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This article throws light upon the top eight characteristics of pre-operational period of cognitive development. The characteristics are: 1. Perceptual Activity 2. Perceptual Constancy 3. Conceptual Invariance 4. Mental Images 5. Symbolic Verbal Schemas 6. Classification 7. Egocentrism v/s Decentring 8. Intuitive Solution of Problems.
Pre-Operational Period: Characteristic # 1.
Perceptual Activity:
Registering in the brain of an object, or of an event through a sense organ, is perception. It is the result of the momentary fixating of a sense organ upon an object. The perception is liable to many distortions because of the momentary fixating and because of the child’s failure to integrate different perceptions temporally distributed and spread over space.
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This is compensated, to some extent; as the child grows, he is more and more able to move his attention from one aspect of the object to the other. He may do it repeatedly. If the child looks at two different objects spatially separated, he would move his sight from the one to the other. All this is perceptual activity, as it has been called by Piaget.
Perceptual activity is a step forward from mere perception, and towards conceptual thoughts—which develop during a later period. Perceptual activity enables the subject to have a view of the object from different angles with wider perspectives; and all this leaves less chances for the perception being distorted.
But still, the subject cannot develop logical conceptions, as still, he cannot integrate his past experiences with those of the current times to come to conceptions which are almost free from distortions; this can be properly done during the last period which Piaget calls the period of Formal Operations, and is the period of 11+.
Pre-Operational Period: Characteristic # 2.
Perceptual Constancy:
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It is during this period that the child assumes that the size and shape of an object remains constant; change of place of the object makes no difference. But before this perceptual constancy develops, one passes through a stage when the perception is distorted because of change of place.
A circle surrounded by smaller circles, appears bigger than when the same circle is surrounded by the bigger ones. Likewise, a gray square in the middle of a white background appears darker than when it is in the middle of a black background.
The proximity of other objects thus distorts the perception regarding a particular object. But with age, it decreases; and the child can perceive the constancy of objects—change of place or time makes no difference in size, shape or colour, though the retinal image of an object may be reduced to half of its present size with the removing away of the object to the double of its present distance.
Pre-Operational Period: Characteristic # 3.
Conceptual Invariance:
A child of pre-school age would declare the amount of liquids to be equal when they are there in containers of the same shape and size, and the height of the liquid in each case is equal.
But if the liquid from one of them is poured out into a third container which is narrower but taller in shape, the child would declare, now the liquid is more in quantity than as it is in the other container because now the level of the liquid is higher.
It is because of the pre-school child’s failure to integrate data of the past experience with that of the present, although the liquid was poured in the very presence of the child itself. A simpler example of two sticks—when the two sticks were lying just parallel to each other; the one just above the other, the child told the two to be equal in size.
But when the above one was moved a little to the left or right, the child told that they were not equal in length. This is the famous Piaget-Taponier experiment (1955-56) which illustrates Muller Lyer illusion.
It is during this period that, to a great extent, the child becomes free from this illusion, as his ability to integrate the past experiences with the present ones develops. This is conceptual invariance that the child achieves before he can develop himself for other cognitive functions of the period of formal operations.
Pre-Operational Period: Characteristic # 4.
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Mental Images:
Mental images are mental schemas they are constructed in the mind as the sensorimotor schemas are constructed. But the latter are the result of some external overt behaviour as the former are not. The mental images are the models of the external actions or events; they represent some specific actions or events, and are the results of the internalisation of the external activities or events.
The mental images are different from conceptual constructs also. Though a conceptual construct may contain some imagery associated to it, but such imagery is different from a mental image. It is the mental image which enables the child to imitate an activity or an event that is no more present; such an imitation is called deferred imitation.
A child can have no deferred imitation till the end of the final, that is, the sixth stage of the period of infancy or the period of sensorimotor.
A mental image is not an after-effect of perception, nor it is “an attenuated perception of some kind”, it is an independent schema, an internal act of the mind. A mental image differs from the external activity or event, also in the sense that it may not have all the details of the external activity or event.
It is only during the pre-operational period, extending up to the age of seven, that such mental images develop which serve as models to guide a subject through the conduct of a behaviour when no other model in the external environment is present.
But such a mental model is always the result of the internalised imitation of an external action or event whereas a conceptual construct is the result of conceptual thoughts. Such a mental model is a very significant mental schema that cannot develop before the pre-operational period.
Pre-Operational Period: Characteristic # 5.
Symbolic Verbal Schemas:
During infancy, the subject perceives things as a result of sensorimotor activity. His perception is a mental activity but still the thing and his perception are not distinguished as separate. It is during the Pre-operational period that the child realizes the existence of an object as separate from his perception as mental representation of the same.
