Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor Stage

• birth to two years

• Object Permanence

• Cognitive Egocentrism

Object Permanence

Understanding that objects exist even when they are outside your perceptual field

Cognitive Egocentrism

Inability to understand other people’s viewpoints

Preoperational Stage

• 2-7 years

• Irreversibility

• Conservation

Irreversibility

When the child is unable to mentally reverse a sequence of events

Conservation

Physically, an object remains the same even when its appearance changes

Concrete Operational Stage

• 7-11 years

• Children are no longer egocentric. They start solving problems logically. Inductive reasoning is developed, but children still find it difficult to reason deductively

Formal Operational Stage

• 11-16 years

• When children develop abstract thought, thinking about thinking, and become capable of deductive reasoning

Piaget & Inhelder Study

Aim: to determine the degree of egocentrism in kids 

Procedure: A child can see three dimensional modes of 3 mountains. Some things are visible from angles but not others. Child was given time to look. They then described what a doll placed in a different viewpoint could see and chose the corresponding picture 

Results: 4 year olds picked the picture that corresponded to their view, but only 7-8 year olds picked the correct picture constantly