This is a sequence of animations broken into ten parts on the topic of Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development.
  1. Part 1 of 10:
  2. The on-screen text says "Jean Piaget’s stage theory of cognitive development proposed that children progress through four major stages as they grow up. The first stage in Piaget’s theory is the sensorimotor period, lasting from birth to about age 2. Piaget called this stage sensorimotor because infants are developing the ability to coordinate their sensory input with their motor actions."
  3. Part 2 of 10:
  4. The on-screen text says "The major development during the sensorimotor stage is the gradual appearance of symbolic thought. At the beginning of this stage, infants aren’t thinking as much as they are responding to stimuli. But by the end of the stage, they can use symbols to represent objects, such as a mental image of a favorite toy. The key to this transition is the acquisition of the concept of object permanence, which develops when a child recognizes that objects continue to exist even when they are no longer visible."
  5. Part 3 of 10:
  6. The on-screen text says "If you show a 3-month-old child an eye-catching toy and then cover the toy with a pillow, the child will not attempt to search for the toy because the child does not understand that the toy continues to exist when it is out of sight. Children gradually acquire the concept of object permanence between 4 and 18 months of age. Once children realize that disappearing objects can continue to exist, they begin to use mental images to represent absent objects."
  7. Part 4 of 10:
  8. The on-screen text says "The second stage in Piaget’s theory is the preoperational period, which lasts roughly from age 2 to age 7. Although progress in symbolic thought continues, Piaget emphasized the shortcomings in preoperational thought. One such shortcoming is the lack of conservation—Piaget’s term for the understanding that physical quantities remain constant in spite of changes in their shape or appearance."
  9. Part 5 of 10:
  10. The on-screen text says "Here is a simple problem that Piaget used to assess whether children could conserve volume. A child is shown two similar beakers that contain the same amount of water. After agreeing that the two beakers contain the same amount of water, the child observes as the water from one of the beakers is poured into a taller and thinner beaker. The child is then asked whether the two differently shaped beakers still contain the same amount of water. Preoperational children tend to believe that the taller beaker with the higher waterline has more water."
  11. Part 6 of 10:
  12. The on-screen text says "Piaget believed that preoperational children have difficulties with conservation problems because of centration and irreversibility in their thinking. Centration is the tendency to focus on just one feature of a problem, such as the height of the waterline, while neglecting other important aspects. Irreversibility is the inability to envision reversing an action. Preoperational children can’t mentally “undo” something, such as imagining pouring water from the tall beaker back into the original beaker."
  13. Part 7 of 10:
  14. The on-screen text says "Another aspect of preoperational thinking is egocentrism—a limited ability to take another person’s viewpoint. For example, imagine that you are the adult seated at this table and you ask the preschooler depicted here to select the drawing that shows how the “mountains” on this table look to you. Most preoperational children pick the drawing that shows how the mountains look to them because they think everyone else shares their perspective."
  15. Part 8 of 10:
  16. The on-screen text says "The third stage in Piaget’s theory is the concrete operational period, lasting from about age 7 to 11. Piaget called this stage concrete operations because children can perform operations only on mental images of tangible objects and actual events. Among the operations that children master during this stage are reversibility and decentration. The newfound ability to coordinate several aspects of a problem leads to a gradual mastery of conservation as it applies to number, length, mass, and area. "
  17. Part 9 of 10:
  18. The on-screen text says "Here is a problem that Piaget used to see the effects of decentration. A child is told that a farmer has nine cows and six pigs. The child is then asked whether the farmer has more cows or more animals. Most preoperational children answer that there are more cows because they cannot handle problems that require them to focus on two levels of classification. However, children in the concrete operational period can handle hierarchical classification."
  19. Part 10 of 10:
  20. The on-screen text says "The fourth stage in Piaget’s theory is the formal operational period, which begins around 11 years of age. In this stage, children begin to apply their operations to abstract concepts in addition to concrete objects. During this stage, youngsters come to enjoy the contemplation of abstract concepts such as justice, love, and free will. Thought processes gradually become more systematic, logical, and reflective."
  21. End of animated sequence.