Jean Piaget: The preoperational stage (Part 1)

Piaget’s second major stage, the preoperational, begins at around 2 years and spans the next 5 years. This stage builds on the skills learned earlier in life as the child becomes more imaginative in play and recognizes that everyone views the world from a slightly different perspective. Furthermore, the child begins to more capably use symbols to represent objects in the environment. This capability enables one of the most important of all cognitive skills, verbal communication, to emerge. Language development is the most important characteristic of preoperations and is strongly linked to rapidly improving motor abilities. The child becomes particularly adept at verbal com- munication very soon after learning to walk upright unassisted. Walking enables the child more thor- oughly to explore and therefore understand the environment, and the rapidly expanding repertoire of new concepts gained from this increased explo- ration facilitates language. By the middle of the preoperational stage, most children have a highly efficient ability to communicate verbally as a result of this important interaction between motor and cognitive development. Although Piaget generally focused on the cognitive attributes gained in each of his stages of cog- nitive development, in the preoperational stage he emphasized the limitations. In fact, the term pre-operations was coined because at this stage children still do not have the ability to think logically or operationally. This second major stage of Piaget’s theory is subdivided into two substages: preconceptual (from 2 years to 4 years) and intuitive (4 years to 7 years). As mentioned, during the preconceptual substage, an ability to use symbols to represent objects in the environment emerges—for example, having a rock represent a turtle or the word Dad represent a certain person. Obviously, this new skill is critical to language development, but it also enables the child to reconstruct past events more easily and facilitates pretend play. During pretend play, children role play; they pretend they are other individuals and use props to symbolize objects to supplement their play. This play often focuses on various movement activities and con- tributes significantly to all areas of child develop- ment, including motor development. It is believed that movement is enhanced by a child’s pretend play, which may include such acts as imitating a parent or other role model engaged in a favorite movement activity. Piaget believed that the preconceptual substage was characterized by a level of cognitive ability that is primitive relative to adult capabilities. Piaget said that during this stage children’s thinking is flawed by their tendency to animate inanimate objects. For example, children may refer to the emotional state of a drooping flower by saying, “The flower is sad!” This is a fun and interesting way to per- ceive the world, but it is also unrealistic and usually erroneous. Source: «Human Motor Development”-A Lifespan approach (Greg Payne, Larry Isaacs) Recent Articles