3.2

Piaget proposed that development takes place in successive stages.  In the stages, people move from natural and concrete thinking to abstract thinking throughout childhood and adolescence.  James also proposed this type of progression when he said, “During the first seven or eight years of childhood the mind is most interested in the sensible properties of material things” (p. 72).  James followed up by saying, “It is not until adolescence is reached that the mind grows able to take in more abstract aspects of experience, the hidden similarities and distinction between things, and especially their causal sequences” (p. 73).  The stages that James discussed regarding levels of acquisition of ideas is similar to Piaget’s stages of cognitive development.