The document summarizes Piaget's preoperational stage of cognitive development in children ages 2 to 7 years old. During this stage, children begin to use symbolic thought and mental representations but still cannot perform logical operations. They exhibit centration by focusing on one aspect of a stimulus and ignore others. They also lack skills like conservation and transformation. Egocentrism is prominent, as they have difficulty seeing things from another's perspective. Their thinking is intuitive in nature as they eagerly learn about the world through primitive reasoning.

1. Childhood
Cognitive Development

2. Piaget’s Stage
• Jean Piaget
• He saw preschool years as a time of both stability and great change.
• The stage lasts from 2 years until 7 years.

3. Preoperational Thinking
• Children become better at representing events internally.
• They grow less dependent on the use of sensorimotor activity.
• A key aspect is symbolic function which is the ability to use a mental
symbol or word to represent an object that is not physically present.
• Still not capable of operations (organized, formal, logical mental
processes).

4. Centration
• The process of concentrating on one limited aspect of a stimulus and
ignoring other aspects.
• Focus on superficial obvious elements
• Button example
• Reason for the error in judgment is children’s inability to master
conservation.
• Conservation is the knowledge that quantity is unrelated to the
arrangement and physical appearance of objects.

5. Transformation
• No skill of transformation.
• The process in which one state is changed into another
• Ice Example

6. Egocentrism
• A thought process that doesn’t take into account the perspective of
others.
• It involves the lack of awareness that others see things from a different
physical perspective and a failure to realize that others may hold
thoughts, feelings and points of view that differ from theirs.

7. Intuitive Thought
• Thinking that reflects preschoolers’ use of primitive reasoning and their
avid acquisition of knowledge about the world.
• Curiosity factor!