Piaget's Stages of Dev

• Sensorimotor stage - 0-2 years


  • Infants explore the world through physical sensation and developing basic physical coordination. They mainly learn from trial and error e.g. learn that they can deliberately move their body in a particular way and eventually learn they can move other objects
  • Limitation - Lack object permanence - the ability to know that even though something can no longer be seen, it still exists. -
  • Children gain object permanence around 8 months
• Pre-operational stage - 2-7 years


  • Some rudimentary logic but cannot be used to understand how the world works - leads to reasoning errors e.g. animism - believe inanimate objects have feelings (e.g. a teddy bear)
  • Limitation - Lack conservation - ability to know even though the outward appearance of something changes, it's characteristics remain the same.
  • Limitation - Egocentrism - inability to see from the perspective of others
• Pre-operational stage - 2-7 years


  • Further Limitation - Unable to do class inclusion - Can place objects into categories. Struggle to understand that categories can have further subsets and objects can belong to more than one class at the same time e.g. they'd struggle to understand that elephants can belong to both categories of mammals and animals
• Piaget's Three Mountains Experiment (Not in 16 marker) 


  • Children view a model of three mountains from different angels
  • Asked them to pick the view that a doll would see
  • Children in the pre-operational stage were unable to see the perspective of the doll
  • Ended up always picking their own view
• Concrete operational stage - 7-11 years 


  • By the age of 7, children are able to show conservation and class inclusion
  • No longer show egocentrism
  • Use "operations" - better reasoning abilities but are only applied to visible and physical objects/scenarios
  • Limitation - lack abstract thinking e.g. have difficulty understanding concepts like morality and justice
• Formal Operational stage - 11+


  • By 11 they develop more formal reasoning abilities. Means that children are able to focus and comprehend abstract concepts e.g. concepts like morality
  • They gain the ability to use hypothetico - deductive reasoning
  • Can test hypotheses in order to determine a causal relationship e.g. they are able to test whether water makes things wet by putting a towel in water
• Eval points for Piaget's stages of development

  • S - supporting evidence for the assertion that children in the pre-operational stage can't conserve (Piaget)
  • W - researchers have claimed his investigations supporting this theory were too complicated for 2-3 year olds to understand well (Donaldson) (McGarrigle and Donaldson)
  • S - supporting evidence for the assertion children in the formal operational stage use hypothetico-deductive reasoning (Piaget and Inhelder)
  • S - concept of "readiness" has practical application in the education system
• S - supporting evidence for the assertion that children in the preoperational stage can't conserve. Piaget - conservation task on kids in the pre-op stage. Two equally spaced rows of counters laid out in front of the kids and they agreed that both had the same number. One of the lines was spread apart in front of the kids and then the kids stated that the spread-out line had more counters. S bc shows theory is correct in arguing that kids in the pre-op stage can't conserve as the kids in the study thought the quantity of the spread apart row changed simply bc of changes in appearance. /V
• W - researchers have claimed his investigations supporting this theory were too complicated for 2-3 year olds to understand well. Donaldson -children in the pre-op stage can conserve if asked in a way they find engaging and thus understand better. McGarrigle and Donaldson repeated the study and found that children agreed the two rows had the same number of counters. Then they used a puppet to act out a Naughty Teddy pushing one of the rows further apart. The children were able to conserve and said that both the rows still had the same number of counters. W bc ....
• (W - Researchers claimed his investigations supporting the theory were too complicated for 2-3 year olds to understand well - McGarrigle and Donaldson)... W bc shows Piaget underestimated the cog abilities of children in the pre-op stage by stating that they can't conserve when in reality they can as long as the task is engaging and easy to understand. As this contradicts the theory. \V
• S - supporting evidence for the assertion children in the formal op stage use hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Piaget and Inhelder asked kids to make yellow coloured liquid using diff coloured liquids in beakers. Found - kids in pre-op stage tried random combinations whereas kids from the formal op stage applied logical strategies and reasoning to come to a method of making yellow coloured liquid. S bc shows kids in later stages of cog dev specifically, formal op, are able to use hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Whereas younger yrs rely on rudimentary logic to achieve their goal. /V
• S - concept of "readiness" has practical app in the education system. Readiness is the idea that kids aren't bio ready to be taught certain concepts until they reach a certain age e.g. difficult to teach a 4 yr old abstract maths bc aren't bio matured enough. For real learning to occur, activities should be adjusted to the right level and age. If you are taught topics beyond your ability, bc it's not the right age, it leads to superficial learning but not a true understanding. Knowledge of readiness lead to the Plowden report which lead to major changes to the English education system. S bc...
• (S - concept of "readiness" has practical application in the education system)... S bc shows Piaget's theory isn't purely theoretical but allows for improved lives of students by facilitating better access to education. Increases utility