Piaget's 4 stages of cognitive development

Birth - 2 years old

• In this stage:
• Babies start to explore the world
• Start to integrate sensory and motor information
• Realise they can grasp objects
• Learn to crawl, walk and begin to talk.

• Object permanence
• Goal-directed behaviour

The understanding that if things cannot be seen, heard or touched they still exist.

Eg. If they haven’t reached this stage they genuinely think somebody has disappeared when playing peek-a-boo

The ability to form a series of steps with a particular goal in mind.

Eg. Crawling to get a toy on the ground

2 - 7 years old

• In this stage:
• Begin to use language and engage in symbolic thinking
• They start to use pretend play to mentally represent people, objects and events that may not be present.

• Centration
• Egocentration
• Symbolic thinking
• Animism

Refers to the tendency of children to view situations and events only from their own perspective and believe that everyone else has the same view.

E.g. A child snatching a toy from another child at day care, even if it makes to other child upset.

• Conservation
• Classification
• Reversibility of thought

Refers to the tendency of children to believe that any inanimate object possesses lifelike characteristics such as feelings.

Eg. Giving care to a teddy

When children tend to narrowly focus on one aspect of the problem.

Eg. Becoming upset if they see their sister getting two slices of cake when they only have one, even though the size of the two cakes combined equal their one.

Symbolic thinking refers to using symbols, gestures and images to mentally represent people, objects and events that may not be present.

7 - 11 years old

• In this stage:
• The child is capable of logical thought and can understand future consequences
• The child can undertake mental arithmetic

When a child understands that physical properties such as mass, volume, number and length do not change even when their shape or appearance changes.

Eg. Showing a child two glasses full of liquid with the same volume, one in a short glass and one in a tall glass and understanding that there is the same amount in each.

Allows children to recognise that if 4+2 = 6 then 2+4 does too, rather than memorising it as 2 seperate equations.

The ability of children to be able to group together or categorise objects based on similar properties.

12 years +

• In this stage:
• Thinking is based more on abstract principles
• Start to consider hypothetical possibilities

• Abstract thinking
• Hypothetico-deductive thinking

Thinking in terms of general concepts rather than specific objects, experiences or events.

Eg. Understanding the concept of love, freedom, morality, time, distance etc.

Being able to test a logical hypothesis by using abstract thought.

Eg. Systematically planning how a problem should be solved.