What Is Jean Piaget Stages Of Development

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A child’s mind is an enigma to many. Whether by actions or reactions, children and babies confuse even the most experienced person from time to time. There are some however, who have observed and watched children, enough to have a slight understanding of the way a child’s brain develops. Jean Piaget is one of these men. Through studying his own children, Piaget has proposed that children develop in stages, and while a child may show signs of more than one stage at a time, they pass through stages none the less, and in these stages, lie changes in the child’s brain. The child will develop by two processes: assimilation, or accommodation, sometimes a mixture of the two. Lev Vygotsky is another man who studied children. Through his studies, …show more content…

To do this, he worked and studied his own children. After a time of observation, he noticed that his children developed in stages. He compiled his ideas of stages into four main stages. The first stage, obviously, starts when a child is born. This first stage was named the sensorimotor stage, and lasts until about the time that the child is between 18 and 24 months old. During this stage a child will only pay attention to the things that they can see and interact with. A large portion of the time spent awake will involve experimenting with the environment around them, like throwing or shaking objects that they pick up. The majority of this stage’s learning is done through trial and error, and by the end of this first stage, a memory will start to develop, as well as a sense of …show more content…

This stage lasts until the child is around twelve years old, or right around the start of adolescence. During this stage, a child will begin to demonstrate a sense of reasoning, and develop concrete logical thoughts. A child in this third stage will start to be aware of the events happening around them. They will begin to notice that their thoughts are unique to them, and that every thought they have may not be shared by the people around them. They will also begin to realize which thoughts are a part of reality, and which thoughts are that of their make believe mind, and their imagination. This is where most imaginary friends fade away. A child will still be just that, a child, and will not have developed hypothetical or abstract thinking.
Once a child has reached an age of about 12, a child will begin to show signs of the last stage of child development according to Piaget. This last stage is called the formal operational stage, and encompasses a large timeline. During this period, a child develop an ability to form abstract symbols, into concepts and systems. Their thoughts begin to become systematic, and they start to formulate hypothesis about the world around them. A child begins to consider the possibilities of an action, and ponder abstract relationships, which will develop into

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