Piaget Stages/Theories

Concrete (first grade to early adolescence)

-Accomadation increases -Develops an ability to think abstractly and to make rational judgments about concrete and observable phenomena -Ask child questions and let him expain things back to you - when children's development of language and acquisition of basic skills accelerate dramatically -Can solve conservation problems Example: Liquid conservation problem

Sensorimotor (birth to age 2)

-Child can learn about himself and environment through motor and reflex actions -Thought derives through sensation and movement -Child learns that he is separate from his environment and that aspects of his environment still exist even when they are out of reach of him -Modify behavior using SENSES -OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND -Example: Child touches hot stove and burns hand, learns not to touch the stove again.

Formal Operations (adolescence)

-Cognition to in its final form -Person no longer requires concrete objects to make rational judgments -Capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning Example: Acquires an ability to learn and read Plato, because his cognition is strong enough to understand philosophy

Egocentrism (Preoperational)

-Limitation -Tendency to perceive the world solely from one's own point of view

Centration (Preoperational)

-Limitation -The tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event

Preoperational (talking age to age 7)

-Uses symbols to represent objects -Personifies objects -Now able to think about things and events that aren't immediately present -Difficulty conceptualizing time -Thinking is influenced by fantasy -CANNOT REVERSE OPERATIONS -Teaching must take into account child's vivid fantasies and undeveloped sense of time -Example: Names all stuffed animals and fantasizes that they are alive.