Piaget stages of intellectual development Flashcards
Sensorimotor Stage
- 0-2 years
- focus is on physical sensations and on developing some basic physical co-ordination
- learn by trial and error
- develop understanding that other people are separate objects and acquires some basic language
- 8 months gain understanding of object permanence
Object permanence
the ability to realise that an object still exists when it passes out of the visual field. Piaget believed that this ability appears around 8 months of age. Prior to this, children lose interest in an object once they can’t see it and presumably are no longer aware of its existence.
Pre-operational stage
- 2-7 years
- by the age of 2 a toddler is mobile and can use language but still lacks reasoning ability.
- conservation
- egocentrism
- class inclusion
Conservation
the ability to realise that quantity remains the same even when the appearance of an object or group of objects changes.
e.g. the volume of liquid stays the same when poured between vessels of different shapes
Egocentrism
the child’s tendency to only be able to see the world from their own point of view. This applies to both physical objects - demonstrated in the 3 mountain task - and arguments in which a child can only appreciate their own perspective.
Class inclusion
An advanced classification skill in which we recognise that classes if objects have subsets and are themselves subsets of larger classes. Pre-operational children usually struggle to place things in more than one class.
Stage of concrete operations
- 7-11 years
- from the age of 7 most children can conserve and perform much better on tasks of egocentrism and class inclusion.
- still struggle to reason about abstract ideas and to imagine objects or situations they cannot see.
Stage of formal operations
- 11 +
- able to focus on the form of an argument and not be distracted by its content
