The 4 Stages of Cognitive Development

Background and Key Concepts of Piaget's Theory

By Kendra Cherry | Reviewed by a board-certified physician

Updated August 16, 2018

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Stages of Cognitive Development

 Piaget's Theory

 Sensorimotor Stage

 Preoperational Stage

 Concrete Operational Stage

 Formal Operational Stage

 Support and Criticism

Illustration by Joshua Seong. © Verywell, 2018.

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages
of mental development. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge,
but also on understanding the nature of intelligence. Piaget's stages are:

 Sensorimotor stage: birth to 2 years

 Concrete operational stage: ages 7 to 11

 Formal operational stage: ages 12 and up

Piaget believed that children take an active role in the learning process, acting much like little scientists
as they perform experiments, make observations, and learn about the world. As kids interact with the
world around them, they continually add new knowledge, build upon existing knowledge, and adapt
previously held ideas to accommodate new information.

How Piaget Developed the Theory

Piaget was born in Switzerland in the late 1800s and was a precocious student, publishing his first
scientific paper when he was just 11 years old. His early exposure to the intellectual development of
children came when he worked as an assistant to Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon as they worked to
standardize their famous IQ test.

Much of Piaget's interest in the cognitive development of children was inspired by his observations of
his own nephew and daughter. These observations reinforced his budding hypothesis that children's
minds were not merely smaller versions of adult minds. Up until this point in history, children were
largely treated simply as smaller versions of adults. Piaget was one of the first to identify that the way
that children think is different from the way adults think.

Instead, he proposed, intelligence is something that grows and develops through a series of stages.
Older children do not just think more quickly than younger children, he suggested. Instead, there are
both qualitative and quantitative differences between the thinking of young children versus older
children.

Based on his observations, he concluded that children were not less intelligent than adults, they simply
think differently. Albert Einstein called Piaget's discovery "so simple only a genius could have thought of
it."

Piaget's stage theory describes the cognitive development of children. Cognitive development involves
changes in cognitive process and abilities. In Piaget's view, early cognitive development involves
processes based upon actions and later progresses to changes in mental operations.

The Stages

Through his observations of his children, Piaget developed a stage theory of intellectual development
that included four distinct stages:

The Sensorimotor Stage

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

 Children learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and
listening.

 Infants learn that things continue to exist even though they cannot be seen (object
permanence).

 They are separate beings from the people and objects around them.

 They realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them.

During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through
sensory experiences and manipulating objects. A child's entire experience at the earliest period of this
stage occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses.

It is during the sensorimotor stage that children go through a period of dramatic growth and learning. As
kids interact with their environment, they are continually making new discoveries about how the world
works.

The cognitive development that occurs during this period takes place over a relatively short period of
time and involves a great deal of growth. Children not only learn how to perform physical actions such
as crawling and walking, they also learn a great deal about language from the people with whom they
they interact. Piaget also broke this stage down into a number of different substages. It is during the
final part of the sensorimotor stage that early representational thought emerges.

Piaget believed that developing object permanence or object constancy, the understanding that objects
continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, was an important element at this point of
development. By learning that objects are separate and distinct entities and that they have an existence
of their own outside of individual perception, children are then able to begin to attach names and words
to objects.

The Preoperational Stage

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

 Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects.

 Children at this stage tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of
others.

 While they are getting better with language and thinking, they still tend to think about things in
very concrete terms.

The foundations of language development may have been laid during the previous stage, but it is the
emergence of language that is one of the major hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development.
Children become much more skilled at pretend play during this stage of development, yet still think very
concretely about the world around them.

At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the point of view of
other people. They also often struggle with understanding the idea of constancy.
For example, a researcher might take a lump of clay, divide it into two equal pieces, and then give a child
the choice between two pieces of clay to play with. One piece of clay is rolled into a compact ball while
the other is smashed into a flat pancake shape. Since the flat shape looks larger, the preoperational child
will likely choose that piece even though the two pieces are exactly the same size.

The Concrete Operational Stage

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes

 During this stage, children begin to thinking logically about concrete events.

 They begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide
cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example.

 Their thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete.

 Children begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general
principle.

While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this point in development, they
become much more adept at using logic. The egocentrism of the previous stage begins to disappear as
kids become better at thinking about how other people might view a situation.

While thinking becomes much more logical during the concrete operational state, it can also be very
rigid. Kids at this point in development tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts.

During this stage, children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other people might
think and feel. Kids in the concrete operational stage also begin to understand that their thoughts are
unique to them and that not everyone else necessarily shares their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

The Formal Operational Stage

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

 At this stage, the adolescent or young adult begins to think abstractly and reason about
hypothetical problems.

 Abstract thought emerges.

 Begin to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific information.

The final stage of Piaget's theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning, and
an understanding of abstract ideas. At this point, people become capable of seeing multiple potential
solutions to problems and think more scientifically about the world around them.

The ability to thinking about abstract ideas and situations is the key hallmark of the formal operational
stage of cognitive development. The ability to systematically plan for the future and reason about
hypothetical situations are also critical abilities that emerge during this stage.

It is important to note that Piaget did not view children's intellectual development as a quantitative
process; that is, kids do not just add more information and knowledge to their existing knowledge as
they get older. Instead, Piaget suggested that there is a qualitative change in how children think as they
gradually process through these four stages. A child at age 7 doesn't just have more information about
the world than he did at age 2; there is a fundamental change in how he thinks about the world.

Important Concepts

To better understand some of the things that happen during cognitive development, it is important first
to examine a few of the important ideas and concepts introduced by Piaget.

The following are some of the factors that influence how children learn and grow:

Schemas

A schema describes both the mental and physical actions involved in understanding and knowing.
Schemas are categories of knowledge that help us to interpret and understand the world.

In Piaget's view, a schema includes both a category of knowledge and the process of obtaining that
knowledge. As experiences happen, this new information is used to modify, add to, or change previously
existing schemas.

For example, a child may have a schema about a type of animal, such as a dog. If the child's sole
experience has been with small dogs, a child might believe that all dogs are small, furry, and have four
legs. Suppose then that the child encounters an enormous dog. The child will take in this new
information, modifying the previously existing schema to include these new observations.

Assimilation

The process of taking in new information into our already existing schemas is known as assimilation. The
process is somewhat subjective because we tend to modify experiences and information slightly to fit in
with our preexisting beliefs. In the example above, seeing a dog and labeling it "dog" is a case of
assimilating the animal into the child's dog schema.
Accommodation

Another part of adaptation involves changing or altering our existing schemas in light of new
information, a process known as accommodation. Accommodation involves modifying existing schemas,
or ideas, as a result of new information or new experiences. New schemas may also be developed during
this process.

Equilibration

Piaget believed that all children try to strike a balance between assimilation and accommodation, which
is achieved through a mechanism Piaget called equilibration. As children progress through the stages of
cognitive development, it is important to maintain a balance between applying previous knowledge
(assimilation) and changing behavior to account for new knowledge (accommodation). Equilibration
helps explain how children can move from one stage of thought into the next.

A Word From Verywell

One of the most important elements to remember of Piaget's theory is that it takes the view that
creating knowledge and intelligence is an inherently active process.

"I find myself opposed to the view of knowledge as a passive copy of reality," Piaget explained. "I believe
that knowing an object means acting upon it, constructing systems of transformations that can be
carried out on or with this object. Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that
correspond, more or less adequately, to reality."

Piaget's theory of cognitive development helped add to our understanding of children's intellectual
growth. It also stressed that children were not merely passive recipients of knowledge. Instead, kids are
constantly investigating and experimenting as they build their understanding of how the world works.