Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory

Question 1

What is stage one?

Answer 1

Sensorimotor

Birth – 2 years

Question 2

What is stage two?

Answer 2

Preoperational

2 – 7 years

Question 3

What is stage three?

Answer 3

Concrete operational

7 – 11 years

Question 4

What is stage four?

Answer 4

Formal operational

11 years on

Question 5

Describe Sensorimotor stage:

Answer 5

Infants use their senses and motor actions to explore and understand the world. At the start they have only innate reflexes, but they
develop increasingly ‘intelligent’ actions. By the end, they are capable of symbolic thought using images or words and can therefore mentally plan solutions to problems.

Question 6

Describe Preoperational stage:

Answer 6

Preschoolers use their capacity for symbolic thought to develop language, engage in pretend play and solve problems. But their thinking is not yet logical; they are egocentric (unable to take others’ perspectives) and are easily fooled by perceptions, failing ‘conservation’ problems because they cannot rely on logical operations.

Question 7

Describe Concrete operational stage:

Answer 7

School-age children acquire concrete logical operations that allow them to mentally classify, add and otherwise act on concrete objects in their heads. They can solve practical, real-world problems through a trial-and-error approach but have difficulty with hypothetical and abstract problems.

Question 8

Describe Formal operational stage:

Answer 8

Adolescents can think about abstract concepts and purely hypothetical possibilities and can trace the long-range consequences of possible actions. With age and experience, they can form hypotheses and systematically test them using the scientific method.