Piaget..... French For??

Jean Piaget is the French psychologist who is responsible for recognising the cognitive ability in children in stages.

These stages are the level at which the children reason:

1) Sensorimotor stage: from birth to age 2 years (children experience the world through movement and senses and learn object permanence) which basically means that children learn that inanimate objects don't disappear when they disappear from view.
2) Preoperational stage: from ages 2 to 7 (acquisition of motor skills) Children learn to grasp language and learn to start thinking for themselves.
3) Concrete operational stage: from ages 7 to 11 (children begin to think logically about concrete events) they start to reason and learn to think laterally.
4) Formal operational stage: after age 11 (development of abstract reasoning). they can see things from a very abstract point of view.

These stages are not necessarily achieved by the children at the suggested age however. Piaget also believes that children are little philosophers and that they learn very quickly.