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The Four Stages Of Cognitive Development

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Jean Piaget was the first psychologist to design a comprehensive model for the study cognitive development. This model explained how a child’s cognitive skills develop over their lifetime, which will eventually result in more of an adult way of thinking; or a more elaborate and logical way of thinking. Unlike other psychologists who were studying cognition, Piaget believed that children were not “tiny adults”, who had to eventually access a more complex way of thinking over time. Instead, he believed that a child’s cognition progresses in stages through the process of reorganizing their way of thinking. The four stages of cognitive development, which I will discuss later, stemmed from a child’s need to equal their two process of thinking.
These two processes of thinking are called assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is defined as the ability to take in new information or experiences and connecting them with previous knowledge. Accommodation is defined as gaining new information or experiences that cause a child to modify their existing schemas, or previous idea. However, in accommodation, rather than the child completely making new information; they change the previous schema to make it fit, or accommodate, the new information. By understanding these two processes of thinking, and how they developed over time, Piaget created his four stage theory of cognition development.
Through the understanding of Piaget’s four stages of cognition development, we can contrast

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