4 stages of cognitive development - Piaget

sensorimotor stage birth - 1

2 years

Children learn about the world through touch, feel, exploration

• Interacting with things around them, learning about the world 

• Main thing a child is learning is to distinguish between things in society

preoperational stage - 2

Children use words to represent images in a symbolic fashion 

• Children start to link concepts to gestures, symbols, and language

• Less social roles, more taking roles of anything they are interested in 

• One of the most egocentric stages 

concrete operational stage - 3

7-11 years

Child starts to be able to think abstractly 

• Start to be able to do basic math 

• Roles we have to follow in school, roles we need to follow at home 

• Just because we haven't met a celebrity, doesn't mean they don't exist 

formal operational stage - 4

More refined ability to think more abstractly 

• Actions have consequences 

• Problem solving 

• First three stages are universal - every person goes through them, some people never reach the last stage 

• not universal - only see the world through the way they have been socialized and can't open their mind to anything else