What Are Jean Piaget's Stages Of Development

Jean Piaget On August 9, 1896 in Neuchatel, Switzerland one of the most well-known psychologists was born. This man changed the way that people think about children and also raised our curiosity as to why children think the way that they do. To us, the mind of a child is very hard to understand because we do things differently and we also have a more complex way of thinking than they do. Before Jean Piaget’s work became known, people thought that children were less knowledgeable thinkers than adults. After his work was published, people soon realized that children have a whole different perspective on the world than that of an adult. “He showed the world that young children think in a strikingly different way compared to adults” (McLeod, pg.2). The basic components of what he studied are: 1) schemas, 2) equilibrium, accommodation, and assimilation, and 3) the stages of development. Most people know his work about the stages of development, which are split up into four categories. The first category of the development stages is sensorimotor. This stage is for children from birth to about two years old and it is where the infant is …show more content…
They will go through this from 2 years old to until they are about seven. “During third stage children are not able to understand abstract concepts, but they are able to understand symbols, like the alphabet, and are able to have mental images of the world.” (Sharp, pg.2) For example; a small child may not want to get out of bed or sleep in his/her room because they are afraid of the monsters under the bed. They may even make you check to make sure there isn’t anything in their room before they fall asleep. Another example is if a child hurts themselves with inanimate objects; they may not feel better until you hit it back. They treat the object as if it has some human characteristics, like the object could feel the pain you inflict on