What Are Jean Piaget Stages Of Development

Jean Piaget was very interested in how children think and at what point in their development their thinking shifts. Piaget focused his theories around the cognitive development of people beginning in the early stages of their development. His observations and consequent stages of development first began with the observations of his own children. His theory concluded that each child progresses through four stages in their mental development. In the process of growing and progressing through the various stages, both assimilation and accommodation will occur, according to Piaget. Through assimilation, each child will add new information to any previously existing information. Thus, a building block of thoughts exists in each child’s mind. An example
of assimilation would be when a child learns about dogs and then refers to all animals with four legs as a dog. Simultaneously, accommodation occurs in that if the newly obtained information does not comply with the existing information, the child will create or rebuild new mental structures, or schemas. To expound on the previous example, when the child is corrected about a cat not being a dog, the child mentally accommodates the information by putting restrictions on what animals with four legs are considered a dog. (Psychology Core Concepts)

The first stage of Piaget’s cognitive development is the Sensorimotor Stage.
This stage occurs from birth to age two. Children in this stage of development rely on their senses to obtain new information and apply it to what they already know. Through senses of smell, sight, sound, taste, and touch, children explore their environment. This stage focuses heavily on the acquisition of motor abilities such as grasping, turning their heads to sound and movement, crawling, walking, and hand to mouth movement are just a few of the motor abilities that are developed during this stage. During the sensorimotor stage, infants develop object permanence in that they begin to realize an object (or person) can be hidden or removed without disappearing completely. For example, around 8 months of age, a child will understand that when playing peek-a-boo, a person is behind the blanket and will go in search of that person. Before object permanence is developed, an infant will not know to look for the person because they think the person is no longer there. During this stage of cognitive development, Piaget concluded that infants are goal-directed in their behavior. Infants gain control by focusing on one goal and repeating it. Children in this stage also learn greatly through imitation. This begins as early as 6 months in which infants will mimic sounds and behaviors. This is due to mental representation and continues through the entire stage. (Psychology Core
Concepts)

The second stage of Piaget’s theory is the Preoperational Stage. A child progresses through this stage from the ages of two to seven. Just as mental representation was developing in the previous stage, in this stage it is well formed. In the Preoperational stage, Piaget thought children to be egocentric in that they see the world only from their point of view and are unable to empathize. They also believe that objects have the same feelings and mental capacities as humans do. This is referred to animalistic thinking. Language is developed throughout this stage. In the Preoperational stage, children focus on one thing at a time and in return, miss lots of information. The inability to take in multiple factors in a situation is referred to as centration. Children in this stage also are unable to view a problem from multiple angles. They cannot experience a set of events and mentally reverse the situation. This mental process of the preoperational stage is known a irreversibility. For example, if equal amounts of water were poured into two cups, a short and a tall one, a child in the preoperational stage will conclude that the tall cup holds more. This is centration. (Psychology Core Concepts)

The next stage of cognitive development that Piaget observed is the Concrete Operational Stage.
This stage consists of children ages 7 to 11. During this stage, children move past centration and irreversibility to conservation. In using the previous example, a child in this stage will know that despite the shape of cups, they both hold equal amounts of water. They develop reversibility, or the understanding that events or actions can be reversed. (psychology.about.com/piagetstheory/p/concreteop.htm) Children in this stage are able to think before acting and solve problems inside their head. This is referred to as mental operations. Through mental operations, children at this stage may demonstrate self-control. However, there are some limitations to their mental problem solving. Though they use mental representation and simple reasoning inside their head, it is limited to concrete rather than abstract objects. Children in the concrete operational stage cannot understand hypothetical concepts. (Psychology Core
Concepts)

The last stage in Jean Piaget’s cognitive development stages is the Formal Operations Stage. This stage occurs in children twelve years through adulthood. Unlike in the previous stage, people in this stage develop the mental capacity to think abstractly. Introspection develops and allows an individual to think about their own position in the world and how they can adapt to it. In other stages, children think very specifically whereas in the formal operations stage, abstract thinking emerges. In this stage, problem solving is done through logical means versus a trial-and-error format of previous stages. (psychology.about.com/piagetstheory/p/formaloperation.htm) Just as in the concrete operational stage, one in the formal operations stage can think before acting. The difference, though, is that a person in the formal operations stage can mentally conjure various forms of acting on a situation and then proceed with one plan of action they see best fits. (Psychology Core Concepts)