. For example, to determine what governs the oscillation rate of a pendulum calls for Formal Operational cognition. A person, who uses Formal Operational cognition, systematically tests each possible variable that could influence the oscillation rate. She modifies the length of the pendulum, the height at which the pendulum is released, the weight of the pendulum, and so on —to see which variable, or which possible combination of variables, if any, changes the oscillation rate.
Initially Piaget assumed that all children, if left to their own devices, would automatically develop Formal Operational cognition through their interaction with the objects of the world. Later, Piaget (1972) concluded that the use of such reasoning may be confined to domains in which a person specializes. 55
Strictly speaking, Piaget’s study of cognitive development is the study of the development of scientific thinking. It is not necessarily a study of the development of cognition in general. Yet it provides the most coherent general framework to date for the study of the development of cognition —a framework for researchers and theoreticians, such as myself, to add to or to correct.
So far, I have reviewed Piaget’s four periods of cognitive development. In this chapter, I described the different cognitive styles that manifest themselves during the Preoperational and the Concrete Operational Periods. I also contended that Stage-6 cognition and Symbolic-Phase cognition are not qualitatively different from each other. And I proposed that a major cognitive reorganization takes place in the Intuitive Phase, not in the Concrete Operational Period, as Piaget proposed.
In the next chapter, I will explain how complete myelination of the auditory tracts probably plays a role in the cognitive reorganization that marks a shift from Symbolic cognition to Intuitive and Concrete Operational cognition. This shift begins in the Intuitive Phase, but it remains fluid. The child continues to use Symbolic, Intuitive, or Operational cognition until sometime during the Concrete Operational Period. This lack of commitment to any one of the three types of cognition is critical to Ahern’s and my theory of character structure formation, which I will describe in chapter 9.
52 Piaget (1962) distinguished the term symbol from the term sign. To Piaget, the term symbol designated something that shares an attribute with the object or activity that it represents. For example, when pretending to fall asleep, Piaget’s daughter used the mane of a toy horse to substitute for —to represent —the fringe of her blanket. Because the mane was similar to the fringe, the mane was a symbol. Piaget reserved the term sign to designate words. Words are arbitrary. They need share no attributes with what they represent.
53 Currently, Perner’s (1991) False Belief test is of considerable interest. It has led to an entire school in psychology —Theory of the Mind —in which children are recognized to have some understandings of another person’s thinking that had been thought was not possible before they were in Piaget’s Formal Operational Period. In Perner’s test, children watch an adult place some candy in a cupboard as another child also watches. When that child leaves the room, the adult moves the candy to a different cupboard. The children are then asked where the child who left the room will search for the candy when she returns.
Children who are younger than 4 say that she will search at the new location. They fail to distinguish what they know from what she knows. Most 4-year-olds say that she will search in the old location. They are able to distinguish what they know from what she knows.
In distinguishing what they know from what someone else knows, these children are using second-order cognition —a form of knowing about knowing or thinking about thinking.
In our earlier publications, we erred in our proposal that all types of second-order social cognition were kinds of Formal Operational cognition (Malerstein & Ahern, 1982; Ahern & Malerstein, 1989). Clearly, 4-year-olds use second-order thinking in the False Belief Test.
However, some types of second-order cognition are unavailable to older children and to some adults. As I noted above, 6-year-olds are unable to imagine another child’s view in the three mountain model test. Even adults fail tests that require them to think about strategies that are involved in scientific reasoning, or in certain tests of social cognition ( Kuhn, Garcia-Mila, Zohar, & Andersen, 1995). Many adults do not have observing egos; they are unable to recognize any patterns in their own thinking as they talk. Some adults in our studies were unable to take a hypothetical position when the interviewer presented them with a moral dilemma, such as whether a person should steal a drug to save his wife or a stranger. Those adults would respond only with what the person would do or with what would happen. They did not deal with what the person should do or with what should happen.
54 He proposed that a complex mathematical structure underlies formal operations.
55 Others, such as myself, find that many adults do not use even Concrete Operational cognition in all domains.
< Chapter 5 | Contents | Chapter 7 >
Do you have a comment or would like to open a discussion? The author would be pleased to hear from you. Contact AJ Malerstein here.
