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GATE 2024 XH5 (Psychology) – Question 57

Development Across the Life Span · Physical, Cognitive and Psychosocial Development: Infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood · 2 marks · Multiple select

Which of the following is/are correct regarding the pre-operational stage (2-7 years) of the cognitive development theory of Piaget?

  1. Infants develop a sense of object permanence.
  2. Tendency of a child to focus only on one feature of an object, while ignoring other relevant features.
  3. The inability of the young child to mentally reverse an action.
  4. The child can conserve, reverse their thinking and classifying objects in terms of various characteristics.

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Correct answer: (B) Tendency of a child to focus only on one feature of an object, while ignoring other relevant features.; (C) The inability of the young child to mentally reverse an action.

Explanation

In the preoperational stage children centre on one feature of an object (B) and cannot mentally reverse an action (C). Object permanence belongs to the sensorimotor stage, and conservation and reversibility to the concrete operational stage.