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Piaget Developmental Stages

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Jean Piaget is famous for his principles of cognitive development from birth throughout childhood. He outlined the different stages that “cognitive capacities” appear (Feist et al., 2015). He made his theories based on his observation of his children. He divided the cognitive development from birth through adolescence into four stages: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational stages. Sensorimotor stage covers ages 0-2 when infants use their senses to learn about their surroundings. Based on Piaget’s observations, young children sense the world through manipulation, and “object performance” is the main illustration of sensorimotor stage of cognitive development in young children (Feist et al., 2015). Ages 2-5 correspond to the preoperational stage which thinking process is developed in children. …show more content…

During ages 6-11, children develop the abilities of performing “mental operations” although they may lack reasoning (Feist et al., 2015). This stage corresponds to the third stage of Piaget’s cognitive development theory, called concrete operational stage. In this stage, children understand different processes or operations through observations. After this stage, children develop reasoning and problem solving abilities. This phase corresponds to the formal operational stage of Piaget theory. In this stage, children learn to utilize their reasoning and problem solving capabilities to solve word-problems. Formal operational stage of cognitive development starts from ages 11 or 12 and continues through adulthood (Feist et al., 2015). Humans gain the scientific reasoning abilities in this stage of cognitive

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