stages of intellectual dev

• Piaget suggested all children passed through biologically determined stages of intellectual development which could be identified by cognitive abilities.
• Cognitive abilities:

  • Object permanence
  • Conservation
  • Egocentrism
  • Class inclusion
• Object permanence


  understanding an object still exists even when it is hidden from view
• Conservation


  understanding the quantity of an item/group is the same despite changes in appearance
• Egocentrism


  the inability to imagine the world from another persons perspective
• Class inclusion


  understanding that categories of objects have subsets

  E.g. Big cats (superordinate group) > Tigers (subordinate group)
• Piaget's stages of intellectual development

  • Stage 1: Sensorimotor
  • Stage 2: Pre-operational
  • Stage 3: Concrete operational
  • Stage 4: Formal operational
• Stage 1: Sensorimotor

  • (0-2 yrs)
  • learns about the world from first performing instinctual reflexes, to intentional actions
  • starting to construct mental representations of objects (schemas)
  • develops object permanence
• Stage 2: Pre-operational

  • (2-7 years)
  • starts to talk, however unable to use logic effectively
  • struggles with conservation and class inclusion tasks and is still egocentric
• Stage 3: Concrete operational

  • (7-11 yrs)
  • can perform a mental set of logical thoughts an "operation", but only on objects/ events they can see (concrete)
  • better performance at conservation, egocentrism and class inclusion tasks
• Stage 4: Formal operational

  • (11+ years) able to use abstract logic
  • capable of hypothetical and deductive reasoning