Piaget divided children's cognitive development into the following four stages:
1. Perceptual operation stage. The main cognitive structure of children at this stage is the sensorimotor schema. This schema can be used to coordinate sensory input and motor responses, thereby relying on movements to adapt to the environment. Through this stage, the child gradually develops from an individual with merely reflexive behavior to a problem solver with a rudimentary understanding of his or her daily environment.
2. Children in the pre-operational stage internalize perceptual actions into representations, establish symbol functions, and can think with psychological symbols (mainly representations), thus making a qualitative leap in thinking.
3. Concrete operational stage In this stage, children's cognitive structure evolves from the representational schema of the pre-operational stage to the operational schema. Characteristics of concrete operational thinking: conservation, detachment from egocentricity and reversibility. Piaget believed that the psychological operations during this period focused on abstract concepts and were operational (logical), but thinking activities needed the support of specific content.
4. Formal Operation Stage During this period, children’s thinking develops to the level of abstract logical reasoning. Their thinking form is free from thinking content. Children in the formal operation stage can get rid of the influence of reality, focus on hypothetical propositions, and can make logical and creative responses to hypothetical propositions. At the same time, children can perform hypothetical-deductive reasoning. Extended information
Jean Piaget (born August 9, 1896, died September 16, 1980) was a Swiss and the most famous child psychologist in modern times. His theory of cognitive development has become a model for this subject. He left more than 60 monographs and more than 500 papers to future generations in his life. He has lectured in many countries and received dozens of honorary doctorates, honorary professors and honorary academicians. title.
Piaget's most important contribution to psychology was that he transformed Freud's random and unsystematic clinical observations into more scientific and systematic ones, which enabled future clinical practice. There have been great developments in psychology.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Jean Piaget