Piaget Stages of Development

I agree with Piaget's stages of development with the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, and the formal operational stage, but I disagree with Piaget's theory for the concrete operational stage.  The sensorimotor stage begins from birth and ends at two years old.  During this stage, infants learn through the coordination of their sensory inputs and their motor skills.  Infants also begin to explore cause and effect relationships, and I agree with everything in Piaget's theory of the sensorimotor stage.  Additionally, the preoperational stage goes from ages two through seven, and in this stage, children begin to represent the world mentally and are able to use symbols to represent actual things.  Children in this stage are also only capable of one dimensional thinking, or focusing on only one aspect of a problem at a time.  In other words, the can only perceive the world through one perspective and they are unable to recognize other's points of view.  I think this is true, because it would be harder for a child two to seven to be able to see someone else's point of view.  Lastly, the formal operational stage is from age twelve to adulthood.  This stage allows adolescents to deal with abstract or hypothetical ideas and also allows them to think about what is possible in their life.  I also agree with this stage because and adolescent at this age is now capable of having the maturity to think about things like this.  This stage also allows them a better understanding of the causes of another person's behavior and their perspective.  However, I disagree with Piaget's concrete operational stage.  He says that this stage is from seven to twelve years old, but I think that this stage starts earlier in life for children.  For example, Piaget says that children are able to center on two dimensions of a problem at once and see another view of their perspective.  I think that finding another person's point of view is a main way of teaching children right from wrong, and children know how to behave from an earlier point in their life.  In other words, I think that children are capable of seeing another person's point of view in an earlier time than what is said in Piaget's theory.  Thus, becuase of the different stages in Piaget's theory of development, I both disagree and agree with his observations.

Videos on Piaget's theory:

Sources: http://www.hippocampus.org/