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The Second Stage Of Development Is Pre-conceptional: For A Mental Age ...


The second stage of development is pre-conceptional: for a mental age approximately 2 to 4 years. Here the direct link between sensory experiences and motor activity are developed into the intermediate process of mental activity, and the acknowledging of symbols starts to take place, which act on the experience and knowledge gained in the first stage, due to internalizing imitations and actions. The child's use of transductive reasoning is evident, where the coincidence of two events, possibly non-related, creates a pre-concept.
This period in a child's development is very dominated by symbolic play, where doll's become babies etc. and direct imitation of what other people are doing. All this takes place with an egocentric nature, as the child is unable to view things from another person's point of view. The egocentric nature also stops the child from understanding what is seen by way of visual perception, another persons angle of view is the same as theirs or vice versa.
Part B of the second stage is Intuitive: for a mental age of approximately 4 to 7 years. Where the mastery of symbols takes place, by the process of mental activity, acting on all experience and knowledge gained in the previous stage. Being very dependent on superficial perceptions of their environment, the development of ideas and understanding of situations are formed by impressions, which are non-reversible. Meaning the child can only comprehend one relationship at a time, this occurrence Piaget terms centering, the concentrating on one aspect of a problem and disregarding the rest. This results in a lack of conservation of quantity, which relate to problems that involve reorganizing a flexible mass such as water in containers. Because the child is dependent on superficial perceptions it cannot work the problem backwards, Child (1997, p.197) outlines the problem of the child realizing of the mass to its original shape by the compensating for changes in the original dimensions. This mental action of reversibility is a central skill that frees the child from intuitive impressions, and enables an appreciation of the change in physical dimensions without change in the total quantity.

Part three of the development stage is concrete operational: for a mental age approximately 7 to 11 years. Where the mastery of classes, relations, numbers, and how to reason takes place. The child describes the environment at the highest levels of abstract reasoning, with consistent classifications leading to the accurate sorting of similar properties, resulting in providing valid concepts. This sorting is referred to as seriation and leads to concrete operational thinking, an essential skill of development.

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