piaget's stages of development

Question 1

sensorimotor stage (birth - 2 years)

Answer 1

infants use their senses and movements to get information about the world. at first, they live in the present. they develop object permanence and learn to control their movements.

Question 2

pre-operational stage (2 - 7 years)

Answer 2

children engage in symbolic play. they think in pictures and use symbols, including some words (the beginning of language development). children are egocentric and show animism. later in this stage they start reasoning and show centration and irreversibility.

Question 3

concrete operational stage (7 - 12 years)

Answer 3

children begin to apply the rules and strategies to help their thinking and use concrete objects to aid their understanding. involves the development of abilities to such conservation, reversibility, seriation and decentration.

Question 4

formal operational stage (12 years +)

Answer 4

children’s thinking is about controlling objects and events in the world. associated with the moral reasoning and deductive reasoning.

Question 5

seriation

Answer 5

sorting objects into an order, such as into size. develops during the concrete operational stage.

Question 6

classification

Answer 6

naming and identifying objects according to size or appearance.

Question 7

(ir)reversibility

Answer 7

(not) understanding that action can return something to its original state. develops in the concrete operational stage.

Question 8

conservation

Answer 8

the child knows that quantity, length or number are not related to shape e.g. juice test.

Question 9

decentration

Answer 9

the ability to take on another/multiple viewpoints.

Question 10

symbolic play

Answer 10

children use other objects e.g. toys to represent other things. this develops at the pre-operational stage.

Question 11

egocentrism

Answer 11

unable to see the world from another’s point of view.

Question 12

animism

Answer 12

believing that objects can behave as if they were alive.

Question 13

centration

Answer 13

focusing on one feature of a situation and ignoring other relevant features.

Question 14

morality

Answer 14

general principle about what is right and wrong,

Question 15

schema/schemata(s) development

Answer 15

mental representations of the world based on one’s own experiences

Question 16

three mountain task

Answer 16

an experiment by piaget and inhelder which tested egocentrism.