re able to be seen, touched, or heard--and ends when the infant can create mental representations in their minds of those objects. In his second stage, the preparation stage, which extends to age seven, the child cannot differentiate between thoughts and conduct, which in turn confuses the child and can make the child feel to blame for the death. During this time, Nancy Boyd Webb says that "the child's thinking is concrete (literal) and sometimes distorts reality to conform to his/her idiosyncratic understanding, despite logical contradictions. Piaget refers this type of thinking as 'egocentric' since the child believes that everyone sees the worlds as he/she sees it." (1993, p. 5) In turn, the child cannot understand the finality and irrevocability of death. They know only about things they have truly touched; they believe that inanimate objects possess life and other human qualities and that an object is the same even in spite of its change in appearance. The following stage is titled the operational period, which last until age eleven, and involves the use of concrete operational thought. During this stage they do not concentrate upon the countenance of objects but are now able to form the images in their minds and manipulate that image mentally. Their logic is still influenced ...