It is during this period that a word is taken to be a symbol for what it signifies; the word is distinguished from its significant. The word is a verbal symbol for an object that it signifies. In the play of a Pre-operational child, both mental images and verbal symbols are very important; they are profusely involved in his plays.
For the development of conceptual schemas, verbal symbolic schemas are must. The verbal symbolic schemas prepare the child for the final stage of cognitive development, that is, the Formal Operational Period which is mainly characterised by conceptual schemas of various sorts.
During the period of late Infancy, and early stage of the Pre-operational Period, we can see how in the play of a child, a pretense is confused with a reality. A child, while pretending to hit something or someone, genuinely performs the action of hitting the same. Thus, the child confuses the mental representation for the reality that he pretends.
When a child can genuinely pretend, it is evidence that the child has developed some sort of symbolic thought. On such an occasion, he has some sort of mental representation of the action he is pretending to perform, and it is distinguished from the action he is really performing.
Verbal schemas are developed because of the child’s living in a social environment; a child bereft of social environment can develop no verbal symbols or verbal schemas—for such a child, the word “dog” would signify nothing. It stands for a quadruped mammal with certain characteristics only because the child has heard the word used for that animal for so many times in his social environment.
In most of the cases, there can be no answer to the question why only a certain word is used for some particular object, and why not any other sound can be used to signify the same object—it is something arbitrary. Of course, some words are onomatopoeic; as for example, ‘cuckoo’ is the name of a bird which makes such a sound.
The development of verbal schemas during Pre-operational Period is a very significant cognitive development of a child. During infancy, that is, the period extended up to the end of second year, an external object remains involved into the sensorimotor schemas related to it.
The object cannot be distinguished from the actions performed in connection with it; the actions, the result of which are the sensorimotor schemas which represent or describe the object. For an infant, at the first stage of cognitive development, the very word ‘ball’ involves the sensorimotor schemas of grasping, throwing, bouncing, rolling, and so on.
But it is only during the Pre-operational Period that the word ‘ball’ stands in the mind of the child as distinguished from the object that it signifies. The word becomes a verbal symbol a verbal schema for the object such a development goes a long way towards the development of conceptual schemas.
The verbal schemas only can enable one to define an object. When one defines an object, one distinguishes it as belonging to a class of objects having certain distinguishing characteristics assimilated in the experiences of the subject. When a pre-operational child uses the word “ball”, he includes in it all kinds of balls, making together a class of their own having certain characteristics.
In the beginning, a word uttered by an infant, happens to be a part of its sensorimotor activity. When it utters the word “mama” in the appearance of its mother, psychologically it is not much different from hugging its mother. Likewise, on the appearance of something strange, big or otherwise fear-arousing, a child may produce the sound “ahh”, and it would cling simultaneously to its mother or other protector.
On the appearance of a like object on any other occasion too, the child would repeat a similar behaviour uttering the word “ahh”. Here, the word “ahh” does not stand for any particular object, but a symbolic schema, of course, it is. It represents rather a situation.
Both Freud and Piaget consider that symbolic thinking is possible even without its being verbal or logical. Like the former, the latter also takes the symbolic thinking to be a primary process which develops with age, as the child gets more and more verbal stimulation to react verbally in his continuously widening social environment.
Notwithstanding, the major difference between the two is that Freud considers symbolic thinking to be primitive while Piaget takes it to be a psychological phenomenon having its origin during the post-infancy period. Even then, they have many points of similarities in their conceptualizations.
Especially during the beginning years of pre-operational period, there seems to be a spurt in the growth of language which we would like to call the development of verbal schemas. But we need to appreciate the difference that is there in the use of verbal schemas or language of an adult and that of a child at the threshold of Pre-operational Period.
I do remember my little granddaughter, Manvi, calling an elderly man, almost daily passing by our house, as ‘Nana’, the Hindi word for maternal grandfather. When she uttered this word, she did not mean what an adult means by that word, though the word as all other words are, a symbolic representative of some living human object.
When an adult uses this word, he means “father of the mother” but for Manvi it stood for all the male people with grey hair and having a little resemblance to her relative who had been introduced to her as “Nana”, especially by her dear mother.
Piaget’s Jacqueline, at the age of 2½, used the term “slug” for the creature seen almost daily while walking along a road. On-going a little further, another slug was seen, and she told, “Here it is again”. She was asked if it was not some other slug.
She went back to see the first one. “Is it the same one”? She was asked, “Yes”, was her reply. “Another slug?” Again, she replied “Yes”. Her answer illustrates that the word “slug” did not represent for her a class consisted of many creatures belonging to it, but only to one particular creature assimilated in her experience.
