Piaget's Four Stages Of Child Development

According to many widely accepted theories and psychologists, children develop morally, cognitively, emotionally, and socially slowly over time, and they often make decisions that show they are unable to grasp whether a choice is right or wrong. It is impossible to exactly measure how children develop, asking questions such as “How much developmental change occurs gradually over time, and how much occurs in a series of clearly defined steps, or stages?(pp 52)” More questions presented are “How much of development is the result of inheritance (heredity), and how much is the result of what we have learned?(pp52)” Seeking answers to these questions can help us understand how much a child really should be responsible for. Lawrence Kohlberg researched
He noticed that the younger children did not have the ability to grasp certain abstract concepts. Their views of the world, or schemas, were limited to concrete objects. They, overtime, develop object permanence, representational thought, and conservation. He explains the egocentric thought of children in his four stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete, and formal operations. The sensorimotor stage includes the child in the first two years of life using schemas that involve his body and senses. The preoperational stage is for the two to seven year old who uses simple symbols for concrete objects. The concrete operational child, aged seven to eleven, apply logic to concrete objects, and the formal operational child, aged eleven and older, can apply this logic to abstract thoughts. This falls in line directly with the law that “children under age 7 are not considered criminally responsible. Children between the ages of 7 and 14 are presumed to lack responsibility, and the state must prove otherwise. Anyone over the age of 14 is held accountable.” According to Piaget, the child cannot apply logic to abstract things like crime, and, therefore, cannot be held responsible in the same way as an