Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

4-25-2025

Keywords

cognitive development, Jean Piaget, learning theory, preoperational period, preoperational stage

Disciplines

Child Psychology | Developmental Psychology | Education | Higher Education | Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

The preoperational period is part of Jean Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development (Lally & Valentine-French, 2019). Piaget was a cognitive psychology, who in 1936 created a model to explain how children understand the world and develop cognitively. While other contemporary theorists believed that intelligence was a fixed trait, Piaget believed that cognitive development was a process that occurred in distinct stages, and that maturation brings about changes and growth in development, rather than training (Lally & Valentine-French, 2019). Piaget posited that each stage occurred at a specific time and in a specific sequential order, such every child goes through each stage in the same order. The order of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development are as follows: sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2), preoperational stage (age 2 to 7), concrete operational stage (age 7 to 11), and formal operational stage (11 to early adulthood).

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