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Piaget's Stage 2 of Cognitive Development

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The preoperational stage, the second of Jean Piaget's four stages of cognitive development, spans approximately ages 2 to 7 and is characterized by the emergence of symbolic thinking. During this stage, children use language, images, and symbols to represent objects and concepts, enabling them to engage in imaginative and pretend play. This symbolic thinking supports children's ability to perform make-believe actions, such as imagining a broom as a horse or their hand as a phone, blending...
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Albert Bandura's observational learning, also known as imitation or modeling, occurs when a person observes and imitates another's behavior. It is a quicker process than operant conditioning. A well-known example is the Bobo doll study, where children who saw an adult acting aggressively towards the doll were more likely to act aggressively when left alone, compared to those who observed a nonaggressive adult. Many psychologists view observational learning as a form of latent learning...
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Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
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During Piaget's concrete operational stage, from ages 7 to 11, children exhibit a marked increase in logical thinking skills, specifically in relation to tangible, real-world events. This stage is characterized by the development of several essential cognitive concepts, including conservation, reversibility, and classification, all of which support the child's evolving capacity for structured thought.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 4, 2025

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
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Rational imitation in preverbal infants.

György Gergely1, Harold Bekkering, Ildikó Király

  • 1Institute for Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1132 Budapest, Hungary. gergelyg@mtapi.hu

Nature
|February 15, 2002
PubMed
Summary

Preverbal infants selectively imitate actions, adopting new methods only when rational. This suggests infant imitation is an interpretive process, not just mimicry.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Development
  • Infant Psychology
  • Behavioral Science

Background:

  • Infant imitation is crucial for learning.
  • Previous theories suggested simple mimicry of observed actions.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the selectivity of action imitation in 14-month-old infants.
  • To determine if infants interpret demonstrated actions based on rationality.

Main Methods:

  • Infants observed adults demonstrating novel task execution methods.
  • Infants' subsequent actions were analyzed for imitation fidelity.

Main Results:

  • Infants imitated the demonstrated action only when it was perceived as the most rational way to achieve the goal.

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  • Imitation was not a simple re-enactment but an interpretative process.

    • Conclusions:

    • Preverbal infant imitation is a selective and interpretive cognitive process.
    • Infants evaluate the rationality of demonstrated means before imitation.