The document discusses Piaget's preoperational stage of cognitive development, which occurs from ages 2 to 7 and is characterized by symbolic thought, egocentrism, and the inability to understand conservation. Key features include children's limited ability to see perspectives other than their own and their use of symbols in play and language. Critiques of Piaget's theory suggest he underestimated children's abilities and the influence of specific experiences on their cognitive development.

1. The Pre-operational Stage
of Cognitive Development

2. Ume Aymen
Part – 1: Introduction

3. Piaget’s Theory Introduction
• Full Name Jean Piaget
• Swiss psychologist
• Work on child development
• Theory on cognitive development
• Change educator’s view – How a
child learns.

4. Why is Piaget's theory
important?
• How we understand children's
development and the ways in which they
learn.
• It helped add to our understanding of
children's intellectual growth.
• It gives a clear framework for the ways in
which children at different ages and stages.

5. Stages

6. What exactly is this preoperational stage?
• The delightful stage your child has entered, the second stage, is
called the preoperational stage.
• The name of this stage hints at what’s happening here: “Operational”
refers to the ability to manipulate information logically. Yes, your
child is thinking. But they can’t yet use logic to transform, combine,
or separate ideas.
• They’re learning about the world by experiencing it, but they’re not
yet able to manipulate the information that they’ve learned.

7. Cont…
• During this stage, children build on object
permanence and continue to develop
abstract mental processes. This means they
can think about things beyond the
physical world.
• They also imagine and think symbolically,
and they begin to display this ability
through their language and behavior.

8. When does the
preoperational stage occur?
• Your toddler hits the preoperational stage
between 18 to 24 months when they start to
talk.
• This stage lasts from around age 2 until about
age 7.
• As they build up their experiences of the world
around them, they move towards the stage where
they can use logical thought and imagine
things.

9. Sana
Part – 2: Key Features

10. Key Features
• Egocentrism
• Symbolic Representation
• Understanding symbols and language
• Role of play in symbolic thought
• Lack of Conservation

11. Egocentrism
• “Egocentrism refers to a child’s
difficulty in seeing things from a
perspective other than their own.
Piaget identified egocentrism as a
characteristic of the preoperational
stage, typically observed in children
aged 2 to 7 years old.”

12. Cont…
• Egocentrism in Thinking: Children at this stage struggle to differentiate their
own perspective from others. They believe that everyone sees, thinks, and feels
the same way they do. For instance, if a child hides their face, they might think
others cannot see them either.
• Egocentrism in Communication: Children might talk incessantly about their
own interests, experiences, or feelings without considering whether the listener is
interested or can relate. They may assume others know what they know.
• Egocentrism in Problem-Solving: When solving problems, they might only
consider their viewpoint and struggle to understand alternative perspectives.

13. Cont….
• Experiment by piaget. In this
task, a child is shown a model
with three mountains of
different size and shape. While
child can describe what they see
from their own view-point.

14. Symbolic Representation
• In preoperational stage child start using
symbolic representation more actively.
For instance, A child might use a stick
to represent a sword during imaginative
play.
• Another example is, they can use words
to symbolically represent objects or
ideas like, calling a toy “car” a big red
truck.

15. Symbolic
Representation
• A child uses a banana as a
mobile phone.

16. Understanding
symbols and language
• During this preoperational stage,
children begin to grasp symbols
and language. For instance, they
start associating words with objects
and concepts.

17. Cont….
• Children in the preoperational stage are rapidly expanding their
vocabulary. For instance, They might start associating words with
actions, like understanding that "run" means moving fast.
• At this stage, children often interpret language quite literally. For
instance, if someone says, "It's raining cats and dogs," a child might
take this statement literally, thinking animals are falling from the sky.

18. Hafiz Abdul Wajid
Part – 4: Psychology

19. Sub-Stages.
• Symbolic Function: Sub- stage occurs between 2
and 4 years of age and is characterized by the child
being able to mentally represent an object that is not
present and a dependence on perception in problem-
solving.
• Intuitive Thought: Sub-stage, lasting from 4 to 7
years, is marked by greater dependence on intuitive
thinking rather than just perception (Thomas, 1979).
At this stage, children ask many questions as they
attempt to understand the world around them using
immature reasoning.

