ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the changes in thinking and reasoning that occur during different stages of childhood. During his or her pre-adolescent growth spurt, the child acquires a sense of justice, often at the expense of a less idealized and more ambivalent view of parents and teachers. Feeling states, depend on the individual's perceptions and comprehension and these form part of his or her intelligence. While the cognitive style of the under-7s is the most significant for later personality, it forms only one of a series of intellectual transformations between birth and maturity. Children's early telegraphic sentences can convey a wide range of meanings, and their grammatical structure is similar across different languages. Jean Piaget describes four main stages of intellectual development: the sensori-motor stage, the symbolic stage, and the stages of concrete and abstract operations. More serious has been the challenge to Piaget's findings about children's egocentrism, animism and pre-logical thinking under the age of 7.
