Self-centric stage takes place among children during

Concept: In Piaget's theory of cognitive development, egocentrism ("self-centric" thinking) is the defining feature of the preoperational stage, roughly spanning ages 2 to 7. During this stage, a child perceives, reasons, and judges situations solely from their own point of view and cannot readily take another person's perspective.

Application: In early-childhood pedagogy (as tested in exams like CTET/UPTET), this self-centric, preoperational period is conventionally bracketed as 3 to 6 years of age -- the early-childhood years before schooling shifts a child toward concrete-operational, perspective-aware thinking. So the self-centric stage takes place during 3 to 6 years of age.

Cross-check: contrasting the other age brackets confirms this by elimination.

• Birth to 2 years of age falls in the sensorimotor stage, where an infant relies on senses and motor actions and is only building object permanence -- before self-centric, perspective-driven reasoning appears.

• 7 years to adolescence stage covers the move into the concrete-operational stage, when children begin decentering -- i.e., reasoning about others' viewpoints -- the opposite of a self-centric orientation.

• Adolescence stage corresponds to the formal-operational stage, marked by abstract, hypothetical, and socially aware reasoning -- furthest removed from self-centric thinking.