Which characteristic describes Piaget's preoperational stage (ages 2-6)?

• A. Egocentrism
• B. Centration
• C. Conservation
• D. Reversibility

Answer: (A)

Egocentrism is the hallmark thinking style of Piaget's preoperational stage. At about ages 2 to 6, children view the world almost exclusively from their own perspective and have trouble recognizing that others may see things differently. This shows up in tasks where a child assumes a doll shares the same view or knowledge they have, illustrating limited perspective-taking and self-centered thinking that characterizes this stage.

Centration is another tendency seen in preoperational thought, where a child focuses on one salient feature of a situation, but the broader way the child thinks is best captured by egocentrism as the defining limitation. Conservation and reversibility, by contrast, require logical operations that emerge later, in the concrete operational stage.