Developmental Psychology: Piaget's Cognitive Stages and Key Concepts

Frameworks or structures used for processing information

Schemas

new experiences in terms of existing schemas

Assimilation

Adapting current understandings to incorporate new information

Accommodation

State of balance between assimilation and accommodation

Equilibrium

Piagetian stage from 0 to 2 years characterized by learning through senses and actions

Sensorimotor stage

Piagetian stage from approximately 2 to 7 years featuring symbolic thinking, egocentrism, and centration

Preoperational stage

7 to 12 years

Concrete operational stage

12 to adulthood

Formal operational stage

Ability to repeat a behavior observed some time ago

Deferred imitation

Inability to take another person's physical perspective

Visual egocentrism

Belief that inanimate objects are alive

Animism

Tendency to focus on only one feature of a problem while neglecting other important aspects

Centration

Task requiring a child to distinguish what something appears to be from what it really is

Appearance-reality distinction

Understanding that quantity remains constant despite changes in physical appearance

Conservation

Understanding that core characteristics of an object stay the same despite superficial changes

Object identity

Understanding that an object or process can be returned to its original state

Reversibility

Ability to arrange items in order based on a physical dimension

Seriation

Ability to infer the relationship between two objects by understanding each object's relationship to a third

Transitive inference

Key type of thinking characteristic of the formal operational stage

Abstract thinking