Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
Sensori-Motor Stage
Birth to 2 years
The first stage encompasses childhood to
adolescence, at which a child's reflexive
grabbing, sucking, and reaching becomes
more structured in his movement patterns.
The phrase sensori-motor refers to the
infant's dominance of senses and muscular
movement in his or her learning about
himself and the surroundings.
Object permanence
This is the child's capacity to
recognize the existence of an
object even when it is out of
sight.
Pre-Operational Stage
2 to 7 years
This period spans the ages of two to seven,
closely equivalent to the preschool years. At
this stage, intelligence is intuitive in nature,
and the child can now create mental
representations and pretend. During these
years, partial logical thinking or cognition
begins.
Symbolic This ability is used to represent things and events.
Function A symbol is anything that depicts something else
through drawing, writing, or speaking and is
recognized to represent an actual item.
Centration This is where the ability of a child is fixated on one
element of an object or event while ignoring
others.
Reversibility Children in the pre-operational stage are unable to
reverse their reasoning.
Animism This is a child's proclivity to assign human-like
features or characteristics to inanimate objects.
Tranductive Refers to the style of thinking used by the pre-
operational kid, which is neither inductive nor
Reasoning
deductive.
Formal Operational Stage
12 to 15 years
A stage at which one's cognition becomes
more rational. They are now able to solve
abstract problems and form hypotheses.
Hypothetical This is the capacity to generate several
Reasoning hypotheses about an issue and to
collect and weigh facts in order to
reach a decision or judgment.
Analogical This is the capacity to identify a
Reasoning relationship in one situation and then
utilize that perception to narrow down
viable solutions in another comparable
circumstance or problem.
Deductive This is a stage that refers to the
capacity to reason rationally by
Reasoning
applying a general rule to a specific
case or scenario.
Concrete Operational
Stage
8 to 11 years
This period spans the ages of two to seven,
closely equivalent to the preschool years. At
this stage, intelligence is intuitive in nature,
and the child can now create mental
representations and pretend. During these
years, partial logical thinking or cognition
begins.
Decentering This refers to the child's capacity to perceive
many characteristics of objects and
circumstances where they are no longer
concentrated or confined to a certain
dimension.
Reversibility The child may now follow some procedures
that can be done in reverse.
Conservation This is the capacity to recognize that particular
qualities of objects, such as number, mass,
volume, or area, do not change despite
changes in appearance.
Seriation Seriation refers to the capacity to organize or
arrange items in series depending on a single
dimension such as weight, volume, or size.