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Piaget's Four Stages Of Cognitive Development

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Children grow, learn, and develop as individuals throughout their lifespan. Not only do they physically change, but also they mentally mature. Jean Piaget researched and created four stages of cognitive development to describe how children’s thinking patterns change as they become older (Grison, Heatherton, and Gazzaniga, 2015). He describes their shifts in thinking into sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages. The sensorimotor stage illustrates how infants from birth until two years of age experience the atmosphere around them through the use of their senses and motor skills (Grison et al., 2015). As a result of what they experience, they begin to act intentionally by associating objects with their …show more content…

The formal operational stage connects theories and investigations. Adolescents are able to carry out research, justifying their ideas as well as associate decision making with consequences. From the age of 12 and beyond, they develop as individuals who think critically about the future and retain knowledge. Piaget attributed his developmental stages of cognitive thinking to schemas, or ways of thinking how the world works (Grison et al., 2015). Schemas are essentially “blocks of knowledge,” which enable cognitive activity (Calvillo, 2014). Schemas develop in either assimilation or accommodation. Assimilation is the idea of using existing schemas to experience new objects or situations (McLeoad, 2012). Accommodation refers to alternating or creating new schemas to acquire information or ideas. Children develop more complex schemas as time progresses, allowing them to develop new ways of …show more content…

The law of conservation states how properties of matter remain the same even if they are altered in appearance. A cookie broken in half would appear to have more mass to a child lacking conservation because he or she believes it is actually two whole cookies (Calvillo, 2014). Additionally, if a child is offered either a short and wide cake cone or a tall sugar cone filled with ice cream, a child lacking conservation will choose the tall sugar cone. The child is not likely to distinguish each cone contains the same amount of ice cream. He or she would assume the tall sugar cone holds more ice cream, making it an appealing

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