Piaget believed that children actively construct their understanding of the world in radically different ways from adults. He further believed that children's minds develop through a series of stages in which they form increasingly complex schemas that organize their past experiences and provide a framework for understanding future experiences.In the sensorimotor stage, 0-2 years, children experience their world through their senses and actions. During this stage, object permanence (and stranger anxiety) develop. In the preoperational stage, 2-7 years, children are able to use language but lack logical reasoning. During this stage, symbolic thought, egocentrism, Irreversibility, centration and conservation develops.In the concrete operational stage,7-11 years, children are able to think logically about concrete events and perform mathematical operations.The formal operational stage, 12 through adulthood, is characterized by abstract and systematic reasoning, as well as by the potential for mature moral reasoning.Criticism - Today's researchers see development as more continuous than did Piaget. For example, object permanence, conservation, and the abilities to take another's perspective and perform mental operations unfold gradually and are not utterly absent in one stage and then suddenly present. Researchers also believe that Piaget underestimated young children's competence. They have found rudiments of various cognitive abilities at an earlier age than Piaget supposed.In many ways, however, Piaget's theory continues to receive support. Despite variations in the rate at which children develop, research reveals that human cognition everywhere unfolds in the basic sequence he proposed.Since you are apparently in good psychological health, according to the psychoanalytic perspective you must have experienced a healthy childhood and successfully passed Freud's stages of psychosexual development. Freud would also say that your ego is fu...
