The Four Stages Cognitive Development:
Piaget identified the following four stages in development of cognition:
Sensory-Motor(Age Birth Through Two)
Preoperational(Age Two Through Seven)
Concrete Operations (Age Seven Through Eleven)
Formal Operations (Age Eleven Through Sixteen)
Piaget (1973) describes the four stages as follows:
Sensory motor stage: Ages Birth through Two
The following information of the sensory motor is a summary of Piaget (1973)
The Sensory Motor stage extends from birth until approximately the age of two. During this stage senses, reflexes, and motor abilities develop rapidly. Such as when an infant will reach fora preferred toy, and will suck on a nipple and not a pacifier when hungry. Understanding of the world involves only perceptions and objects with witch infant has directly experienced. Actions discovered first by accident are repeated and applied to new situations to obtain the same results.
Towards the end of sensory motor stage, the ability to form primitive mental image develop as the infant acquire object permanence. Until then, an infant does not realize that objects can exist apart from him or herself.
Preoperational stage: age two through seven
The following information of the preoperational stage is a summary from Piaget (1973).
The child in the preoperational is not yet able to think logically. With the acquisition of language, the child is able t represents the world through mental images and symbols, but in this stage, these symbols depends on his own perception and his intuition .the preoperational child is completely egocentric. Although he is beginning to take a great interest in objects and people around him he seems than only one point of view: his own. This stage may be a curiosity;
It is during the preoperational stage that children’s’ thought differs the most adult thoughts.
Stage of concrete operations: ages seven through eleven
The following information of the stage of concrete operations is summary from page(1973)
The stage of concrete operations begins when the child is able to perform mental operations .Piaget defines a mental operation as an interiorized action, an action performed in the mind .mental operations prim it the child to think about physical; actions that he or she previously performed. The preoperational child could count from one to ten, but the actually understanding that one stands for one object only appears in the stage of concrete operations.
The child can mentally reverse the direction of his or her thought. A child knows that something that he can add, he can also subtract. He or she can also trace her rout school and then follow it back home, or picture where she has left a toy without a haphazard. Exploration of the entire house. Children learn to conserve such quantities as numbers, substance (Mass, Area, Wait, & Volume, though they may not achieve all concept at the same time.
Stage Of Formal Operations: Ages Eleven through sixteen
The following information of the stage of formal operations is a summery from piaget (1973, p. 36). The child in the concrete operational stage deals with the present, the here and now, the child who can use formal operational thought can think about the future the abstract, the hypothetical. Piaget’s final stage coincides with the beginning of adolescence, and marks the start of abstract thought and deductive reasoning.
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