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Four Stages Of Jean Piaget's Model Of Child Development

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Swiss biologist and psychologist Jean Piaget 1896-1980 is renowned for constructing a highly influential model of child development and learning (Professional Development through Distance Education). Piaget’s theory is based on the idea that the developing child builds cognitive structures–in other words, mental “maps,” schemes, or networked concepts for understanding and responding to physical experiences within his or her environment. Piaget further attested that a child’s cognitive structure increases in sophistication with development, moving from a few innate reflexes such as crying and sucking to highly complex mental activities. Piaget’s theory identifies four developmental stages and the processes by which children progress through them. Piaget proposed four stages of cognitive development which reflect the increasing sophistication of children's thought are Sensorimotor stage birth to age two, a Pre-operational stage from age two to age seven, Concrete operational stage from age seven to age eleven, and Formal operational stage age eleven and up or adolescence and adulthood.
Key Points
The four stages are sensorimotor stage birth two years old. The child, through physical interaction with his or her environment, builds a set of concepts about reality and how it works. This is the stage where a child does not know that physical objects remain in existence even when out of sight object permanence. Preoperational stage ages are two to seven (Funderstanding Education

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