It is obvious that young children do not have the same reasoning and cognitive capacities as teenagers or adults. Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget was the first to observe that the increase in cognitive abilities tends to progress in gradual, predictable stages. His theory, known as the four stages of cognitive development, is widely used as a reference in developmental and child psychology.
While people go through the steps in the same order, the pace of progress differs from person to person. Since each stage builds upon skills gained in the one before, Piaget did not believe that individuals could skip a step in their development.
The first stage, termed the sensorimotor stage, lasts from birth until 24 months. Early in life, humans interact with their environment primarily through their senses. Piaget theorized that this is the earliest form of learning. A defining milestone in this stage is development of object permanence.
Infants younger than six months old do not search out a familiar object that is out of sight. However, around six months of age, the infant begins to understand that objects and people can still exist even if they are hidden. Object permanence is a crucial aspect of understanding the wider world.
Children spend the following five years of their lives in the preoperational stage. Between the ages of two and seven, children will start to use objects in imaginative ways, which contributes to the phenomenon of dramatic play.
When children play with imaginary objects, they are engaging in realistic and creative thinking at the same time. This is an early stage of metacognition, or the ability to think about one’s thinking process. Early education teachers often encourage dramatic play in the classroom to further promote this type of cognitive development.
One limitation of the preoperational stage is the hyperfocus on only one element of reality. As a result, young children do not grasp conservation, or the idea that an object retains its properties despite changes to its appearance. Children at this stage also have difficulty understanding that a transformative process can be reversed.
Between seven and 11 years old, children enter the concrete operational stage. Children at this age can analyze more complicated problems and apply multi-step solutions. Cognition also starts to become internalized. Children at the concrete operational stage are better able to visualize and solve simple problems without using tactile objects.
The last stage, formal operational thinking, begins after 12 years old. At this point, young people can contemplate hypothetical and abstract realities. They can analyze a problem in a logical way by developing and testing theories.
Due to their inexperience, adolescents may apply abstract thinking in immature ways. For example, adolescents tend to center their worldview around their personal experiences. Taking on more responsibilities and experiences will eventually widen and refine their perspective.
Piaget believed that while most people master the concrete operational stage, very few progress to the final stage, formal operational thinking. Current research suggests that 40 percent of the adult population cannot engage in abstract cognition without supports, such as metaphors or real-life examples.
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