Preoperational stage: characteristics of this phase according to Piaget

In his theory of cognitive development, Jean Piaget divided the growth of cognitive abilities into childhood in four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations and operations formal.

Next we will focus on the preoperational stage, the second of them, in which aspects such as a very egocentric vision, the beginnings of symbolic thought and the belief that every object is alive stand out.

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What is the pre-operational stage?

The preoperational stage is a stage within Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, happening to the sensorimotor stage and coming before that of the concrete operations and the operations formal. This stage occurs between the ages of 2 and 6 and its name is due to the fact that, when Piaget conceptualized it, thought that children of those ages were not capable of abstract mental operationsHis thinking being highly influenced by how they perceived immediate things.

The preoperational stage presents a few achievements with respect to the sensorimotor. Among the most important are the fact that, as might be expected, cognitive abilities have developed to such an extent that the child possesses skills such as making use of internal images, handling diagrams, having language and using symbols, which will be fundamental in the development of consciousness own.

The main milestone of this stage is provide the child with more representative knowledge, improving his communication and learning ability. They start to use persuasion tools to get what they want, like toys or candy. However, not fully understanding the logic, they are still unable to manipulate the information from in such a way that they make sure to satisfy his desire or make others see his point of sight.

As the child grows, he experiences changes in the way he understands and captures ideas, while he expresses them better. That is, he builds experiences about what happens around him, and progressively forms a more coherent and logical thought. What's more, they begin to be able to understand that something can represent something else, that is, the use of symbols begins, causing objects to transform, momentarily, into something else (p. eg, a spoon is an airplane).

It is called preoperational because the child is not yet able to use logic in such a way that it efficiently transforms, combines, or separates ideas. He does not understand concrete logic, so he is not able to mentally manipulate information and take other people's point of view.

In the pre-operational stage there are two substages.

1. Symbolic and pre-conceptual substage (2-4 years)

The child uses concrete images to understand the world, but does not yet acquire abstract or generalizable ideas. The words have a meaning based on his lived experience, not based on what has been explained to him without having given him a real example that represents him.

He uses preconceptions, which are closely linked to his sensory experience, which is why he is so It is important for children from 2 to 4 years old to be closely related to nature in order to expand their world.

2. Intuitive or conceptual substate (4-7 years)

The child's mind is dominated by immediate perception. Intuition plays a fundamental role in this stage since it implies the internalization of perceptions in the form of representative images that prolong sensorimotor schemes without rational coordination. That is, the child, based on what he has seen, intuitively dares to generalize what he already knows.

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Characteristics of this stage

Jean Piaget attributed several characteristics to children who are in the preoperational stage.

1. Centering

Centering is the infant's tendency to focus on only one aspect of an object or situation at a time. That is, children who are in this stage have trouble thinking about more than one characteristic and taking them all into account simultaneously.

The opposite situation, that is, being able to shift their attention to another aspect, both in the same situation or object and in another, is decentration and, sooner or later, they acquire it.

Equally, their ability to decentrate varies depending on the type of situation. It is easier for them to shift the focus of attention in non-social situations than in those that are.

2. Egocentrism

Children's thinking and communication at this stage is typically self-centered. By egocentrism we mean that their way of seeing and describing things revolves around their experience, that is, they are focused on themselves.

Thus, preoperational children assume that what they see, hear, and feel is also being seen, heard, and felt by others.

3. Play

Although children from 2 to 7 years old play, their way of doing it is in parallel. That is, they play often, and several children can even play in the same room. However, they do not interact, each is absorbed in his things and rarely play collectively.

Although it is normal for parents to try to motivate their children to play with other children, the truth is that According to Piaget, it is normal for these ages to play without sharing or creating any bond with other children of the same age.. This would be because children still do not understand the ability to speak or the rules by which it is governed.

4. Symbolic representation

Symbolic representation is the ability to perform an action, either through words or using objects, to represent something else. Language is the pinnacle of symbolic representation since by means of phonemes and graphemes we are capable of representing objects, ideas and actions.

Although important, Piaget considers that it is not language that facilitates cognitive development, but rather there would be an inverse relationship. That is, it would be the normative cognitive development itself that would promote the development of language and its use as symbolic representation.

5. Symbolic game

Related to the capacity for symbolic representation, preoperational children are able to play something that they are not, like superheroes, firefighters, doctors... That is, they can symbolically represent being other people.

They are also able to do this with objects, such as taking a broom and pretending to be a horse. Objectively, it is clear that it is a broom, and the child understands it, but also, with the intention of having fun, turns it into the animal's mind and pretends to ride it. It is also at this age that children can make up an imaginary friend.

In symbolic play, infants advance in their knowledge of how the world works. How are people, objects and the actions they can perform. Thus, they build increasingly sophisticated representations of the world from their experiences. As the symbolic play increases, the more the egocentric vision diminishes.

6. Animism

Animism is the belief that inanimate objects, such as toys, pencils, cars or any other have human feelings and intentions. That is to say, according to Piaget, the child of the preoperational stage considers that the natural world is alive, is conscious and has a purpose.

