Piaget’s four main stages of cognitive development
Jean Piaget, the renowned father of the Theory of Cognitive Development, was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, on August 9, 1896.
His father was a professor of medieval literature with an interest in local history. Being the oldest child, Jean was quite independent
and took an early interest in nature, especially the collecting of shells. He published his first “paper” when he was ten – a one page
account of his sighting of an albino sparrow. In 1918, Piaget received his Doctorate in Science from the University of Neuchatel. He
worked for a year at psychology labs in Zurich and at Bleuler’s famous psychiatric clinic. During this period, he was introduced to the
works of Freud, Jung and others. In 1952, he became a professor at the Sorbonne. His Theory of Cognitive Development is
described briefly herebelow.
Piaget’s four main stages of cognitive development are:
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The sensori-motor stage (from birth to 2 years);
The pre-operational stage (from 2 up to 6 years);
The concrete operational stage (from about 6 to 12 years); and
The formal operational (from the age of 12 onwards).
The Sensori-motor stage is divided into six sub-stages:
Age
Sub-stage
Typical behaviours
0-6 weeks
1 Reflexes
6-16 weeks
2 Primary circular reactions
4-8 months
3 Secondary circular reactions
Practice of innate reflexes such as
sucking, grasping, looking
Repetition of body movements for their consequences:
e.g. putting hand to mouth and sucking it
Repetition of actions that have effects on the
environment: e.g. kicking to shake cot and produce a
sound
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8-12 months
4 Co-ordination of means-ends
relations
Child begins to combine actions to achieve results:
e.g. pulling a cover away to get a rattle which is then
shaken
12-18 months
5 Tertiary circular reactions
Experimentation begins as the child explores new ways of
acting on the environment. Adults are drawn into activities.
18-24 months
6 Mental combinations
Representation becomes apparent through emergence of
Language and symbolic play. Child becomes able to plan
Behaviour in simple ways.
During the Sensori-motor Stage, the child’s development is concerned with mastering the interactions of information from the
senses and from motor actions in relation to the physical world. Learning at this stage is concerned with solving physical problems.
The Sensori-motor stage concludes with the emergence of symbolic function: the ability to represent schemas which begins to free
the child from a total involvement in action. A schema is an organized sequence of behaviour. Simple examples include sucking and
grasping whilst a more complex example includes the putting on a pair of socks.
The Pre-operational Stage commences at approximately the age of two and ends at around the age of six. It is first detectable with
the establishment of object permanence and ends with the emergence of “Concrete Operations”. With regards to object
permanence, the child becomes aware that a physical object is permanent and that it continues to exist even when the child no
longer interacts with it. During this stage, the child is characterized largely by dependence upon perceptual features of the world
and thinking is intuitive in nature rather than logical. Although, the child is capable of some early forms of symbolic representational
thought e.g. during play, the crib for the child’s doll may be represented through the usage of a box. The pre-operational child also
lacks an understanding of underlying constancies in the world: for instance when a piece of clay is rolled out, the child is unable to
comprehend that, even though its appearance is different, the amount of clay is exactly the same.
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The Concrete Operational Stage, which starts from about six and ends at around the age of twelve, begins with the establishment of
conservation and ends at around twelve with the beginning of the abstract thinking which marks the formal operational period. The
“conserver” child understands that the quantity is preserved no matter what transformations are applied so long as nothing is added
and nothing taken away. However, it appears that various applications of this principle by the child require different amounts of
experience i.e. the conservation of number is observed before conservation of length, and weight and volume appear later still.
The Formal Operational Stage, which starts from the age of twelve, is regarded as the culmination of “intellectual” development. It
involves abstract thinking which is no longer tied to physical objects and events. It is propositional in nature and is concerned with
the hypothetical and possible rather than the real and the perceived.
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