Life Span Development II School Age and Adolescence

Life Span Development II: School age and Adolescence 3 (2+1)

Lesson 4 : Cognitive development during Late childhood

Emergence of concept of reversibility

Children in school age do possess reversible intellectual operations. These children can exhibit reversible mental operations based on two rules - inversion or negation and compensation or reciprocity.

The negation rule states that an operation can always be inverted or negated.

For ex: if 5+2=7, 7-2=5.

The Compensation rule states that for any operation to change into another operation that compensates for the effect of the first, the understanding that one change can offset another.

Ex. If water is poured into a tall thin glass, the increased height of the water level is compensated by a decrease in the breadth of the water.