Piaget’s stages of cognitive development

A concise reference for families, educators, and writers shaping kidlit that fits how children think at each age.

Sensorimotor

Age range: Birth to 18–24 months  |  Goal for stage: Object permanence

The infant learns about the world through their senses and through their actions (moving around and exploring their environment).

During the sensorimotor stage, a range of cognitive abilities develop. These include: object permanence; self-recognition (the child realizes that other people are separate from them); deferred imitation; and representational play.

Cognitive abilities relate to the emergence of the general symbolic function, which is the capacity to represent the world mentally.

At about 8 months, the infant will understand the permanence of objects and that they will still exist even if they can’t see them, and the infant will search for them when they disappear.

Helping children make a leap

• Imitate actions of adults (kissing babies/others)
• Petting animals
• Labeling parents/self
• Pop-up or manipulative board books help children process and attain object permanence.
• Mirrors help the child recognize and differentiate themselves from others

Preoperational

Age range: 2 to 7 years old  |  Goal for stage: Symbolic thought

Toddlers and young children acquire the ability to internally represent the world through language and mental imagery.

During this stage, young children can think about things symbolically. This is the ability to make one thing, such as a word or an object, stand for something other than itself.

A child’s thinking is dominated by how the world looks, not how the world is. It is not yet capable of logical (problem-solving) type of thought.

Moreover, the child has difficulties with class inclusion; they can classify objects but cannot include objects in sub-sets, which involves classifying objects as belonging to two or more categories simultaneously.

Children at this stage also demonstrate animism: the tendency to think that non-living objects (such as toys) have life and feelings like a person’s.

Helping children make a leap

• Labeling objects with words
• Block becomes a person
• Dishwasher packets look yummy (dangers of poisoning). Whirling blades of a fan are something to touch.
• Daddy is parent, Daddy is coach
• Milk is to eat, milk is a drink
• Talking to toys

Concrete operational

Age range: Ages 7 to 11 years  |  Goal for stage: Logical thought

During this stage, children begin to think logically about concrete events.

Children begin to understand the concept of conservation: understanding that, although things may change in appearance, certain properties remain the same.

During this stage, children can mentally reverse things (for example, picture a ball of plasticine returning to its original shape).

During this stage, children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other people might think and feel.

Formal operational

Age range: Adolescence to adulthood  |  Goal for stage: Scientific reasoning

Concrete operations are carried out on physical objects, whereas formal operations are carried out on ideas. Formal operational thought is entirely freed from physical and perceptual constraints.

During this stage, adolescents can deal with abstract ideas (for example, they no longer need to think about slicing up cakes or sharing sweets to understand division and fractions).

They can follow the form of an argument without having to think in terms of specific examples.

Adolescents can deal with hypothetical problems with many possible solutions. For example, if asked, “What would happen if money were abolished in one hour?” they could speculate about many possible consequences.

Piaget described reflective abstraction as the process by which individuals become aware of and reflect upon their own cognitive actions or operations (metacognition).

Related desk-reference pages

• Speech and language milestones
• Kohlberg’s stages of moral development
• Symbolic play and preschool play
• Writing resilience (kidlit and protective factors)

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