PSYC 2450 Chapter Notes - Chapter 16: David Elkind, Imaginary Audience, Personal Fable
4 Dec 2013
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To understand the difference that formal reasoning makes, let s follow the progress of a typical child in dealing with a classic piagetian problem, the pendulum problem. To see more of piaget s tasks for assessing the achievement of formal operations, see page 429, figure 16-1. The child is shown the pendulum an object hanging from a string. He is asked to figure out which factor, or which combination of factors determines how fast the pendulum swings: child at 7 years old (preoperational stage) Unable to formulate a plan for attacking the problem. Tries one thing after another in a hit-or-miss manner: child at 10 years (concrete operations) He discovers that varying lengths of the string and the weight of the object affects the speed of the swing. However, because he varies both factors at the same time, he cannot tell which is critical or whether both are: child at 15 years (formal operations)
