Preoperational Stage: (2 to 7 years)
begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings
Advances in mental representation
Make-believe play / pretend play
After age 2, children pretend with less realistic toys
During age 3, they can imagine objects and events without any support from the real world
E.g. acting out daily and imaginary activities, such as pretending to eat, going to sleep or driving a car.
Include more complex combinations of schemes and children have an understanding of role relationships and story lines in socio-dramatic play.
Drawings
1.5 - 2.5 years: scribbles.
Around 3 years: - first representation forms.
- scribbles become picture.
- can tell what their picture represents.
3 - 4 years: the simplest form that looks human.
5 - 6 years: more realistic drawing.
Egocentrism
Inability to distinguish between one’s own perspective and someone else’s perspective.
Difficulty recognizing another person’s point of view.
Piaget studied young children’s egocentrism by using the three mountains task.
Socializing somewhat reduces egocentrism.
Animism
Children attribute life to objects not alive.
elieve inanimate objects have lifelike qualities, such as thoughts, wishes, feelings, and intentions
E.g. The sun is angry at the clouds.
Failure in Conservation
are unable to understand the idea that certain physical characteristics of objects remains the same, even when their outward appearance changes.
Centration
focus on one aspect of a situation, neglecting other important features
E.g. Tim tells his sister that he has more juice than she does because his juice box has been poured into a tall, skinny glass, while hers has been poured into a short, wide glass.
Failure in Reversibility / Irreversibility
unable to go through a series of steps in a problem and then mentally reverse direction, returning to the starting point.
cannot understand that an operation or action can go two or more ways.
E.g. Children focus on the water as it stands in each glass rather than on the water being poured from one glass to another.
Class Inclusion Problem / Lack of Hierarchical Classification
cannot consider multiple aspects of a problem at one time
override some features
E.g. “Are there more white stars or stars?” Preoperational child responds “more white stars”.