Authentic Counselling Training
Stages
of development in Piaget's cognitive developmental theory
[Under development: 17 June 2005]
|
Age |
Stage |
|
0-2 |
Sensorimotor stage. The infant interacts with the world primarily through his senses and the actions he can perform on objects. He does not yet have the capacity to represent objects or people to himself mentally. |
|
2-6 |
Preoperational stage. The child can now represent things to himself internally, but he is still focusing his attention on such external characteristics of objects or people as size, shape, colour, clothing. Still, he uses these features for classifying objects into groups. |
|
6-12 |
Concrete operations stage. The child makes a major step forward in the abstractness of thought. He discovers an entire set of basic rules about objects, such as the fact that they can be arrayed in various orders (from small to large or fat to thin, for example) or that aspects of them remain constant even in the face of external change (which Piaget calls conservation). He also develops the ability to use complex mental operations – such as addition, subtraction, or simultaneous classification of one object into two or more categories (a chair is both a piece of furniture and a wooden object, for example). |
|
12+ |
Formal operations stage. As a final step, the teenager becomes able to think still more abstractly, using deductive as well as inductive logic and approaching decisions and problems in a systematic fashion. He can now think about ideas as well as objects and imagine objects or events that he has never actually experienced himself. |
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