A 3-year-old is categorized in Piaget's preoperational stage. The preoperational stage applies to children age two to age seven. This child is able to think about present life and make representations for specific roles. Piaget believed that children did not think of life …show more content…
in points of view other than their own. Children in the preoperational stage are able to recognize an object but cannot execute a mental transformation on objects. For example, children can identify and envision a bowl of cereal, but they cannot determine what would occur if that bowl of cereal was knocked off of the table. The 3-year-old is in the preoperational stage, while a 9-year-old falls into the concrete operations stage.
The concrete operations stage occurs in children age 7 to age 11.
Piaget suggested that children in the concrete operations stage are able to perform mental operations during physical events. The 9-year-old would be able to pass Piaget's conservation tasks like being able to count the same number of coins displayed in different patterns. In the concrete operations stage, children can also sort objects into size categories. However, children in this stage cannot perform mental operations for hypothetical situations.
A 3-year-old and the 9-year-old are categorized in different stages. Both the 3-year-old and 9-year-old are able to think about the present state and can picture objects in their minds. However, the 9-year-old is able to differentiate and perform mental transformations on specific objects. Both stages need to expand their minds on hypothetical situations.
Jean Piaget was a stage theorist who studied cognitive development. He developed four stages that occur during development, and the ages corresponding with the stages. A 3-year-old is in the second stage: preoperational stage, while a 9-year-old is in the third stage: concrete operations stage. The 9-year-old is able to perform more tasks than the
3-year-old.