Another very interesting example I would like to give here. It is again related to my granddaughter, Manvi. Now she is about 2½, whenever she is angry with anyone, on any account, she would always react with the words—”Gande chore”, meaning thereby “bad boy”.
She has been reacting thus since the time she had hardly attained the age of two. She remarks thus in regard to anyone, without distinction, the object may even be her old grandmother.
It shows, her remark is neither concerned with sex nor with age, it represents only a situation of displeasure that she happens to be passing through. Symbolic schema, of course, it is, but not a verbal schema in the same sense as it is for an adult.
As Manvi would grow older, this phrase would lose its present connotation for her as then, she would be knowing the correct meanings of the words “Gande” (bad) and “chore” (boy); the use of the phrase would be discontinued in its present sense.
Should we use the terms of Piaget, we should call these terms used by Manvi as “pre-concepts”. When a child really understands what a noun signifies, he should be considered to have genuinely achieved conceptual thinking. Since at that stage, he would be realising the fact that a class cannot be pointed to, it is only an individual member of a class that can be thus demonstrated.
A child of two, failing to understand what classes or classification is, may form aggregates of two objects belonging to different classes, only because of similarity of the two in some single respect or so. For example, a child of about two may call a herd of cows and buffaloes combined by a single noun “cows”.
AL Baldwin writes—”The formation of such aggregates takes place by a different psychological process than conceptual thinking”. The former is the result of “merely a momentary” clustering while the latter, that is, conceptual thinking, would be based on some “defining criterion”.
Pre-Operational Period: Characteristic # 6.
Classification:
What is the nature of classification, and, what are the relationships that may exist among individual members of a class? AL Baldwin writes about a class that “it is a set of objects or events that have certain characteristics in common”. A class is often designated by a certain label.
The members of a class may not always be physically forming a cluster; spatially they may be dispersed apart. When we say ‘squares’, we are referring to a certain class of geometrical figures having certain defining characteristics though we may get to see them at different places and different times.
This environment of ours is made up of so many objects of different kinds, both living and non-living, and having a variety of defining characteristics that it is quite baffling to think of them unless a proper classification is made of them on the basis of certain characteristics which distinguish one class from the other. Again, a class may further be divided into sub-classes.
When we say “canidae”, we are referring to dogs as well as to wolves, jackals, the dogs and others, all being the members of the same class, that is, “canidae”. But the class “canis” does not include the wolves, the jackals; it is a sub-class of “canidae”.
For mastering the logic of classification, the child must understand three things:
1. What a class is?
2. What are the elementary relationships among classes?
3. What complex relationships are there among classes?
These relationships are described in formal logic, to which Piaget calls Formal Operations. For a child, before the Pre-operational Period, it is not possible to understand even the elementary relationships; and it is during the period of 11+ that a child develops formal operations; that is, can develop conceptual schemas through thinking logically in the abstract regarding more complex relationships among different classes.
But in this section of the article we are dealing with the Pre-operational Period when only the cognitive schemas develop which enable the child to understand what a class is, and, what elementary relationships are there among different classes. Piaget and Inhelder made serious investigations (1974) as to when at the earliest the child can understand the relation between two classes.
Very significant experiments were conducted. A number of counters were spread before some children. Some were circular in shape, and the others were square.
And the set of counters was only in two colours, red and blue. In answer to the question whether all the blue ones were circular, the youngest among the children, not older than three, answered in negative, “No, it is not true that all the blue ones are round because here is a round one that is red.”
In another experiment (1952), Piaget showed a box of wooden beads to a child; some beads were white and some, brown. The question that was put to him was whether there were more wooden beads or brown beads. The young child usually answered that there were more brown beads than wooden beads. When further asked “why”, the answer was, “Because there are so few white ones”.
Piaget concluded that a child cannot solve this problem before the age of seven. The answer of the child was based on the comparison of brown beads with the white beads; in his cognitive system, he could not include a separate property of the beads at the same time; he failed to recognise the fact that both the brown and the white beads were included in the class—of “wooden beads”.
The problem is because still the child has not developed conceptual schemas which require some sort of a representation of a class of objects, events, or instances. “A child during the period of pre-operations, has no cognition that each member of a class is an individual in its own right besides being a member of the class”.
Baldwin, by way of an example, writes that a poodle is a dog. It has all the properties of a dog; it means it is a member of the class of animals designated as “dogs”. But at the same time, it has some such additional characteristics which dogs other than poodles, do not have.
It qualifies poodles to be considered as a sub-class of the class of animals called “dogs”. Thus, a class has the characteristic of inclusiveness, as it includes the specific characteristic of a sub-class which distinguishes it in its own class.
