In which developmental stage do children exhibit concrete operational thinking?

Concrete operational thinking is a stage in cognitive development characterized by logical thinking about concrete events and the ability to understand the concept of conservation, which means that quantity does not change even when its shape does. This type of thinking typically develops during middle and late childhood, around the ages of 6 to 11 years.

At this stage, children begin to grasp the concepts of classification, seriation, and the ability to perform operations mentally rather than just physically. They start to understand the perspectives of others and engage in more complex problem-solving activities that require logical reasoning rather than just intuitive thought.

In contrast, during infancy, children primarily engage in sensorimotor interactions with the world, focusing on their immediate experiences. Early childhood is marked by preoperational thinking, where children are developing language and symbols but struggle with logical operations, often thinking in egocentric ways. Adolescence involves formal operational thinking, where abstract and hypothetical reasoning becomes prominent, moving beyond the concrete operations developed in the earlier stage.