Jean Piaget’s Stage

Theory of Cognitive
Development
BASIC PRINCIPLES
1. We naturally organize our observations and experiences so that
they fit together in a coherent, understandable manner. A set of
interrelated ideas about our experiences is called a schema.
2. We use the schema to adapt to new experiences. This process of
adaptation takes two forms:
Assimilation: We first try to fit a new experience into our
existing schema, like studying for your first college exam in
the same way as you studied for high school exams.
Accommodation: If that doesn’t work, then we make
changes to our schema so that it works better, like trying out
new study strategies.
Bottom line: to grow intellectually, we constantly need new experiences to challenge
our existing schemas.
 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development

The theory says that cognitive development occurs

in four, age-related stages. This means that at
certain ages there are abrupt shifts in thinking, with Formal
a lot of changes taking place at the same time. Operational

STAGES OF Concrete
DEVELOPMENT Operational

Preoperational

Sensorimotor

Birth 2 Years 7 Years 11 Years

 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
The Sensorimotor Stage
Development mostly consists of coordinating actions with sights and sounds,
like hearing a parent’s voice and then the infant turns her head in the
direction of the voice.
Main Characteristics
1. Learns simple habits (like grasping a rattle).
2. Begins to understand object permanence: objects continue to exist
when they are not perceived (starts about 8 months)…

Out of
sight,
out of mind.
Sensorimotor

Birth 2 Years
 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
Object Permanence
Object permanence requires forming a
mental representation of the object. This is
necessary for thinking, which is defined as
the mental manipulation of information.
Here’s an older child. He’s got a mental representation of the toy…

Sensorimotor

Birth 2 Years
 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
The Preoperational Stage
An operation is a mental manipulation that follows logical rules. So in this
stage thinking is generally not logical. It’s intuitive, based on how things look.
Main Characteristics
1. Rapid language learning.
2. Full object permanence.
3. Animism: the belief that everything is alive
and has human characteristics.

Preoperational

Sensorimotor

Birth 2 Years 7 Years

 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
The Preoperational Stage
An operation is a mental manipulation that follows logical rules. So in this
stage thinking is generally not logical. It’s intuitive, based on how things look.
Main Characteristics
1. Rapid language learning.
2. Full object permanence.
3. Animism: the belief that everything is alive
and has human characteristics.

Preoperational

Sensorimotor

Birth 2 Years 7 Years

 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
The Preoperational Stage
An operation is a mental manipulation that follows logical rules. So in this
stage thinking is generally not logical. It’s intuitive, based on how things look.
Main Characteristics
1. Rapid language learning. Three Mountains Experiment

2. Full object permanence.

3. Animism: the belief that everything is alive
and has human characteristics.
4. Egocentrism: seeing things only from one’s
own point of view.

Preoperational children often

pick picture showing what Child looks at entire
they see, don’t take other’s landscape. Then doll placed
perspective. on one side, child on other.
What does doll see?
 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
The Preoperational Stage
An operation is a mental manipulation that follows logical rules. So in this
stage thinking is generally not logical. It’s intuitive, based on how things look.
Main Characteristics
Test for Conservation
1. Rapid language learning.
2. Full object permanence.
3. Animism: the belief that everything is alive
and has human characteristics.
4. Egocentrism: seeing things only from one’s
own point of view.
5. Failure to grasp Conservation principle:
a quantity of matter stays the same regardless
The child says the two
of changes in its appearance, as long as glasses have the same
nothing is added or taken away. amount of water.
 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
The Preoperational Stage
An operation is a mental manipulation that follows logical rules. So in this
stage thinking is generally not logical. It’s intuitive, based on how things look.
Main Characteristics
Test for Conservation
1. Rapid language learning.
2. Full object permanence.
3. Animism: the belief that everything is alive
and has human characteristics.
4. Egocentrism: seeing things only from one’s
own point of view.
5. Failure to grasp Conservation principle:
a quantity of matter stays the same regardless Do they now have the same
of changes in its appearance, as long as amount? Or does one have
more?
nothing is added or taken away.
 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
The Preoperational Stage
An operation is a mental manipulation that follows logical rules. So in this
stage thinking is generally not logical. It’s intuitive, based on how things look.
Main Characteristics
Test for Conservation
1. Rapid language learning.
2. Full object permanence.
3. Animism: the belief that everything is alive
and has human characteristics.
4. Egocentrism: seeing things only from one’s
own point of view.
5. Failure to grasp Conservation principle:
a quantity of matter stays the same regardless To the child, it’s obvious: The
of changes in its appearance, as long as tall one has more.

nothing is added or taken away.

 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
Reasons for Conservation Errors

1. Thinking is perception-bound, based on how things look.

Test for Conservation

2. Centration: the child focuses on just one
dimension of the object—height—and ignores
the other dimension—width. She doesn’t see
that narrow compensates for tall.

3. Lack of Reversibility in thinking:

reversibility means mentally reversing an
operation that we have observed. If we
poured the water back into the short-wide
glass, would it overflow onto the table? To the child, it’s obvious: The
tall one has more.
 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
More Conservation Problems
Conservation of Substance

Conservation of Length

Conservation of Number
 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
The Concrete Operational Stage
In this stage, thinking is logical but children typically apply mental operations
only to problems that they can directly observe (problems that are “concrete”
rather than abstract, that is, expressed only in words).

Concrete
Operational

Preoperational

Sensorimotor

Birth 2 Years 7 Years 11 Years

 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
The Concrete Operational Stage
In this stage, thinking is logical but children typically apply mental operations
only to problems that they can directly observe (problems that are “concrete”
rather than abstract, that is, expressed only in words).

1. Conservation problems are now solved (they’re concrete).

2. Classification skills: grouping things logically.
There are two kinds of classification skills: additive and multiplicative.
Additive: understanding how subgroups add up to form larger groups.
For example, on a computer the C drive is made up of folders and the
folders are made up of files.
Multiplicative: being able to repeat (multiply) a logical grouping under
different conditions.
 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
Testing Additive Classification Skills
Children are shown 10 wooden beads, 8 are pink and 2 are blue.

Child agrees they’re all made out of wood.

Ask child: Are there more pink beads or more blue beads?
Preoperational child: Pink. Concrete Operational Child: Pink
Now ask: Are there more pink beads or more wooden beads?
Preoperational child: Pink. Concrete Operational Child: Wooden

The preoperational child just says how things look. Pink stands out more than
wood. The concrete operational child keeps the larger category in mind and
immediately grasps that pink and blue beads are smaller subgroups.
 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
Testing Multiplicative Classification Skills
One test is to place a bunch of objects on a table and ask the child to sort
them into neat piles. The objects may be various geometric forms of different
colors…

Preoperational children are

often inconsistent in what
they put into a pile due to
shifting attention.

Concrete operational children are logically consistent and can

repeat a system under different conditions, like circles, squares
and triangles repeated for different rows of colors…
 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
Testing Multiplicative Classification Skills

This arrangement is another example of how concrete operational children

can think in terms of two dimensions at the same time.
 Jean Piaget’s Stage
Theory of Cognitive
Development
The Formal Operational Stage
This stage goes from puberty into adulthood.
Children can now apply logical operations to Formal
hypothetical situations and they can reason Operational
deductively.

Concrete
Operational

Formal operational children can

Preoperational think more like a scientist,
thinking of hypotheses to test
possible answers to problems.
Sensorimotor

Birth 2 Years 7 Years 11 Years