| Age Range | Name of Period | Characteristics of the Period | Major Gains During the Period |
| Birth to 2 years | Sensorimotor | Infants use senses and motor abilities to understand the world. Learning is active; there is no conceptual or reflective thought. | Infants learn that an object still exists when it is out of sight (object permanence) and begin to think through mental actions. |
| 2–6 years | Preoperational | Children think magically and poetically, using language to understand the world. Thinking is egocentric, causing children to perceive the world from their own perspective. | The imagination flourishes, and language becomes a significant means of self-expression and of influence from others. |
| 6–11 years | Concrete operational | Children understand and apply logical operations, or principles, to interpret experiences objectively and rationally. Their thinking is limited to what they can personally see, hear, touch, and experience. | By applying logical abilities, children learn to understand concepts of conservation, number, classification, and many other scientific ideas. |
| 12 years through adulthood | Formal operational | Adolescents and adults think about abstractions and hypothetical concepts and reason analytically, not just emotionally. They can be logical about things they have never experienced. | Ethics, politics, and social and moral issues become fascinating as adolescents and adults take a broader and more theoretical approach to experience. |