4 Development Stages of Piaget

Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, developed children’s cognitive development theory, which is divided into four distinct stages that are characterized by different ways of thinking and understanding the world. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.

Even though Piaget’s cognitive development theory is not completely perfect and has been criticized by subsequent researchers for overestimating the abilities of adolescents and underestimating the capacity of infants, his theory remains a significant framework for understanding cognitive development in children.

Then, what are the four stages of cognitive development in children? Okay, here’s everything you need to know about!

Jean Piaget’s Four Stages of Cognitive Development in Children

Piaget revealed that children are not small versions of adults, whose ways of thinking and ways of solving problems cannot be compared. He believed that children really have extraordinary intelligence, which is not inferior to that of adults—it’s just that their way of thinking is different.

Actually, there are qualitative and quantitative differences between young children and older ones. In his theory, older children tend to think faster than younger children. With this way of thinking, Jean believed that children’s development goes through a series of stages.

According to Jean’s development stages theory, cognitive development involves changes in cognitive processes and abilities, where early development involves processing based on action and then develops into changes in mental operations. When children’s thinking develops from one stage to the next, their behavior can also change, which reflects cognitive development.

Piaget’s theory showed that cognitive development in children goes through the following stages:

Stage 1: Sensorimotor Stage

The sensorimotor stage is the earliest stage of cognitive development in children and can occur from birth to two years old. At this stage, children begin to learn about the world through sensory experience and start to develop basic problem-solving skills. They are not only able to perform physical actions but also learn how to interact with others.

Thinking that the objects exist even if they are not visible is the most important thing at this stage. When they learn that the objects are separate and distinct entities, they will then have the ability to attach names and words to them.

According to Jean Piaget, children pass the cognitive development test in a relatively short time during this period. He divided the sensorimotor stage into substages, where children’s behavior moves from reflex impulses to more abstract ones. Here’s the brief description for each substage:

1. Use of reflexes

Children will use their reflexes from birth to two months of age. When they acquire information, they cannot consolidate information from their sense organs into a single concept.

2. Primary circular reactions

Children learn to consolidate information from different sensory organs from one month to four months old. At this stage, they’ll engage in behavior that satisfies their bodily feelings or needs. At this stage, they tend to repeat pleasurable behaviors and adapt their behavior to feed on different objects. That’s not to wonder if they will turn to respond to sounds and sights in their surroundings.

3. Secondary circular reactions

Starting from four to eight months of age, the children will start to take more interest in their environment and will widely repeat behaviors that obtain interesting responses external to their body. The behavior of children at this stage becomes more intentional.

4. Coordination of secondary schemes

The children start to develop coordination of secondary schemes from eight months to one year old. They will behave more goal-oriented, and they can combine various behaviors to achieve goals.

5. Tertiary circular reactions

Starting at 12 months to 18 months of age, children may try new behaviors and acts to reach different results instead of performing the same actions. Even though their behaviors are by accident or spontaneous, they are purposeful. At this stage, they can start to combine more complicated behaviors and even behave similarly but not the same to gain the desired result.

6. Mental combinations

Children start to solve their problems by relying on their mental abstractions when they reach the age of 18 to 24 months. At this stage, they can also pretend and use gestures and words to communicate. It is no wonder if they can deliberate and carefully choose their actions instead of relying on numerous attempts to solve their problems.

Stage 2: Preoperational Stage

When children turn two to seven years old, they tend to rely more on their mental representations than on physical objects. They start to think that the existence and identity of the objects around them are still the same, even though they look different.

At this stage, children become more proficient in language and symbolic thinking. There’s no doubt that they can engage in pretend play, develop intuitive reasoning, and use symbols and language to represent objects and ideas. Additionally, they can also learn more about categorization and how to classify items based on differences and similarities.

Here are some basic characteristics of the preoperational stage:

• Children tend to be egocentric, still considering their own viewpoint based on others’ perspectives.
• Children can start to learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic.
• Children still struggle to understand the idea of dependability.
• Children start to think about something in very concrete terms.
• Children begin to get better with the use of language and symbols to represent objects.
• Children still think very concretely about the world around them, although at this stage they have much better pretend play skills.

It is important to note that although abstract thinking develops more rapidly in the preoperational stage, other cognitive processes develop more slowly.

Stage 3: Concrete Operational Stage

At the age of seven to eleven, children will start to think logically and understand more complex concepts. They do not use others’ perspectives in solving their problem anymore; they can instead combine outcomes and perspectives—the egocentrism that they developed in the previous stage begins to disappear.

At this stage, children can start to solve their conservative problems because they already understand revisability, where the objects can be returned to previous states; they can decenter, where they can concentrate on multiple dimensions of items rather than just one; and they better understand identity, where an item remains the same even if its appearance looks different.

There is no doubt that all of a child’s cognitive abilities would be better developed at this stage. Here are some basic characteristics that children demonstrate during preoperational stage:

• Children start to logically think about concrete events.
• Children start to understand the conservation concept. For example, the amount of liquid in a short, wide glass is equal to the amount of liquid in a tall, narrow glass.
• Children begin to think more concretely and more organizedly.
• Children begin to use inductive logic, or reasoning from specific to general principles.
• Children begin to understand that others have their own thoughts, feelings, and opinions that must not be the same as theirs.
• Children’s thinking can be very rigid since they tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts and be much more logical during this stage.

Stage 4: Formal Operational Stage

The formal operational stage usually occurs around eleven years old and continues into adulthood. Their thoughts involve an increase in logic, an understanding of abstract ideas, and the ability to use deductive reasoning—these can be the main characteristics of this stage.

At this stage, children can start to think about abstract concepts that are not limited to a current person, time, or situation. They can also think of various possibilities, such as situations that do not yet exist, may be unrealistic, and may never exist.

During the formal operational stage, the children have the ability to conduct hypothetical-deductive reasoning, where they handle their problems in a systematic and logical manner without haphazard problem-solving. During the adolescent and young adult stages, they will be more capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to their problems. It is not a wonder if they will think more scientifically about the world around them.

Here are some basic characteristics that the children demonstrate during the formal operational stage:

• Children start to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems.
• Children start to use deductive logic, or reasoning from general to specific information.
• Children start to think more about ethical, moral, social, philosophical, and political issues, which require abstract and theoretical reasoning.
• Children begin to systematically develop their plans for the future and their reasoning about hypothetical situations, which become important skills during this stage.

Well, those are Piaget’s four cognitive development stages. One thing you should know is that not all individuals progress through these stages at the same rate. Some may not reach the final stage, a.k.a., the formal operational stage, fully.

It’s important to note that Piaget’s theory did not make the intellectual development of children a quantitative process. This means that children don’t just add more knowledge and information to their existing knowledge when they grow up.

Piaget instead revealed that there is a qualitative change in how children think when they gradually pass through these four cognitive development stages. The point is that children will learn about the world at every stage, take an active role in the learning process, make observations, and act like little scientists when they conduct experiments.

Basically, when children interact with the world around them, they can build upon existing knowledge, continuously add new knowledge, and adapt previously held ideas to accommodate new information.