The classification also implies something. When we say—”this object is metallic”, it implies that “this object is a conductor to electricity.” In this way, statements about different objects, have many other things implied therein which happen to be related to their characteristics.
Classification helps in making conclusions. The individual goes on gathering information. He designs ways for the formulation of the same into relevant groups. Conclusions are the end points of the process. One can reach to these points only when one can understand what a class is, what elementary relationships are there among classes, and what are the complex relationships among them.
Pre-Operational Period: Characteristic # 7.
Egocentrism V/S Decentring:
For a pre-school child, it is difficult to grasp:
1. The separation of appearance from reality,
2. Perceptual constancy,
3. The size constancy, and
4. The diversity of views.
To a pre-school child, the moon appears to be following him as he himself moves on. It is only later on that he understands that the following of the moon to him, is only an appearance, and not a reality, as another child moving opposite to him also makes the same claim.
He muses, the same object cannot be moving simultaneously in two different directions. As the child grows in age during the Pre-operational Period, he becomes able to integrate experiences temporarily scattered, and the same further enables him to distinguish an appearance from a reality.
Now, the child’s difficulty in grasping perceptual constancy during the beginning stage of the Pre-operational Period may be illustrated experimentally. A child of three or four cannot understand what is the actual shape of a landscape; a view that he grasps, is egocentric, it is from his own perspective.
He cannot grasp the perceptual constancy until he becomes able to view the same object decentralizing his perspective, and this he can do first during the Pre-operational Period only when his cognitive schemas develop as a result of viewing the same object from different perspectives.
Only then he can realise that each object has its shape constant, and what appears to be different from different angles, is only an appearance and not a reality, constancy of objects is a reality.
When a young child of Pre-operational Period, views a ball lying just near him, it appears bigger than what it appears when it is removed to a distant place. Double the distance; an object would, roughly, appear half in size in comparison to what it appeared previously.
Still, the child cannot grasp the size constancy. He can do this only when he is able to integrate his previous experience of the object to that of his present experience of the same. The integration of the present experiences with that of the past, is a result of the development of the very important cognitive schema which is also essential for conceptual schemas.
The main limitation of a child during the major part of the pre-operational period is his egocentric thinking which renders him unable to know what others may be thinking about an object or event from their own individual perspectives. So long as the child can see and take things from his own perspective alone, he would remain insensitive to the feelings and thoughts of others.
For the socialisation of an individual, for the intuitive solution of problems, decentering is must. This decentering, of course, develops before the period of Pre-operation ends. Using the Freudian terminology, we should say that decentering indicates an onward journey in the development of personality from Id to Superego through Ego.
Pre-Operational Period: Characteristic # 8.
Intuitive Solution of Problems:
Experimentally, Piaget demonstrated the role of intuition in resolving a problem. Three beads were strung on a wire like a miniature clothesline. In the middle of the wire there was a tube which could hide the beads when they were moved through it. First, the beads were moved from the left to the right through the tube.
The order of the beads was fixed as first red, then yellow, and the third one was blue. The experimenter repeatedly moved the beads through the tube, and would be asking the child “Now, which one will come out first?” Making mental picture of the event, the child, but only such a one who was not younger than four, could make a number of correct responses.
Piaget has divided the Pre-operational Period into two parts—the first from 2 to 4 years, and, the second from 4 to 7 years, Piaget has named the latter as intuitive stage. The child before attaining this stage, cannot have the feel of the solution of a problem—such a feel marks the attainment of the intuitive stage.
Coming back to the Piagetion experiment, referred to in the above paragraph, it was found that when the experimenter, holding in the middle of the tube, reversed the process, the child failed to answer in a correct way which bead would come out first, and bead of what colour would be the last one.
Reversing the process would reverse the order of beads, and, a second reversal of the process would restore the original order, and, the child may fail to make a correct response to the question regarding the order of beads until the time the child has developed the conceptual schema.
A child of five can mentally manipulate the development of an event, but his limitation is that he cannot formulate laws conceptually and see the problem through; for the formulation of conceptual laws, proceeding logically in his mind, he is still too young to do.
A child at the intuitive stage, sometimes has a feel of the solution of a problem but is likely to blunder at the other time. AL Baldwin writes of such children, “They just cannot revolve a mental image seven times and keep track of all of its parts”.
The child can grasp the principle that one turn reverses the order, the second one restores it, and the middle one always stays in the middle. It is only by the age of seven, that the child starts concrete operations.
A child during the period of Formal Operations, would behave in a different fashion, nevertheless, intuitive approach continues to be a part of his repertoire, and proves of great help in the solution of simple problems involving interpersonal relations. We must frequently imagine ourselves in the position of others so that we may formulate our behaviour in the light of the likely reactions of the others.