Piaget's Four Stages of Cognitive Development

In class we discussed Jean Piaget and his four stages of cognitive development, sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. We were asked to imagine each of these stages in action.

Piaget’s first stage, the sensorimotor stage, is where children from birth to age two interact through their senses and movement. An example of this stage is visible when looking at the type of toys made for infants at this age. Toys geared towards this age of children are aimed at developing new skills through their senses. Toys like building blocks contribute to this goal, by helping infants learn and grow through their senses.

            Piaget’s second stage, the preoperational stage, is where children from age two to seven begin symbolic thinking. An example if this is that a child is now able to imagine an object to represent something else, like using a stick to represent a wand. This stage includes geocentricism, which means that the child doesn’t realize that everyone else is experiencing something different from their own experience. An example of this that I found on the internet would be to show a child a three dimensional model, and then ask them to choose a picture of what they saw. Then ask them what they think someone else saw. In this stage they would almost always pick the one they chose.

            Piaget’s third stage is the concrete operational stage, which is when we start to see operational thinking. On the same website I found an example of this stage. The example that this website uses says that in the concrete operational stage a child should be able to recognize that their dog is a golden retriever, and that a golden retriever is a dog, and that a dog is an animal.

            Piaget’s fourth stage of cognitive development is the formal operational stage. In this stage children can now think logically in their heads. An example of this would be a child doing a math problem in their head. In previous stages they might have required a visual aid like blocks to complete the problem, but now they can think about the problem logically in their head.

http://psychology.about.com/od/piagetstheory/p/concreteop.htm
This is the website that I attained some of my examples from.