Introduction to Piaget’s Stages of Development

Stages of Development Sensorimotor (birth to 2 years) Preoperational (2 to 7 years) Concrete Operational (7 to 11 years) Formal Operational (11 years and above)

Stages of Development Sensorimotor (birth until 2 years) Recognizes self as agent of action and begins to act intentionally Differentiates self from objects Begins to differentiate sensory and motor actions, initially reflexes, by means of accommodation and coordinates them to form adaptive ways of acting on the environment - Bukakto & Daehler, 2001 Organizes responses to objects into complex activities such as hand-eye coordination, knowledge of space and objects, and eventually rudimentary symbols designed to solve problems and understand the physical world - Bukakto & Daehler, 2001

Stages of Development Sensorimotor (birth until 2 years) Object Permanence - objects continue to exist even though they cannot be seen, heard, or touched

Stages of Development Preoperational (2-7 years) Operations are initialized sets of actions that allow the child to do mentally what was done physically before Learns to use language and to represent objects by images and words Classifies objects by a single feature Reasoning about categories, relations, space, time, and causality is inconsistent Thinks in a unidimensional manner Understands that symbols stand for or represent objects and events Starts to reason, build concepts, acquire language, and mental representations Bukakto & Daehler, 2001

Stages of Development Preoperational (2-7 years) Animism – tendency to believe that all objects, animals, and things are living and capable of having feelings, intentions, and emotions; objects are personified Egocentrism - inability to take another person’s perspective or the inability to separate one’s own perspective from other’s Centration - tendency to focus on only one aspect of a situation, problem or object

Stages of Development Concrete Operational (7-11 years) Gain abilities of conservation The understanding that something stays the same in quantity even though its appearance changes; the ability to understand that redistributing material does not affect its mass, number or volume Thinks logically about concrete objects, events, and relationships Achieves conservation of number, mass, and weight No longer fooled by appearance Reasons more systematically with respect to classes, number, and other characteristics of their physical and social world

Stages of Development Formal Operational (11 years and above) Operations can be performed on operations Thought becomes abstract and all possible outcomes can be considered Thinks logically about abstract propositions and tests hypotheses systematically Able to reason about hypothetical outcomes Abstract issues (e.g., religion, morality, alternative lifestyles) are systematically evaluated