Etapa preoperatorio

The Preoperational Stage
In the preoperational stage a child will react to all similar objects as though they are identical (Lefrancois, 1995). At this time all women are 'Mummy' and all men'Daddy'. While at this level a child's thought is transductive. This means the child will make inferences from one specific to another (Carlson & Buskist, 1997). This leads to a child looking at the moonand reasoning; 'My ball is round, that thing there is round; therefore that thing is a ball' .
From the age of about 4 years until 7 most children go through the Intuitive period. This ischaracterized by egocentric, perception-dominated and intuitive thought which is prone to errors in classification (Lefrancois, 1995).
Most preoperational thinking is self-centred, or Egocentric. According toPiaget, a preoperational child has difficulty understanding life from any other perspective than his own. In this time, the child is very me, myself, and I oriented.
Egocentrism [ 2 ] is veryapparent in the relationship between two preschool children. Imagine two children are playing right next to each other, one playing with a colouring book and the other with a doll. They are talking to eachother in sequence, but each child is completely oblivious to what the other is saying.
Julie: "I love my dolly, her name is Tina"
Carol: "I'm going to colour the sun yellow"
Julie: "She has long,curly hair like my auntie"
Carol: "Maybe I'll colour the trees yellow, too"
Julie: "I wonder what Tina's eyes are made of?"
Carol: "I lost my orange crayon"
Julie: " I know her eyes are made ofglass."
These types of exchanges are called "collective monologues". This type of monologue demonstrates the "egocentrism" of children's thinking in this stage.

According to Piaget, egocentrism of theyoung child leads them to believe that everyone thinks as they do, and that the whole world shares their feelings and desires. This sense of oneness with the world leads to the child's assumptions...