Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Question 1

Sensorimotor (ages 0-2)

Answer 1

Learns by 5 senses, manipulating objects, trial + error.

• coordination
• object recognition
• imitation (intentional until late infancy)
• object performance

Question 2

Pre-operational (ages 2-7)

Answer 2

Learns by thinking relationally

• symbolic representation
• egocentrism (fail to see others view)
• animism (objects have human thoughts and emotions)
• centration (focuses on one element at a time and ignores rest of details)

Question 3

Concrete operational (ages 7-12)

Answer 3

Learns by inductive logical reasoning

• conservation (quantitative reasoning)
• classification (separating items by shared qualities + hierarchies)
• reversibility (can be put back to original state)
• seriation (ability arrange objects according to quantitative value)

Question 4

Formal operational (12-on)

Answer 4

Learns by abstract thinking

• deductive reasoning
• complex problem solving
• hypothetical scenarios
• constructing arguments
• metacognition: thinking about process of thought; philosophy