Piaget's theory outlines four obstacles to logical thinking in the preoperational stage of development from ages 2 to 6: centration, where children focus on parts rather than wholes from their own perspective; focus on appearance, judging based on outward characteristics alone; static reasoning, believing things cannot change from their current state; and irreversibility, thinking changes cannot be undone once made. Examples are provided for each obstacle.

1. Obstacles to Logic during the
Preoperational Thought phase
Piaget’s Theory
(Berger, 2017)

2. Preoperational
Thought
• Young children (2-6 years old) do not
yet think logically
• While they can think symbolically
(words and objects standing for other
things), they cannot yet connect ideas
together to better understand reality.
• Piaget listed four difficulties that young
children have with logical thinking:
• Centration
• Focus on Appearance
• Static Reasoning
• Irreversibility
(Berger, 2017)

3. Centration: egocentrism
• Young children focus on part
of a situation instead of the
whole thing. In egocentrism,
they only see things from
their own perspective. For
example, they can only think
of their father as their father,
not as someone else’s son,
brother, etc.
(Berger, 2017)

4. Centration:
conservation
• Another example of centration is
conservation – the young child will
think a longer line of candy has more in
it, regardless of how many individual
pieces are in the line.
(Berger, 2017)

5. Focus on Appearance
(Berger, 2017)
“A thing is whatever it appears to
be”(Berger, 2017, pg. 234)
Examples:
A taller
child is
older.
A child
wearing
pink is a
girl.
A moving
vehicle
with four
wheels is a
car.
A person
wearing
high heels
is a grown-
up woman.

6. Static Reasoning
Things don’t change. How things are now is how
they always were and how they always will be.
(Berger, 2017)

7. Irreversibility
Once something changes, it can’t change back.
Examples:
A child can’t imagine pouring juice back into the container.
A child doesn’t want a sandwich even after mom removes the lettuce because it was already
done.
A crumpled-up piece of paper can’t be flattened out.
(Berger, 2017)

8. References
• Berger, K. S. (2017). The Developing Person Through the Life Span
(10th ed.). Worth Publishers.
• Artwork created by Christina Brummett
(Berger, 2017)