20. Symbolic function sub-stage.
• Age 2 to 3: Kids begin to engage in pretend play, can follow simple
directions, and can sort objects into different categories.
Example:
• Try lining up two rows of paper clips in such a way that a row of five paper
clips is longer than a row of seven paper clips. Ask your young child to point
to the row that has more paper clips and she’ll point to the row of five.

21. Cont.…
• A child’s arms might become airplane
wings as he/she zooms around the room.
• A child with a stick might become a brave
knight with a sword.
• Children also begin to use language in the
preoperational stage, but they cannot
understand adult logic or mentally
manipulate information.

22. Intuitive thought sub-stage
• Lasting from 4 to 7 years.
• Children begin to move toward logical thinking.
• For example, if children ask “Why do I have to wear a helmet when I ride a
bicycle?” they are not looking for a lecture on legal issues, but just a simple
“To keep your head safe.”
• Can explain the idea of risk through an everyday example.

23. Parallel play
• At the beginning of this stage you’ll notice that your child plays alongside
other children but not with them.
• Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean your little one is antisocial by any means!
They’re simply absorbed in their own world.
• Actually, they don’t yet realize that speech is the tool to becoming social.

24. Let’s pretend
• As your child develops within this stage, they’ll move from parallel playing to
including other children in games. That’s when “let’s pretend” games
happen.
• According to Piaget, children’s pretend play helps them solidify the concepts
that they’re developing cognitively. Here’s when your dining room chairs
become a bus. Keep an eye out: You may need to referee when your child
and their playmate fight over who’s the driver and who’s the passenger.

25. Conversation
• Conservation is related to centration.
• This is the tendency to focus on only one aspect of a situation at a time.
(Previous Paper clip length example)
• This is because they’re focusing on one aspect only (length) and can’t
manipulate two.
• It’s the understanding that a quantity stays the same even if you change the
size, shape, or container it’s in. Piaget found that most children can’t
understand this concept before 5 years old.

26. Cont.…
• Pour equal amounts of juice into two
identical disposable cups.
• Then pour one cup into a tall, thin
cup and ask your child to choose the
cup that contains more.
• They’ll point to the tall, thin cup.

27. Understanding Accommodation And
Assimilation
• Both assimilation and accommodation are essential to how organisms build
schemas about the world.
• Piaget defined a schema as the mental representation of an associated set of
perceptions, ideas, and/or actions. Piaget considered schemata to be the
basic building blocks of thinking.
• A schema can be discrete and specific or sequential and elaborate. For
example, a schema may be as specific as recognizing a dog or as elaborate as
categorizing different types of dogs.

34. Abbas
Part – 5: Conclusion

35. Critique of Piaget
• Piaget underestimated the intellectual
capabilities of the preoperational child.
• For example, children’s specific experiences
can influence when they can conserve.
Children of pottery makers in Mexican
villages know that reshaping clay does not
change the amount of clay at much younger
ages than children who do not have similar
experiences.

36. Criticisms and Modern Views
• The ages at which skills emerge: Other researchers have also found
that kids can overcome egocentrism as early as age four, which is earlier
than Piaget believed.
• The focus on inability vs. ability: As you might have noticed, much of
Piaget's focus at this stage of development focused on what children
could not yet do.
• The concepts of egocentrism and conservation are centered on abilities
that children have not yet developed; they lack the understanding that
things look different to other people and that objects can change in
appearance while maintaining the same properties.

37. When to Be Concerned
• Several important cognitive milestones emerge during the preoperational stage of development.
Some of these include:
• Age 2 to 3: Kids begin to engage in pretend play, can follow simple directions, and can sort objects
into different categories.
• Age 3 to 4: Kids develop more refined schemas or categories of information, that they use to sort
and understand objects. They also understand past vs. present, have a longer attention span, group
similar objects, and seek answers to their questions about the world.
• Age 4 to 5: Children's cognitive skills become more refined and they are better able to imitate the
actions of adults.
• Age 6 to 7: Kids develop a better understanding of time and more advanced language skills.

38. Importance of understanding pre-
operational stage in child development
• During this stage (toddler through age 7), young children can think about
things symbolically.
• Their language use becomes more mature.
• They also develop memory and imagination, which allows them to
understand the difference between past and future, and engage in make-
believe.