- Sensori Motor Stage: In this stage the child’s intelligence is manifested in action. The child explores the world and experiments with the environment through his senses and physical movements.
- Pre- operational Stage: In the pre-school age the child is at the pre-operational stage of development. At this stage the child learns language and becomes capable of symbolic thought. The main characteristics of children’s thinking are as follows:
The child’s thinking is perception-bound. At this stage the child has not yet formed basic concepts related to the environment. Therefore, his thinking is guided by what he sees before him, rather than through reason. For example, if we put five match-sticks in two different arrangements as shown below, the pre-school child is likely to say that a) is more than b) because it appears to him that a covers more area than b.
a) 1…1…1...1…1 b) …….11111……..
In this stage the child is not capable of abstract and logical thinking because of absence of concepts. Only his perceptions guide him.
The child’s thinking is egocentric that means he has an affinity to see everything only from his own point of view and is not capable of understanding other’s view point.
The child is able to focus on only one thing/attribute at a time. For instance, take two glasses where one is tall and narrow and has some water and the other is short and wide and pour equal amount of water in front of the child. The child judges the quantity either in terms of height or width of the glass. He cannot consider both at a time. He might say the water is more in the tall glass if he is focusing on the height or more in the wide glass, if he is looking at the width, just because it looks more. It is only in the later stage of development when the child is able to follow more than one aspect at a time, he will realize that the water level is higher but at the same time the glass is narrower.
The child is not capable of reverse thinking i.e. he has no knowledge that things can be ‘undone’ as well as ‘done’. For example, that water can be poured back into the short, fat glass and come to the same level as it had been earlier. Similarly, he cannot understand that 3+2=5, so 2+3=5, or 5-3=2. The child’s reasoning is transductive or his reasoning is from one particular to another particular. If the child sees two things happen at the same time he assumes one is the cause of the other. He is still not capable of analyzing the relationship between cause and effect.
- Concrete Operational Stage
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