The Preoperational Stage

Piaget's Second stage of development is titled the Preoperational Stage. This stage allegedly applies for children from ages two through seven. The child in the preoperational stage has not yet discovered logic. Thereby Piaget argued that without logic the child is yet unable to use valid reasoning: induction, abduction, and deduction.

The child in the preoperational stage, despite a lack of induction, abduction, and deduction is able through the acquisition of language to represent the world through mental images and symbols. These images and symbols are individual interpretations of the world, the child's own perception by way of intuition.

In this stage the child is impelled by egocentricity, so the images, symbols, and people of the world despite being of interest are still viewed through a lens of the child's own perception.

The interest in the world initiates a stage of curiosity where the child questions and investigates the unknown and problems that he/she encounters. The child's own perception is deceived by a lack of experience and where the child encounters problems or questions he/she often makes up own explanations, which are often invalid or delineated by lack of experience and not supported by empirical evidence.