Sensory motor development (Birth 2 years): Infant differentiates himself from objects and learns about his environment through his sensory exploration and motor play. This stage is divided into six sub-stages- Simple Reflexes, First habits and primary circular reactions phase, Secondary circular reactions phase, Coordination of secondary circular reactions stages, Tertiary circular reactions, novelt and curiosity and internalization of Schemes.
Pre operation stage (2-7 years):
Pre conceptual phase (2-4 year): The child is very egocentric, classifies objects only by single feature. An example is an experiment performed by Piaget and Barbel Inhelder. Three views of a mountain are shown and the child is asked what a traveling doll would see at the various angles; the child picks their own view compared to the actual view of the doll. Animism is the belief that inanimate objects are capable of actions and have lifelike qualities. An example is a child believing that the sidewalk was mad and made them fall down.
Intuitive phase (4-7 years): The child is able to think in terms of classification of objects and can understand the relationship to some extent. Example, a child is presented with two identical beakers containing the same amount of liquid. The child usually notes that the beakers have the same amount of liquid. When one of the beakers is poured into a taller and thinner container, children who are younger than 7 or 8 years old typically say that the two beakers now contain a different amount of liquid. The child simply focuses on the height and width of the container compared to the general concept.
Concrete operation (7-11 years): Child is able to use logical thinking. During this stage of concrete operations,the intelligence of the child progresses from sensory motor activity to internal mental activity and this change is brought about by the development of the ability to represent reality to one’s self.
Operation may be logical, such as those dealing with principles of formal logic or mathematical concepts.
The development of concrete operations allows the child to deal with the concept of classes, relations and quantity.
Classification: To understand the concepts involved in classification, the child must perceive the logical similarity among a group of objects and be able to sort them based on their common features.
By the age of 5 or 6 when children are moving into the stage of concrete operations they begin to sort objects by their logical defining properties. When given a group of geometric shapes they are now likely to group the objects based on shape, size or colour and make an interesting pattern etc.
Relationship: A second major development that indicates the transition to operational thought is the development of mature understanding of relations. This understanding allows the child to see the world in an orderly manner – to detect and understand consistencies and patterns as the adult does. Young children do have a basic understanding of concepts such as greater than or less than in the ordering task.
Quantity: An understanding of the quantity involves awareness that regardless of changes in physical appearance, quantity remains the same unless material is added or subtracted. For ex: a biscuit broken into two pieces. A child thinks they have more cookies to eat than they did before. In contrast older children make judgments on the basis of a genuine understanding of quantity. The appearance may be different but since nothing was added or subtracted, the total amount has not changed.
A person who uses logical operations is said to conserve the amount to recognize that the amount does not change regardless of any no. of changes in the physical appearance of the material. Thus the task is used to determine one’s understanding of quantity is referred to as conservation.
The school age children need to provide first hand experiences on these concepts to promote cognitive abilities.
Period of formal operations (11-15 years): Capable of hypothetical testing.
Briefly summarizing the development of cognitive ability from birth to 7 years, the early months of sensory motor period is disorganized, unrelated and diffused perceptions. Later months of this period involves egocentric experiences where in the infant becomes aware of his involvement in actions through sensory experiences.
During the pre operational thought period, the child gradually becomes aware of his thoughts, although his reasoning is restricted to immediately observable circumstances. He cannot reason beyond the unobservable.
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