Child development encompasses all aspects, including physical, emotional and mental stages. Jean Piaget, a developmental psychologist renowned for his theory of cognitive development, identified four primary mental stages. Mental or cognitive development forms the foundation for the other aspects. Any flaw in the mental stages of your child's development can trigger potential problems in other areas, including learning disabilities, developmental delays or mental illnesses. The Connect for Kids website offers suggestions to monitor the milestones in your child's mental development. Consult your child's pediatrician if you have any concerns.
Sensorimotor
The first of Piaget's cognitive development stages, as defined at the Educational Psychology Interactive website, is the sensorimotor stage, divided further into six phases, which occurs during infancy. With limited, yet developing mental skills, infants learn primarily through their physical senses and interactions. During the latter half of their first year, an infant begins to understand the concept of "object permanence" as caregivers appear, disappear and reappear within the infant's line of sight. Infants gain additional mental acuity as they explore their world through their increased mobility.
Pre-Operational
The pre-operational stage of mental development takes place during the toddler and early childhood years, with two major divisions. Children in this stage grow in intelligence as their memory and imagination capacities expand, and speech and language skills blossom. As Angela Oswalt, a Social worker, explains at the Mental Health Care website, preschool-age children acquire an understanding of symbolic cues, realizing that a picture of an object represents that object, but is not the object itself. Their thought process at this stage tends to be egocentric, as everything is "all about them," based on their feelings, needs and wants. They tend to lack logic or common sense, or comprehension of how their actions affect others.
Concrete Operational
Adolescents in their early elementary school years comprise the concrete operational stage of mental development. At this stage, children begin thinking in a more rational and orderly fashion as they process information. They learn to handle concrete thoughts and symbols, such as those used within math and science studies. At the Contexts website, a collection of videos reveals experiments with kids, demonstrating how they also gain clearer understanding of cause and effect, as well as "reversible" thinking. For instance, they see that whether a balloon is inflated or deflated, it remains a balloon. At this stage, children become more "other" oriented, rather than focusing primarily on themselves.
Formal Operational
The formal operational stage includes adolescents from about the age of 12, through the teen years (and into adulthood). Children in this stage continue to gain logical thought processes, including comprehension of abstract concepts. At the previously mentioned the Contexts website, another video clip shows a child using deductive reasoning, as well as a different child implementing systematic planning. Ironically, children at the beginning of this stage tend to regress toward self-centered thinking, as they become more self-conscious and concerned about how others view them.
