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The interactive map is available at www.yasenik-
graham.com and select the trainee portal button. The
online version includes charts, tables, short video clips, and
additional readings.

Cognitive Development & Language

By middle childhood, egocentric thinking
has been replaced by logical thinking.
During this age band, there is a shift
from physically manipulating objects to
solve problems to being able to manipulate objects by way

of perception mentally. This shift from action to thought
involves an increase in basic reasoning processes. Abstract
thought is beginning to develop but it is not on-line in the
same way as it is for adolescents. The middle to late school-
aged child still needs to have objects in front of them or
available to them to engage in reasoning skills, whereas
adolescents can mentalize without objects and they can
engage in hypothetical thinking. The hallmark of this
developmental stage is the idea of reversibility which Piaget
(1952b) termed Concrete Operations. This means that the
child can now think back over what she has perceived. She
can look at experiments involving mass and volume and
look back at the steps to identify that although the
containers water has been poured into may be differently
shaped, the same volume of water may have been used
(conservation experiment). This marks an increase in
flexible thinking and the ability to look at reality from
multiple perspectives using multiple strategies (Siegler,
1996).