CURRICULUM GUIDE FOR S.C. TEACHER CADET COURSE | EXPERIENCING EDUCATION, TENTH EDITION
Four Stages of Cognitive Development
As the child grows and develops, he/she goes through four stages of cognitive development.
2. Pre-Operational Stage (Ages 2-6) Language development is an important task of this period and enhances symbolic thought. The child relies on intuition or what seems right. For example, if the child is asked, “Which is more-or are the two worth the same?,” he will probably
pick a nickel instead of the dime because “the nickel is bigger” or the five pennies instead of
the nickel because he reasons that “five is more than one.” There is also evidence of animism,
assigning human qualities to inanimate objects. Children at this age are also egocentric, seeing
the world in terms of themselves. Children can answer “what” questions, but not “why” questions. They can pretend and engage in creative play, which is a step towards use of symbols.
They learn that drawings and words (either spoken or written) stand for something (ex. a dog).
Children at this age also have an understanding of the past and future. However, they usually
center on one problem or communication at a time. For example, if a mother says, “Your father
is my husband,” the child might not understand. A child at this cognitive level might say, “I don’t
live in the United States; I live in South Carolina.”
3. Concrete Operational Stage (Ages 7-11) Children can reason deductively (reason from
the general to the specific or from a premise to a logical conclusion) and deal with the world in
the way they see it. They can no longer be tricked if they can see something literally. Children
still cannot reason abstractly nor do problem solving in their heads, such as mental manipulation. People in this stage of thinking are capable of conservation (the recognition that physical
properties remain the same regardless of changes in their outward appearance) and seriation
(putting things in order). They are capable of classification (categorize, group, and detect relations).
4. Formal Operational Stage (Ages 12 and older) (Mastery of thought)
This is the stage of abstract reasoning. The person can do inductive and deductive reasoning
from hypothetical situations and can perform mental manipulations. He can answer “how” and
“why” questions. A person at this cognitive level can actually “think about thinking” in a systematic way. There are five cognitive processes a formal operational thinker can do better than a
concrete one:
a. Logic (e.g., If all dogs are vicious, and Fifi is a dog, Fifi must be vicious.)
b. Abstract reasoning (e.g., algebra; considering a variety of possibilities)
c. Hypothetical reasoning (thinking of many plausible solutions to problems;
considering “what-if’s” and potential scenarios)
d. Extended thinking or mental leaps (e.g., If I have sex, I might get pregnant, have
to drop out of school, not go to college, not be able to get a good job)
e. Projective thinking (e.g., Once I have completed my undergraduate degree, I am
going to law school; thinking across multiple time horizons)
f. Metacognitive thinking (being aware of and regulating one’s own thinking
processes)
g. Reflective thinking (reflecting upon and learning from actions and experiences)
PAGE I – 3 -10
Theme I: Experiencing Learning
Unit 3: Growth and Development
1. Sensory Motor Stage (Ages Birth- 2) (Mastery of concrete objects)
Children learn through their senses. When they encounter a new object, they see it, smell it,
hear it, touch it, or put it in their mouths. Towards the end of this stage, children develop object
permanence, realizing that an object exists independently of their perception of it.