 Module 5. Child Developmental Psycho-Cognitive Stages. Psycho-Cognitive stages has been proposed by Piyaj with the belief that as the child grows his or her brains develop and the child has passed through different cognitive stages why because the child when the child brains develop he or she has been started to learn new things and when he or she is started to learn new things that mean that the thought processing is started to be different. So, if a child is born then the thought process will be in the first two years definitely that thought process will not be in the third or fourth year. So, the Piyajia observed that thing that the children are moving from one stage to another stage cognitively. So, their thought patterns are different. On the same basis, Piyajia gave four stages for any child's cognitive development which he named the sensory motor stage, pre-operational stage, concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage. So, the characteristics of each stage are different and the learning of the child is also different. Sensory motor stage is developed between birth to two years and during this time the child can differentiate himself from the objects. What does that mean that the child sees that the things are acting, they are trying to move them, they are trying to move them, they are trying to develop sounds from different objects and that also makes sense that if a thing is in front of it, it does not exist for too long, that means its existence can be You must have often seen that you tell the children that the thing has gone away from here or in fact that thing is there but you hide it. So, the child has got the idea that this thing is not doing further. So, the thoughts are developing in between birth to two years, then the pre-operational stage which develops between two to seven years is developed. During this time, the child learns different kinds of languages and also tries to represent his ideas through images and words. Now, what is important in this is that all the communication of the child is egocentric, that is, it relates everything with itself and at this time the child does not develop so much ability that he can understand the point of view of the other person and during this time, he cannot categorize a lot of things in multiple forms, in fact, he is usually using a single form. Then the concrete operational stage that is between seven to eleven years, this is the stage where the logical thinking of the child develops and the reasoning of the object starts giving to someone. Within this time frame, the concept of conservation of numbers, mass and weight develops. This means that if you tell him that these are two glasses of water and you have to put it in a big bottle, then he will have this concept that the size of the bottle has changed, that is why these two glasses have gone into it, but the amount of water will remain the same. Similarly, if you are showing him two clay balls and two are in the round and after that you do it in one round and if you do it long, then the child will have this concept that the amount of clay is the same and the shape of it has changed. Similarly, if there are 12 biscuits and you have put them together and if you put them in front of him by separating them, then he will have this concept that the number of biscuits is the same, it is just by separating them and that is why the quantity is more visible. So these kinds of things start understanding the child at that time. And at the same time period, when he classifies things or objects, then he has developed the ability to make multiple dimensions and he can categorize them in different ways than the formal operation stage. This goes 11 years and up and the logical thinking of the child in this stage is developed, he wants to do different kinds of experiments, he thinks of different kinds of hypotheses and he wants to experiment with different things, he wants to prove them, he develops his reasoning and his abstract level of thinking has been developed. He understands that he has to design his future and think about it. That's why his abstract thinking has been developed and at that time he does different kinds of arguments and he understands them and he defines them with reasoning. So that is called as formal operational stage.