Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Psychology (Second Ed.)Saundra K. Ciccarelli & J. Noland White

Sensorimotor Stage( Birth- 2 years old )Infants use their senses and Motor abilities to

learn about the world around them.By the end of this stage, infants have fully

developed a sense of object permanence.This is a critical stage for the language

development, as words themselves become symbols of things that may not be present.

Symbolic thoughts become possible by the end of this stage, with children at 2 years old capable of thinking in simple symbols and planning out actions.

Preoperational Stage(ages2-7)This is a period of developing language and concepts.Yet, they are limited in several ways.

They are not yet capable of logical thoughts.They believe that anything that moves is alive (animism)They tend to believe that what they see is literally true.Egocintrism- The inability to see the world through anyone

else’s eyes except on his own.Children in this stage are overwhelmed by appearancesCentration is the tendency of a young child to focus only

on one feature, ignoring other relevant features.Conservation- The ability to understand that simply

changing the appearance of an object does not change the object’s nature.

Irreversability- the inability of young children to reverse action.

Concrete Operations( ages 7-12 )Children finally become capable of

conservation and reversible thinking.This is the schooling age, wherein children

tend to think that they know more than their parents.

The major limitation in this stage is the inability to deal with Abstract concepts.

Children need to be able to see it, touch it or at least taste it to be able to understand it.

Formal Operations(ages 12- adulthood)Abstract thinking becomes possible.Teenagers not only understand concepts that

have no physical possibilities but they also get involved in hypothetical thinking.

Studies show that only about half of those in adult stages reach formal operations. (Sutherland,1992)

Piaget saw that children are active explorers of their surroundings.

He suggest that educators must provide children with “hands-on” experiments.

Some criticisms about Piaget’s theoryCritics argue that by describing tasks with

confusing abstract terms and using overly difficult tasks, Piaget under estimated children's abilities.

Piaget's theory predicts that thinking within a particular stage would be similar across tasks.

According to Piaget, efforts to teach children developmentally advanced concepts would be unsuccessful.