Piaget's concrete operational stage (intellectual development)

Concrete operational stage features AO1

• 7-11 years

• Children develop the ability to think logically and systematically, but only when dealing with concrete, tangible objects or events

• Reduction of egocentrism, enabling children to understand that others may hold different perspectives

• Class inclusion

Class inclusion AO1

• The cognitive ability to understand that categories have subsets

• Reflects children’s growing capacity for logical thinking and classification

Wooden beads aim AO1

• To investigate whether children could demonstrate class inclusion

Wooden beads method AO1

• Piaget presented children with a collection of wooden beads, typically consisting of more beads of one colour than another (eg 7 brown beads and 3 white beads).

• He then asked the child if there were more brown beads or wooden beads

• To answer correctly, the child needed to recognise that brown beads are part of the larger class of wooden beads

Wooden beads findings AO1

• Pre-operational children (under 7 years) usually answered “more brown beads,” showing a lack of class inclusion

• Concrete operational children (7+ years) correctly answered “more wooden beads,” showing successful class inclusion

• Shows that concrete operational children can understand class inclusion, whilst pre-operational children cannot

Strengths AO3

• P - practical applications, particularly in primary school education

• E - Piaget proposed that children at this stage can reason logically but struggle with abstract concepts, meaning learning is most effective when it involves concrete, hands-on experiences. As a result, educational practices often incorporate physical resources such as counters for mathematics, measuring cylinders in science, and visual diagrams to support children’s developing logical abilities. Additionally, recognising that children can now classify information has influenced lessons increasingly to require organisation, comparison, and rule-based problem solving. This ensures that teaching is developmentally appropriate, reducing frustration and promoting academic success.

• T - Piaget’s theory has strong ecological validity, as it successfully translates laboratory findings into real-world classroom practice. These practical applications also show the practical value of his theory outside of psychology, ultimately enhancing learning outcomes and supporting more effective educational environments.

Limitations AO3

• P - may have underestimated children’s cognitive abilities

• E - many of Piaget’s experiments required children to fully understand complex instructions, maintain attention, and interpret what the researcher was asking. However, children aged 7–11 can still have developing language skills and relatively limited attention spans, meaning they may misinterpret the question or lose concentration, particularly in repetitive or artificial laboratory settings. For example, when asked whether there are “more brown beads or more wooden beads,” a child might assume the researcher is prompting them to focus on the more visually obvious category rather than testing hierarchical reasoning.

• T - this creates a performance vs competence issue, where a child’s failure may reflect problems with comprehension, memory, or motivation rather than an absence of logical thought. Consequently, Piaget may have underestimated children’s cognitive abilities, weakening the internal validity of his findings, whilst also suggesting that cognitive development may be more advanced and less rigidly staged than Piaget proposed.

• P - contrasting evidence

• E - McGarrigle conducted a study on class inclusion using 4 model cows (3 black & 1 white). They then laid them all on their sides, as if sleeping and asked the children “Are there more black cows or more cows?” and “Are there more black cows or more sleeping cows?”. They found that 25% of children answered Q1 correctly, whereas 50% answered Q2 correctly.

• T - this suggests that children are capable of understanding class inclusion when the question was made easier and more accessible to their age. This reduces the validity of Piaget’s findings as it suggests that younger children may have already understood conservation but were confused by the complex or misleading phrasing of Piaget’s original questions, their errors may reflect language comprehension difficulties rather than a lack of cognitive abilities.

• P - limited sample

• E - Much of Piaget’s work was based on detailed observations of his own three children and Swiss children, resulting in an extremely small sample that is unlikely to reflect the developmental patterns of the wider population. His children were raised in a highly stimulating, intellectually enriched environment, which may have accelerated aspects of their cognitive development compared to children from different educational, cultural, or socioeconomic backgrounds. This introduces researcher bias, as Piaget acted as both parent and observer, increasing the risk of subjective interpretation of behaviour to fit his theoretical expectations. Furthermore, the lack of participant diversity means the theory may suffer from ethnocentrism, as it assumes universal stages of development without sufficient cross-cultural evidence.

• T - Consequently, the reliability and scientific credibility of Piaget’s conclusions are weakened, suggesting that his stage theory may oversimplify cognitive development by presenting it as more universal than it actually is. The generalisability of concepts such as class inclusion are questionable as they may be ethnocentric.