Stages of Learning in Child Development
Jean Piaget is well-known for his work on child development. Piaget concluded a child will pass through four specific stages of learning before reaching adulthood: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. A child will go from learning about the world in a physical, tangible manner to understanding abstract, intangible concepts.
Parents who have a general understanding of Piaget's stages of development can provide an environment conducive to learning, based on the stage their child is currently in. Parents can provide games, toys and other educational activities to enhance their child's learning at each stage.
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Sensorimotor
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Children explore with all five senses in the sensorimotor stage. The sensorimotor stage begins at birth and last until your child is about 2 years old. During the sensorimotor stage, your child will explore the world in a physical manner. A child will do this by using all five sense to explore every object in his environment. He will explore toys and other objects with his mouth and hands to gain understanding of how things work and related to each other. This stage concludes with your child realizing object permanence -- things exist even when out of sight.
Preoperational
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Children begin positive interactions with others by the end of the preoperational stage. The preoperational stage begins at age 2 and lasts until around age 7. Your child begins to learn and understand language as a means of manipulating her world. Pretend play begins during the preoperational stage, as does the understanding that certain objects belong together. For example, your child may put all the red blocks together or keep all her dolls in one basket.
Egocentric behavior dominates the beginning of the preoperational stage -- your child believes the world focuses on her wants and needs and does not use empathy for others. By the end of the preoperational stage, your child will begin to realize the feelings of others matter and logical thought processing starts.
Concrete Operational
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Logical and reverse thinking are accomplishments of the concrete operational stage. The concrete operational stage occurs from ages 7 to 11 and marks the beginning of logical thinking. Your child may also start to understand basic abstract concepts, such as love and happiness. An important concept learned during this stage is reversibility, the idea that things can be worked backwards rather than simply forward. For example, your child learns that his favorite food is an apple, an apple is a fruit and fruit is a type of food.
Formal Operational
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By high school graduation, many children will have mastered the formal operational stage. The formal operational stage begins at age 11 and usually concludes around the age of 15. However, many children will not fully reach the end of this stage until early adulthood.
Your child will begin to think more adult-like, developing more abstract thinking skills and concern about the future. Your child will use more deductive reasoning skills to figure out problems, as well as realize a concept can exist without any physical manifestation. At this stage, egocentric behavior is fully gone and a child will have mastered most developmental skills necessary for independent functioning.
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Edward Thorndike was a U.S. psychologist whose work influenced the later theories of B.F. Skinner and other behaviorists. If youve ever been told that your child will repeat any behavior you reward and avoid any behavior you dont reward, youve been e
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Praise refers to use of positive feedback to encourage children. Praise can either have positive or negative outcomes depending on how an individual uses it, notes Mark Lepper and Jennifer Henderlong in American Psychological Association’s Psyc
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The development in language is a rapid learning process that begins at birth. Children learn quickly how to communicate their wants and needs first through cries and coos, then to more complex sounds. By age 5, a childs vocabulary has increased treme
