Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development

Vocabulary flashcards covering the four stages of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development based on the lecture notes.

Sensorimotor Stage

The first stage of development (after being born up to 2 years) where infants live in the present, do not understand time and space, learn by linking senses to objects, repeat actions deliberately from around 4 months old, and develop a sense of self separate from the world by the end of the stage.

Symbolic Function Stage

A stage occurring from 2 to 4 years old where children start imitating others, engage in symbolic play, think in pictures, use words as symbols, and exhibit egocentrism and animism.

Symbolic Play

A type of play involving using 1 object to represent a different object (e.g., using a box as a tool) and roleplay.

Egocentrism

A characteristic where children can see the world through their own eyes, but not someone else's.

Animism

A phenomenon where children believe objects can behave as if they are alive.

Intuitive Thought Stage

A stage occurring from 4 to 7 years old marking the start of reasoning, where children ask many questions, experience centration, have not yet achieved conservation, and exhibit irreversibility.

Centration

The tendency where children can only consider 1 aspect when something is complex.

Irreversibility

The inability of a child to use their thoughts to reverse events (e.g., not knowing that water poured from a wide glass into a tall glass would look the same if poured back into the wide glass).

Concrete Operational Stage

A stage occurring from 7 to 12 years old where children begin applying rules and strategies, use concrete objects to aid understanding, have difficulty with abstract ideas and morality, and develop key cognitive abilities like seriation and conservation.

Seriation

An ability in the concrete operational stage involving sorting objects (e.g., sorting them into size or colour).

Classification

An ability in the concrete operational stage involving naming and identifying objects according to size or appearance.

Reversibility

An ability developed in the concrete operational stage where children begin to think more logically or backwards (e.g., knowing that if $2 + 4 = 6$ bricks, then $6 - 2 = 4$ bricks).

Conservation

An ability in the concrete operational stage where children know that length, quantity, or number are NOT related to how things look (if the shape changes, the quantity is still the same).

Decentration

The ability to take multiple views of a situation, which conservation relies on.

Formal Operational Stage

A stage occurring from 12+ years where young people should be able to control thoughts, think about 2 things at once, understand how time changes, comprehend sequences of events, realize actions have consequences, and understand that self and others exist in the real world separate from each other.