Piaget found that there were different stages in the development of kids development. He categorized the cognitive development of children into four stages.
- Sensory Motor Stage ( Birth-2 years)
- Pre-operational stage ( 2years-7years)
- Concrete Operational Stage (7years-11years)
- Formal Operational Stage (11years-16years)
These development stages can help the parents and Educationists in supervising a child's growth. In each stage, Piaget describes the activities and nature of activities that a child performs in a particular stage.
Sensory Motor Stage ( Birth-2 years) :
His ideas for this stage, are centered on the basis of "Schema" which are mental representations or ideas, about, what things are? and how we deal with them? According to Piaget, much of n infant behavior is triggered by a certain stimulus, in that they are reflexive.
After a few weeks of birth, a baby begins to receive and understand some information that he is receiving through his senses and learns to use some muscles and limbs. These types of developments are known as "action schema".
During this stage, the knowledge about objects and the ways that they can manipulate is acquired. Through this acquired knowledge about the world, people, and other things a baby begins to develop simple ideas. Suppose, he puts everything in the mouth or calls every women's mom and man papa.
Babies have the ability to build up a mental picture of things around them. Roundabout at the age of eight to nine months, infants are more interested in objects. Piaget discovered that when an object is taken from a baby's sight, the baby acts as though the object is ceased to exist. Up to twelve months babies begin to explore the objects, this is known as "Object permanence.
Pre-Operational Stage(2years-7years):
During this stage (the concrete operational stage) the child/ kids thought processes are going to develop, yet they have not logical thoughts. Other than this a kid gets his vocabulary expanded. At this stage kids are mostly "egocentric", I mean they able to consider things from their point of view. After some, they become "dicentric" and believe that they are not the center of the world.
"Animism" is another characteristic of this stag. Animism means that everything in this world has some sort of consciousness. That is why they punish the piece of furniture when they run into it. they thought it was naughty and should be punished.
Other than this, in this stage child can symbolize, and going to learn moral realism. He is now learning the differences between right and wrong, that's why they insist to obey the rules and are respected and learn to respect rules and regulations.
Concrete Operational stage(7years-11years):
During this stage, the thought process becomes more rational, mature, and adult-like. Although this procedure develops well into teenage years, hence Piaget divided this process into two stages; Concrete Operational and Formal Operational
In the concrete operational stage, the kid has the ability to develop logical thoughts about the objects. Piaget claimed that before the beginning of this stage, kids' ideas about different things are dominated by the appearance of the things and objects. Kids gradually develop the ability to conserve.
Formal Operational Stage(11years-16years):
The formal operational begins at the age of 11 years and achieved completely at roundabout 16years. there are major characteristics of this stage. The first one is "Hypothetical deductive reasoning." And the other is "propositional" in nature.
