Describe Piaget's theory of cognitive development, including a discussion of each of his stages of ...

Piaget believed that children progress through a sequence of qualitatively different stages. The basic processes of cognitive development are assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is when new experiences can be incorporated into already existing mental frameworks. Accommodation is when already existing mental frameworks must be modified to incorporate new experiences. The four stages of cognitive development are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Each stage represents a more sophisticated way of interacting with the world. During the sensorimotor stage, the infant develops object permanence
when s/he realizes that an object continues to exist even when out of sight. During the preoperational stage, preschool-aged children develop symbolic representations, primarily enhanced by developing language skills. However, the child exhibits limitations in thinking like egocentrism, animism, centration, and irreversibility. In the concrete operational stage, schoolaged children master conservationan understanding that the nature of objects does not change even though their
appearance might. In the final stage, formal operations, adolescents and adults develop the ability to think logically about abstract ideas, generate hypotheses, and think deductively.