Piaget's Theory

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PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNATIVE DEVELOPMENT Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development is broken down into four stages: 1. SENSORIMOTOR PERIOD: this takes place the first two years of life. During this period infants spend m much of their time learning to coordinate sensory experiences with motor activities. According to Piaget around 8 months old they begin to develop object permanence, the realization that object continue to exist even though they can no longer be seen. 2. PREOPERATIONAL THOUGHT PERIOD: ages 2-7. During this time the major characteristic is representational thought, children may use symbols or words to represent things that aren’t present. During this time children develop the use of their imagination which according to Piaget means the children are egocentric, animalistic, and unable to conserve and use deductive reasoning. During this time children are more likely to assume all objects are alive, anything that moves is alive such as cars, or that objects that move on their own are alive, such as the sun and moon. Two other key aspects to this stage are” Conservation the ability to recognize the properties of objects such as mass, number and volume do not change even if their appearance does and Transductive reasoning the reasoning from the particular to the particular or specific to specific, at this stage children do not have these abilities. 3. CONCRETE OPERATIONS PERIOD: ages 7-11. During this time children’s problem solving and reasoning abilities greatly increase. Children become capable of logical thought but are bound by immediate physical reality and cannot transcend the here and now. During this time children still have difficulty dealing with remote, future or hypothetical matters. During this time children are able to conserve. 4. FORMAL OPERATIONS: ages 11 and older. During this time children can now demonstrate
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