Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development (OCR GCSE Psychology): Revision Note

Learning occurs through senses and movement (touching, seeing, tasting, grasping)

The child develops the following schemas:

• A body schema – an awareness of their own body

• Physical schemas, e.g. sucking, grasping

• Trajectory schemas - throwing or dropping objects repeatedly

They begin to link sensory input to actions, e.g. “I can use my hand to grab this toy”

Object permanence

• Refers to the understanding that an object still exists even when it cannot be seen

• In early infancy, if a toy is hidden, a baby will not search for it because they believe it no longer exists

• Once a child begins to look for the hidden toy, they have developed object permanence — typically achieved between 8 and 12 months of age

Children begin to use language and symbols, marking major cognitive growth

Thinking is egocentric — they find it difficult to see things from another person’s perspective

Children engage in pretend play and develop more complex schemas (e.g. understanding social roles like “being a good boy/girl”)

Animism – believing inanimate objects have feelings or intentions (e.g. “the sun is happy today”)

Egocentrism – inability to understand others’ viewpoints, such as those of their parents or siblings

Reversibility – difficulty thinking about things in reverse order. They are also unable to understand that if you add or take something away from an object, you can return it to its original state

Lack of conservation – failure to understand that quantity remains constant despite changes in appearance (e.g. water poured into a taller glass looks like “more”)

Thinking becomes logical and organised but still concrete, i.e., linked to real objects and experiences

They can solve problems more systematically and understand relationships between things, though abstract reasoning is still limited

Conservation – Understanding that quantity remains the same even when appearance changes (e.g. the same amount of water looks “more” in a taller glass)

Decentration – The ability to focus on more than one aspect of a situation at a time, rather than being centred on a single feature

Seriation – The skill of arranging or ranking items in a logical order (e.g. sorting sticks from shortest to longest)

Linguistic Humour – The development of wordplay and jokes that rely on understanding double meanings or language patterns, e.g., puns

Children develop abstract and hypothetical thinking

They can:

• reason logically, test hypotheses, and manipulate ideas mentally

• think scientifically, compare theories, and consider multiple viewpoints

• solve problems systematically rather than through trial and error

Examples include understanding moral or political issues or imagining life in other time periods

Piaget has been criticised for underestimating children’s abilities

• E.g. younger children may have object permanence earlier than he suggested, but lack the motor skills to show it

He has also been criticised for overestimating children’s abilities

• Not all individuals reach the formal operational stage, and many adults struggle with abstract reasoning — suggesting the theory is not universal