Developmental Psychology
The Developing Mind: Piaget's Stages
Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development
| Stage | Age Range | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Sensorimotor | Birth to 2 years | Experiencing the world through senses and actions; object permanence develops. |
| Preoperational | 2 to 7 years | Representing things with words and images; use of intuitive rather than logical reasoning; egocentrism. |
| Concrete Operational | 7 to 11 years | Thinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and performing arithmetical operations; conservation. |
| Formal Operational | 12 through adulthood | Abstract reasoning; potential for mature moral reasoning. |
Key Concepts in Development
Object permanence is the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived. Conservation is the principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects. Egocentrism is a child's difficulty taking another's point of view.
Social and Moral Development
Erikson's Psychosocial Stages
Attachment
Early social development is marked by attachment, an emotional tie with another person. Psychologist Harry Harlow's work with monkeys showed that attachment is not merely about nourishment, but about contact comfort and security.
According to Piaget, the concept of conservation is typically mastered during which stage?
The ability to understand that quantity does not change if the form is altered is a hallmark of the Concrete Operational stage.
Correct answer: Concrete Operational
In Erik Erikson's theory, what is the primary psychosocial task of adolescence?
During adolescence, teens work at refining a sense of self by testing roles and then integrating them to form a single identity, or they become confused about who they are.
Correct answer: Identity vs. Role Confusion