The Four Stages Of Cognitive Development

Young children do not have the capabilities to think like adults. In fact, this is a misassumption in psychology for many years. Children, on one hand, are competent thinkers in a way that they think in different ways compared to adults. Although they may be wrong when providing an answer, children would not admit it because they have reasons for their wrong answers to questions that involved logical thinking. Incorrect answers indicated the differences between the thinking of children and adults (McLeod). Thus, I want to explore and have a better understanding of the development of children, how they think and learn; as well as how children assimilate things they know with new objects or situation, or accommodate new situation until there is an equilibrium. In addition, I want to explore how children go through the four stages of cognitive development. According to Piaget’s cognitive theory, there are three basic components which include schemas, adaption (assimilation and accommodation), and equilibration. The theory also has four stages of development that is the sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage and formal operational stage.
First of all, to have a better understanding of child development one should recognize that schema is the basic building block of intelligent …show more content…
Every child goes through each stage in the same order - no stage can be missed out. McLeod points out, Piaget did not claim that every child must go through every stage at a certain age because there are some individuals who may never attain the later stages, even though each stage has an indication of age that each child should reach on average. In each stage, the average children face the same challenge by going through the same stage. For instance, in the sensorimotor stage, children (birth to age 2) all explore the world by moving and