In which Piagetian stage does a child begin to use language but not yet understand logical operations?

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Language begins to flourish and symbols become meaningful in this stage, but careful, step-by-step logical thinking hasn’t formed yet. In Piaget’s framework, this is the period roughly from ages 2 to 7 when children can use words to represent objects, engage in pretend play, and communicate ideas, yet they think in a mostly intuitive and nonlogical way. They often focus on one feature at a time (centration) and may not see things from another person’s point of view (egocentrism), and they struggle with operations that require reversible thinking or understanding that quantity stays the same despite changes in appearance. A classic example is misjudging quantity when water is poured into a differently shaped container—they believe the amount changes with shape instead of recognizing it remains constant. This combination—language use without corresponding logical operations—identifies the pre-operational stage.