Cognitive structure stage seven (4 to about 6 or 7 years of age)

Multiple causes and diverging possibilities for reality.

By the age of about 4 most children have become emotionally invested in becoming accurate in their expectations of outcomes. This enables the possibility of being able to entertain the idea that there may be many possible paths through reality and that the same outcome can be in response to very different causes. Greenspan and Shanker in their book "The First Idea" elaborate on this phenomenon:

"From simple causal thinking children progress to recognizing multiple causes often experiencing a rapid growth in this capacity between four and seven years of age. If someone won't play, instead of just concluding, 'She hates me,' the child can say, 'Maybe she has someone else she wants to play with today. Maybe her mother is making her come home after school.' She can set up multiple hypotheses. Or, 'Maybe she doesn't want to play with me because I have always played Nintendo. Maybe if I offer to do something else she'll want to come over.' The child is now becoming a multiple-cause thinker in many contexts. In school she can now look at multiple reasons for the Civil War or why a storybook character is upset. With peers she can compare two friends - 'I like Sally better than Stephanie because she has great toys.' Multiple-cause thinking enables her to engage in 'triangular' thinking. At home if mother is annoyed, the child can try to make her mother jealous by going to her father and being coy with him. She can figure out how a character in a book pretended to like vegetables so that she could get desert."

"To learn multiple-cause thinking a child not only needs to have learned the earlier levels discussed above, she needs to be able to invest emotionally in more than one possibility. For example she may not be able to consider a second friend as a possible play partner if she is too dependent on the first friend. She may believe that she will 'lose' that friend unless she plays only with her. She may not be able to woo her father into playing with her or even consider this possibility if she is too anxious about losing her mother."   

Flexibility of theories.

This possibility of having different causes presenting the same outcome naturally leads to the possibility of having competing or alternative theories that predict different outcomes. From there it is a small step to envisioning alternative theories that predict the same outcome. When such testing as the child is able to perform is unable to eliminate one of those theories, the child can be left with the quandary of two theories either which might be correct. As the child begins to work out all the possibilities involved, theory building becomes very complex, and both more accurate but more tentative. Perhaps one is true or maybe both are independently true or maybe both theories need to be combined to produce the outcome or effect. In other words one cause may produce the effect, each cause may independently produce the same effect, or some combination of the two or more causes may be necessary to produce the effect. 

In this way the child for the first time is able to hold alternative possibilities or theories in his/her mind without having to declare a winner. One may be right the other may be right both may independently be right or some combination of both or more causes may be necessary. The child's ability hold these possibilities in mind leads naturally to the creation of ever more complex hypotheses to be tested. The free floating islands of knowledge we have called reality patterns at this stage become overlapping with far more numerous connections which at the same time become less rigid and more tentative. This in turn allows for increasing flexibility in thinking. Greenspan and Shanker have this to say:

"The child becomes a more flexible thinker as a result of multiple cause thinking. Eventually she comes to understand more intricate plots in literature, the multiple causes for historical events, and a physical phenomenon that requires scientific explanation. Therefore multiple-cause thinking constitutes a higher level of reflective thinking in all spheres."

Social dynamics.

The ability to create multiple hypotheses and to test them leads to many sorts of new knowledge. Perhaps the most important of these new bits of knowledge is the ability to attribute several different motivations in others to the same outcome. This enables a far greater understanding of social dynamics than was previously possible. Greenspan and Shanker put it like this:

"The child can now also understand her own family dynamics through relationships among different people rather than just whether her own needs are met. For example, it's not simply a question of whether her mother is paying enough attention to her but how she compares with a sibling when they both want mother's attention. Similarly, she can negotiate social triangles and figure out that another child may prefer to play with someone else on a given day without necessarily disliking her.

Intelligence, social skills and the expanding sense of self.

The child seeing multiple causes in all thing is now able to see multiple causes in him/herself. The child is able to select multiple facets of his/her own self to make use of, just as is possible with external objects. Greenspan and Shanker put it like this:

As the child's intelligence and social skills are advancing her sense of self is expanding to include new horizons as well. She can now begin to look at herself as competitive and needy, mischievous and funny (multiple dimensions) all at the same time. Her consciousness is gradually developing an awareness of how she can employ these different facets of herself in a variety of contexts - whether it's to compete with her sibling or recruit a new friend at school."