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Sensorimotor period

Infants are born with a set of congenital reflexes that allow them to float in the heavily dense world, according to Piaget, in addition to a drive to explore their world. Their initial schemes are formed through differentiation of the congenital reflexes. The sensorimotor period is the first of the four periods. According to Piaget, this stage marks the development of essential spatial abilities and understanding of the world in six sub-stages:

1. The first sub-stage, known as the reflex scheme stage, occurs from birth to one month and is associated primarily with the development of reflexes.

2. The second sub-stage, primary circular reaction phase, occurs from one month to four months and is associated primarily with the development of habits.

3. The third sub-stage, the secondary circular reactions phase, occurs from four to eight months and is associated primarily with the development of coordination between vision and prehension (aka, "hand-eye coordination").

4. The fourth sub-stage; called the co-ordination of secondary course round modest circular reactions stage, which occurs from eight to twelve months, is when Piaget (1954) thought that object permanence developed.

5. The fifth sub-stage; the tertiary circular reactions phase, occurs from twelve to eighteen months. New means through active experimentation and creativity in the actions of the "little scientist".

6. The sixth sub-stage, considered "beginnings of symbolic representation", from eighteen months to twenty four months. New means through mental combinations considering before doing provides the child with new ways of achieving a goal without resorting to trial-and-error experiments.

Preoperational stage

The Preoperational stage is the second of four stages of cognitive development. By observing sequences of play, Piaget was able to demonstrate that towards the end of the second year a qualitatively new kind of psychological functioning occurs.

(Pre)Operatory Thought in Piagetian theory is any procedure for mentally acting on objects. The hallmark of the preoperational stage is sparse and logically inadequate mental operations. During this stage the child learns to use and to represent objects by images and words, in other words they learn to use symbolic thinking. Thinking is still egocentric: The child has difficulty taking the viewpoint of others.

The child can classify objects by a single feature: e.g. groups together all the red blocks regardless of shape or all the square blocks regardless of color. According to Piaget, the Pre-Operational stage of development follows the Sensorimotor stage and occurs between 2–7 years of age. In this stage, children develop their language skills. They begin representing things with words and images. However, they still use intuitive rather than logical reasoning. At the beginning of this stage, they tend to be egocentric, that is, they are not aware that other people do not think, know and perceive the same as them. Children have highly imaginative minds at this time and actually assign emotions to inanimate objects. The theory of mind is also critical to this stage.

The Preoperational Stage can be further broken down into the Preconceptual Stage and the Intuitive Stage... The Preconceptual stage (2-4 years) is marked by egocentric thinking and animistic thought. A child who displays animistic thought tends to assign living attributes to inanimate objects, for example that a glass would feel pain if it were broken.

The Intuitive(4-7 years) stage is when children start employing mental activities to solve problems and obtain goals but they are unaware of how they came to their conclusions. For example a child is shown 7 dogs and 3 cats and asked if there are more dogs than cats. The child would respond positively. However when asked if there are more dogs than animals the child would once again respond positively. Such fundamental errors in logic show the transition between intuitiveness in solving problems and true logical reasoning acquired in later years when the child grows up.

Piaget considered that children primarily learn through imitation and play throughout these first two stages, as they build up symbolic images through internalized activity.

Concrete operational stage

The Concrete operational stage is the third of four stages of cognitive development in Piaget's theory. This stage, which follows the Preoperational stage, occurs between the ages of 7 and 11 years and is characterized by the appropriate use of logic. Important processes during this stage are:

Seriation—the ability to sort objects in an order according to size, shape, or any other characteristic. For example, if given different-shaded objects they may make a color gradient.

Classification—the ability to name and identify sets of objects according to appearance, size or other characteristic, including the idea that one set of objects can include