Concrete Thinking: What It Is And How It Develops In Childhood
The process through which human beings mentally elaborate and relate ideas about what surrounds us is quite complex. It starts from our earliest years and advances according to a series of certain stages and characteristics.
Among other things, this process allows us to develop two ways of thinking: one based on physical objects in the world, which we call concrete thinking ; and the other established in mental operations, which we call abstract thinking.
In this article we will see what concrete thinking is and how it is related to or different from abstract thinking.
What is concrete thought and how does it originate?
Concrete thinking is a cognitive process that is characterized by the description of facts and tangible objects. It is the type of thinking that is linked to real-world phenomena, that is, to material objects. The concrete thought allows us to generate general concepts about particular phenomena and categorize them in a logical way.
In this area, the studies of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget on the stages of thought formation are classic. Broadly speaking, he analyzed how cognitive processes develop from early childhood to adolescence.
From a biological, psychological and logical perspective, Piaget was interested in knowing how a child achieves his or her cognitive abilities He proposed, among other things, that thought has patterns derived from genetic composition, which in turn are activated by sociocultural stimuli.
The latter are what allow the person to receive and process information, thus, psychological development is always active From this he proposed a series of stages, each qualitatively different from the others, and which allow the child to move towards a more complex form of understanding and organization of knowledge.
Stage of concrete operations
According to Piaget, concrete thinking develops during the stage of concrete operations, which occurs between the ages of 7 and 12. In this, the child is already able to perceive and discriminate between reality and appearances. He cannot do without the real and, unlike what happens in previous stages, he begins to decenter his thinking, that is, he gradually decreases egocentric thinking.
Furthermore, during this stage it can classify and account for, for example, the transformations of the states of matter. Thus, a series of logical comparisons occur that allow you to respond to the stimuli in a way that is no longer conditioned by appearance, as in the previous stage, and begins to be determined by concrete reality
In the mathematical area, for example, the child is expected to be able to develop cognitive skills such as the conservation of numbers, the notions of substance, weight, volume and length, as well as spatial coordination. All of the above are acquired once the child can describe objects based on their material composition
In this sense, for learning to occur, the child must always have the object present: through his senses he establishes relationships that allow him to know reality. In this period also it is not yet possible for children to make hypotheses and it is also not possible for them to apply previously acquired learning to new situations (the latter belongs to abstract thinking).
Differences between concrete thinking and abstract thinking
While concrete thinking is what allows us to process and describe objects in the physical world, abstract thinking occurs through purely mental processes. Piaget called this last one “formal thinking”, because it occurs in the stage of “formal operations”, which occurs between the ages of 12 and 16. In addition to occurring at different times in development, concrete thinking and abstract thinking have the following differences:
1. Deductive or inductive?
Abstract thinking is hypothetical deductive thinking, which allows us to build hypotheses without the need to test them empirically In the case of concrete thinking this happens the other way around: knowledge can only be formulated through direct experience with the phenomenon or object; It is an inductive type of thought.
2. The general and the particular
Abstract thinking can go from the general to the particular, allowing us to formulate more general laws, theories and properties. Concrete thinking operates in the opposite direction, it goes from the particular to the general. A broad or multidimensional phenomenon can only be understood and described by its particular characteristics
3. Flexibility
Abstract thinking allows an openness to reflection and debate, it is therefore flexible thinking. For its part, concrete thinking, being based on the tangible and evident, does not allow variations.
4. Complexity in the acquisition
Abstract thinking, as Piaget suggests, is acquired later than concrete thinking because it requires a more complex process. Although the concrete thought finally consolidates towards the end of childhood Throughout his development, the child acquires learning and psychological maturation only through direct experience with the environment. Abstract thinking only occurs after the need to make purely empirical verifications has been achieved and satisfied.
