Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor

Birth to about 2 years

Sensorimotor

Children experience the world through their fundamental senses of seeing, hearing, touching, and tasting

Object permanence

Sensorimotor attainment

Preoperational thinking

2 to 7 years

Preoperational thinking

Children acquire the ability to internally represent the world through language and mental imagery

Preoperational thinking

They also start to see the world from other people's perspectives

Theory of mind / rapid increase in language ability

Preoperational attainment (2/)

Concrete operational thinking

7 to 11 years

Concrete operational thinking

Children become able to think logically

Concrete operational thinking

They can increasingly perform operations on objects that are real

Conservation

Concrete operational attainment

Abstract logic

Formal operational attainment

Formal operational thinking

11 years to adulthood

Formal operational thinking

Adolescents can think systematically, can reason about abstract concepts

Formal operational thinking

can understand ethics and scientific reasoning