Cognitive Development

Preoperational Stage (continued)

• Imagination & Play.


• Internal representation - the ability of a child to make herself represent someone or something else.


• External representation - the ability of a child to make something outside of herself represent something else.


• Egocentrism - children assume the world is the same for everyone else as it is for them.


• Supernatural egocentrism - children believe that all of nature does their bidding.

Concrete Operations:
Mastery of logical and conceptual thinking.  Operations = functions that take place totally in the mind, which help us categorize and understand the world.

• Pattern Recognition.


• Mathematical Operations


• Conservation = the realization that the quantity of something doesn’t change even when other properties (like size or shape) do.


• Reversibility = the realization that any operation can be done in reverse (or undone).


• Causality = the realization that every effect has a cause.