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
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
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