Within this characteristic, Piaget detected four stages:

The first goes from 4 to 5 years old, being one in which the child believes that almost everything has life and has a purpose.

During the second stage, between the ages of 5 and 7, he only considers objects that move to be alive and attributes a purpose to them.

The third, between 7 and 9 years, the child only considers objects that move spontaneously as alive.

The last stage goes from 9 and 12 years, and based on what he has learned both from his family environment and from school the child understands that only plants and animals have life.

7. Artificialism

Artificialism is the fact that pre-operational children think that aspects of the environment such as clouds, stars, animals or any other are manufactured by people. It is a very normal characteristic at these ages, a mixture of not yet knowing how the world works and their interest in the natural world.

8. Irreversibility

Irreversibility is the fact that preoperational children are unable to reverse the directionality of a sequence of events to its starting point. That is, after having done a series of actions, for example, with Lego pieces or any other similar type of toy, children would not be able to do the reverse steps to get back to the same point where they were at the beginning.

The three mountains experiment

Piaget wanted to see at what ages infants continued to have a self-centered view of reality. To do this, in collaboration with the psychologist Bärbel Inhelder in 1956 he applied the experiment of the three mountains, which consists of presenting children with a model in which there are three mountains. In one, its summit is snow-covered, in another there is a little house at the top and in the third there is a cross at the top.

Piaget and Inhelder's premise was that if the child has an egocentric perspective, he will assume that others see the same perspective that he has of the mountains. On the other hand, if the child has overcome egocentricity, she will be able to understand that others do not have to see exactly the same as him, and she will know how to indicate what they are seeing. Thus, the main objective of Piaget and Inhelder was to see from what age children were able to focus their attention and indicate what others might see.

The method was simple. The child subject of the experiment was shown the model and told that he could walk around and pry a little about what he saw. After a while, the child was taken and made to sit in a chair so that he would have a static view of the model. Then he would hold a doll that was placed in various positions on the table.

Once this was done, the child was presented with several photographs of the mountains, taken from different positions.. The task was for the child to indicate which photograph he showed the same perspective as he was viewing the doll. Thus, if the child pointed to the photograph that corresponded to the same vision of him, the child was still self-centered. Instead, if he indicated what the doll saw and got it right, then it was a sign that he had overcome the self-centered view of him.

After having carried out the experiment, Piaget and Inhelder discovered that 4-year-olds had an almost always egocentric vision, given they used to indicate the image that represented what they saw themselves and showed no signs of being aware of the doll seeing something different. It was from the age of 6 that children began to be seen who were able to understand that what the doll saw was different, although they were rarely right. Those who did get it right were almost always children from 7-8 years old.

Criticism of Piaget: The Problem of Police Figures

But despite the findings of Piaget and Inhelder in 1956, Martin Hughes argued in 1975 that this experiment did not make sense to children because it was difficult for them to understand.. It was too complicated for infants of these ages to have to match their own visual perspective with those shown in the photographs and pretend to assume what the doll was seeing.

Based on this, Hughes came up with a task that he had that was easier for children to understand. He showed the infants a model that comprised two walls that intersected perpendicularly, forming a Greek cross that had four corners. For the experiment he also used three dolls, two of them were of policemen and one of a thief.

First, a police figure is placed in various positions, and the children are asked to select the same figure. The purpose of this was to ensure that the child understood what was being asked of him, since at such an early age it may be that the problem is not having an egocentric vision, but not fully understanding the language spoken. In case the child made mistakes, he explained the task to him again and tried again. Interestingly few made mistakes in the early rehearsals.

Once it was verified that the children understood the experiment, the experiment itself was started. Hughes introduced a second police figure, placing it at the end of two walls. The child was asked to take the robber doll and hide it from both policemen, that is, he had to take into account two different points of view.

The sample Hughes worked with ranged from 3 to 5 years old, and about 90% were able to give correct answers. Based on this, Hughes devised a more complex situation, with more walls and a third policeman, and even 90% of 4-year-olds were successful. With this Hughes He showed that children had overcome their egocentric vision only when they were 4 years old., being able to assume the perspective of the other person much sooner than Piaget had ensured with his experiment of the three mountains.

Bibliographic references:

• Borke, H. (1975). Piaget’s mountains revisited: Changes in the egocentric landscape. Developmental Psychology, 11 (2), 240.
• Piaget, J. (1929). The child’s concept of the world. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Piaget, J. (1951). Egocentric thought and sociocentric thought. J. Piaget, Sociological studies, 270-286.
• Piaget, J., & Cook, M. T. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. New York, NY: International University Press.
• Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1956). The Child’s Conception of Space. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Hughes, M. (1975). Egocentrism in preschool children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Edinburgh University.
• Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., & Bornstein, M. H. (1996). Variations in Children’s Exploratory, Nonsymbolic, and Symbolic Play: An Explanatory Multidimensional Framework. Advances in infancy research, 10, 37-78.