Formal operations stage: what is it and what are its characteristics

The stage of formal operations is the last of the proposals by Jean Piaget in his Theory of Cognitive Development. At this stage, adolescents have a better capacity for abstraction, more scientific thinking and a better ability to solve hypothetical problems.

Below we will see in more depth what this stage is, from what age it begins, what are its characteristics and what experiments have been done to confirm and refute Piaget's claims.

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What is the formal operations stage?

The formal operations stage is the last of the four stages proposed by the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget in his Theory of Cognitive Development, the other three being the sensorimotor, preoperational and concrete operations stages.

Formal operational thinking manifests itself from the age of 12, covering up to adulthood, characterizing due to the fact that children, now almost adolescents, have a more abstract vision and a more logical use of thought. They can think about theoretical concepts.

It is during this stage that the individual can handle hypothetical-deductive thinking, so characteristic of the scientific method.

The child is no longer chained to physical and real objects in order to reach conclusionsBut now you can think about hypothetical situations, imagining all kinds of scenarios without having a graphic or palpable representation of them. Thus the adolescent will be able to reason about more complex problems.

Characteristics of this stage of development

This stage, which, as we have already mentioned, has its beginnings between the ages of 11 and 12 and lasts until after adolescence, has the following characteristics.

1. Hypothetical-deductive reasoning

Another of the names that Piaget gave to this stage was that of "hypothetico-deductive reasoning.", since this type of reasoning is essential during this developmental period. Children can think of solutions based on abstract ideas and hypotheses.

This is observable by seeing how frequent questions such as "what if ..." are frequent in late childhood and early adolescence.

Through these hypothetical approaches, young people can reach many conclusions without having to rely on physical objects or visual aids. At these ages they are presented with a gigantic world of possibilities to solve all kinds of problems. This gives them the ability to think scientifically, posing hypotheses, generating predictions and trying to answer questions.

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2. Problem resolution

As we have commented, it is at these ages that a more scientific and thoughtful thinking is acquired. The individual has a greater ability to address problems in a more systematic and organized way, ceasing to be limited to the strategy of trial and error. He now poses in his mind hypothetical scenarios in which he wonders how things could evolve.

Although the technique of trial and error can be helpful, obtaining benefits and conclusions through it, the having other problem-solving strategies significantly expand the youth's knowledge and experience. Problems are solved with less practical methods, using logic that the individual did not have before.

3. Abstract thinking

The previous stage, that is to say, that of the concrete operations, the problems were necessarily solved by having objects at hand, in order to understand the situation and how to solve it.

In contrast, in the formal operations stage children can work from ideas found only in their heads. That is, they can think of hypothetical and abstract concepts without having to experience them directly before.

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Difference between the stage of concrete operations and that of formal ones

It is possible to see even if a child is in the concrete operations stage or the formal operations stage by asking them the following:

If Ana is taller than her friend Luisa hers, and Luisa is taller than her friend Carmen, who among them is taller?

Children in the concrete operations stage need some kind of visual support to be able to understand this exercise, such as a drawing or dolls that represent Ana, Luisa and Carmen and, thus, to be able to find out who is the tallest of the three. In addition, according to Piaget, children at these ages have no problem ordering objects based on characteristics such as length, size, weight or number (seriation), but it does cost them more with tasks in which they have to order people.

This does not happen in older children and adolescents, who are already in the stage of formal operations. If they are asked who is the tallest of the three, without having to draw these three girls, they will know how to answer the exercise. They will analyze the sentence, understanding that if Ana> Luisa and Luisa> Carmen, therefore, Ana> Luisa> Carmen. It is not so difficult for them to do serialization activities regardless of whether what they have to order are objects or people.

Piaget's experiments

Piaget made a series of experiments to be able to verify the hypothetical-deductive reasoning that she attributed to children older than 11 years. The simplest and most known to verify this was the famous "third eye problem". In this experiment, children and adolescents were asked if they had the option of being able to have a third eye, where they would place it.

Most 9-year-olds said they would put it on their forehead, right on top of the other two. However, When asked 11-year-olds and older, they gave very creative answers, choosing other parts of the body to place the third eye. A very common response was to place that eye in the palm of the hand, to be able to see what was behind the corners without having than to look out a lot, and the other was to have that eye on the nape or behind the head, to be able to see who was behind following us.

Another well-known experiment, carried out together with his colleague Bärbel Inhelder in 1958, was the pendulum experiment. This consisted of presenting the children with a pendulum, and they were asked which or which they believed were the factors that influence on the oscillation speed of the same: length of the rope, weight of the pendulum and the force with which it is boosts.

The experimental subjects had to go testing to see if they discovered which of these three variables was the which changed the speed of movement, measuring this speed in how many oscillations it made per minute. The idea was that they should isolate different factors to see which of them was correct, with only the length being the correct answer, since the shorter it is, the faster the pendulum will move.

The youngest children, who were still in the concrete operational stage, tried to solve this activity by manipulating several variables, often at random. On the other hand, the older ones, who were already in the stage of formal operations, intuited that it was the length of the rope which made the pendulum, regardless of its weight or force applied to it, move more Quick.

Criticisms of Piaget

While the findings made by Piaget and Inhelder were helpful, as was their claims regarding the other three stages proposed in their Theory of Cognitive Development, the formal operations stage was also subjected to experiments to disprove what was known about it.

In 1979 Robert Siegler carried out an experiment in which he presented several children with a balance beam. In it he was placing several discs at each end of the center of balance, and was changing the number of discs or the moved along the beam, asking his experimental subjects to predict which way the balance.

Siegler studied the responses given by 5-year-olds, seeing that their cognitive development followed the same sequence that Piaget had raised with his Theory of Cognitive Development, especially in relation to the experiment of the pendulum.

As the children got older, they took more into account the interaction between the weight of these discs and the distance from the center, and that it was these variables that allowed us to successfully predict the breakeven point.

However, the surprise came when he did this experiment with adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17. Contrary to what Piaget had observed, at these ages there were still some problems with regard to the hypothetical-deductive thinking, some of them having trouble knowing which way the balance.

This led Siegler to suppose that this type of thinking, rather than dependent on the maturational stage, would depend on the individual's interest in science, its educational context and ease of abstraction.

Bibliographic references:

• Inhelder, B., & Piaget, J. (1958). Adolescent thinking.
• Piaget, J. (1970). Science of education and the psychology of the child. Trans. D. Coltman.
• Schaffer, H. R. (1988). Child Psychology: the future. In S. Chess & A. Thomas (eds), Annual Progress in Child Psychiatry and Child Development. NY: Brunner / Mazel.
• Siegler, R. S. & Richards, D. (1979). Development of time, speed and distance concepts. Developmental Psychology, 15, 288-298.