Recently your friend Martha took her sons to a hands-on children's museum. Martha noticed that her 8-year-old son and her 12-year-old son interacted with some of the displays in very different ways
One display involved opening doors to safes by determining the correct combination. Each safe had three, four, or five buttons that had to be pressed in a particular order to open the door. Martha's 8-year-old son randomly pushed the buttons and never found the correct combinations to any of the safes. Martha's 12-year-old son approached the task in a very systematic manner — trying all possible combinations of buttons until the doors opened. Now Martha is concerned that there is something wrong with her younger son. What can you tell Martha about the differences in concrete operational and formal operational thought that might explain her sons' behavior?
What will be an ideal response?
A good answer will be similar to the following:
The behavior of Martha's sons fits Piaget's description of formal operational thought very well. According to Piaget, children who are 12 years old would be in the period of formal operations. Formal operational children use more sophisticated, logical, deductive reasoning to solve problems like the safe problem. However, concrete operational children (such as the 8-year-old) use haphazard trial-and-error and often do not solve successfully problems like the safe problem. Concrete operational children are more likely to try to solve problems like this by randomly pushing buttons, but formal operational children can think deductively about the possible, logical combinations before attempting the button pushing. In time, Martha's younger son also will use deductive reasoning and will solve the safe problem like his older brother.
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