Spatial Development in Children

Spatial awareness is the ability to understand the relationship between objects in your environment and your body. It begins immediately after birth and continues to mature until about 18 years of age in most cases. Jean Piaget suggested four stages of development in his theory of cognitive and spatial processing that detail the growth of spatial reasoning through the lives of children.

  1. Sensorimotor Stage

    • Babies begin discovering basic outlines, shapes and sizes at birth. They learn and recognize the facial features of parents or caregivers. Objects that are in close range to a baby's body are intriguing and cause the child to reach or grasp to discover more about the item. The sensorimotor stage continues until the child reaches about 2 years old. Children learn about colors, sizes and distances of objects as they experiment with moving their body to acquire the item.

    Pre-operational Stage

    • The pre-operational stage ranges from ages 2 to 7. Children begin to use language and imagination to understand the space around them during these years. They express their spatial development in two-dimensional drawing at this point and are not able to understand that there is another side to the objects they are drawing that cannot always be represented on paper.

    Concrete Operational Stage

    • Children who are between ages 7 to 12 are beginning to develop a more tangible way of viewing objects that are not pictured three-dimensionally. They will draw pictures of objects and understand that there is another side to the object that cannot be seen in the drawing. Kids are familiar with shapes and overall proportion of objects at this age. Generally, children in the concrete operational stage are also more aware of their external environment and are not as self-absorbed as the previous stages.

    Formal Operational Stage

    • When adolescents from age 12 to adulthood reach the formal operational stage, they mainly develop knowledge of abstract concepts. They start to grasp that certain items in their environment exist and are not always tangible. They can use symbolism to represent concepts. While the formal operational stage is typically thought to end around age 18, it has become evident that the development of abstract concepts can continue well into adulthood.

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