Excerpts from the article by
Dr. Lawrence F. Lowery,
Lawrence Hall of Science
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
1990 University of California
Biological Stages and Thinking
Compared to other living organisms, we enter
this world empty headed. The human baby is quite
helpless and must construct its knowledge of the
world for itself.
From a biological perspective, the human
baby's lack of prior knowledge has survival
value. Humans can reproduce in virtually any
environment, and the offspring will learn that
environment through observations of and
interactions with it. Nature has prepared us to
seek patterns in what we see and do, and the
patterns we discover enable us to cope with,
understand, and appreciate our environment.
Discovery-learning-does not happen all at once
but, rather, in stages. We develop a set of
thinking capabilities at intervals, and each
capability is fairly well established before the
next appears. These are the capabilities that
allow us to learn how to survive in a wide
variety of environments.
The nature of thinking capabilities and the
sequence in which they appear have been well
established on two research fronts. The
biological basis underlying their appearance is
established by periodic increases in brain size,
brain weight, cellular growth within the brain,
electrical functioning with the brain, and head
circumference. The psychological basis is
established through evidence of the individual's
increasing capa-city to deal with independent
ideas and to exhibit the same kinds of behaviors
as other individuals within two- to three-year
ranges and, with growth, the individual's ability
to replace naive with more sophisticated views.
Researchers have provided various descriptions
of the unfolding of the thinking phenomenon.
Here, descriptions of a child's interactions with
a set of concrete objects help illustrate seven
biologically based stages of cognitive
development. The clinical technique described is
that of sorting objects.
Stage 1: Accidental Representation --
Inability to Impose Patterns
A child's thinking capability in this first
stage of cognitive development is highly sensory
and characterized by sensing actions on an
object. Once the child has chosen an object-only
one at a time at this stage-he or she will look
at it and perceive aspects of its color, size,
and shape. The child will also touch the object,
push, pull, or throw it, and definitely taste it,
noting from these actions such information as
flavor, texture, firmness, and how an object
behaves. The child can be seen deliberately
carrying out inquiry processes that contribute to
building his or her personal repertoire. Repeated
experiences of this kind are fundamental, and the
child will call upon them in future stages.
In terms of accidental representation, from
birth until about age 3, the child explores
objects randomly and indicates no system that
suggests an organized, rational plan. The final
arrangement of objects might represent something
to the child, but only accidentally-and only
after the action. For example, if in the process
of arranging objects randomly, the arrangement
begins to resemble something familiar to the
child, the child may name it or provide an
explanation for it. The distinctiveness of this
stage, however, is that in it, the child does not
impose a pattern on objects in advance of an
action on them.
Stage 2: Resemblance Sorting --
Pre-Patterning Abilities
This second stage of cognitive development
begins to unfold at about age 3. Now when the
child thinks about objects and acts on them, she
produces pairing on the basis of size, shape,
color, or other property. Her rationale for each
pairing is derived from the repertoire acquired
through previous experiences.
From her pairing actions, the child
establishes additional mental constructs about
the world and how the objects and events in it
are related. All of her thinking is characterized
by the ability to match objects in pairs on the
basis of one common attribute or to link two
events on the basis of one relationship. This
continues to be the dominant way by which she
thinks and solves problems until about age 6.
Figure 1 -- Example of What Learners Do in
Stage 2
After creating a pairing, the child may
sometimes consider the pair to be a single entity
that will permit another single entity to be
placed with it. This chunking ability is
important, for later it enables the child to deal
with larger and larger quantities of objects (for
example, to chunk spaniels and terriers together
as dogs, dogs and wolves together as canines, and
so on). Chunking, or collapsing quantities into
smaller numbers, enables the human brain to deal
with greater quantities of objects and events
within its environment.
Stage 3: Consistent and Exhaustive Sorting
The next stage of cognitive development begins
at about age 6 and is established for most
children by age 8.
At this stage, the child organizes in a
logical way all the pieces in a set. When
grouping, she has a consistent rule for all the
objects in the set. She also gives a rule that is
consistent for all the groupings. For example, if
the child puts all the blue objects together from
an array, she will then go on to sort the other
colors into groups, then explain that "I've
grouped all of these by their colors."
The sorting ability at this stage is
characterized by the child's grouping of all
objects in a set on the basis of one common
attribute. If earlier experiences have been rich,
the child will have a broad repertoire of
possible properties to draw on, and she will be
able to sort objects to the extent of that
repertoire. Each sorting will always be on the
basis of one property, however, because at this
stage, children cannot yet mentally combine more
than one property at a time.
Stage 4: Multiple Membership Classifying --
True Patterning Abilities
When children exhibit thinking that indicates
they can mentally combine more than one idea at a
time, they have entered this stage. For most
children, this takes place at about age 8 and
continues to be the dominant way they think until
about age 10.
At this stage, the child can classify an
object into more than one category at the same
time or into one category based on two or more
simultaneous properties. The child can now
understand that an object can be both brown and
square at the same time.
Figure 2 -- Example of What Learners Do in
Stage 4
Although younger children can produce results
that appear to exemplify this stage, the manner
by which they get results is quite different: for
example, the younger child may first sort objects
by their colors, then by a desired state, whereas
the older child will cognitively select the
correct object by both properties before acting
on it.
Stage 5: Inclusive Classifying
Thinking about the relationships among groups
of objects and having a superordinate concept of
them are indicators of this stage of development,
which appears at about age 10. A child engaged in
such thinking realizes that if one collection of
objects is included in another, then all of the
objects in the smaller grouping are but a part or
some of the larger, and the converse. There also
is recognition that the whole is equal to the sum
of its parts and that an example to represent the
whole does not exist.
One characteristic of this stage is the
emergence of deductive reasoning, which allows
students to make logical inferences between the
more general and the less general: All women are
mortal; all queens are women; therefore, all
queens are mortal. Given the opportunity, the
student can learn to recognize logical
relationships between larger and smaller
classes-for example, that while all whales are
mammals, not all mammals are whales. It is at
this stage that students understand that they
live in a particular city and a particular state
at the same time and that one is superordinate to
the other.
Stage 6: Horizontal Repatterning --
Flexibility in Patterning Abilities
As the next stage unfolds, at about age 13,
students become more flexible in their thinking.
They can organize and then reorganize a
collection of objects or ideas in different ways
while realizing that each way is possible at the
same time and that the choice for an organization
depends on one's purpose. For example, if an
individual is given a set of books with the
identifying characteristics of size, shape,
color, and content, the individual realizes that
the books can be organized on the basis of size;
shape; color; content; size and shape; size and
color; size and content; shape and color; and so
on. Given the goal of locating information, the
individual selects only content as the organizing
attribute because the other attributes are not
useful in order to achieve the goal. Given a
different goal, such as the determination of the
ratio of books with fewer than 100 pages to those
with more than 100 pages, the individual
reclassifies the books for a different attribute
to achieve that goal.
Stage 7: Hierarchical Repatterning
When Stage 7 appears at about age 16, students
are able to classify and reclassify objects or
ideas into hierarchies of increasingly related or
inclusive classes.
It is now that the individual can develop a
taxonomy based on a logical rationale concerning
the relationships among the objects or ideas
comprising the taxonomy while also realizing that
the arrangement she has made is tentative and can
be changed based on fresh insights. A content
expertise is necessary. This cognitive stage
exemplifies the highest order of flexible
thinking.
Figure 3 -- Example of What Learners Do in
Stage 7
