Sensorimotor and Pre-Operational Stages of Cognitive Development

When a parent is knowledgeable about the stages of development their child goes through, they are better able to address the child’s needs, help them the child in their physical as well as cognitive development. help them to grow into healthy and successful adults, and to identify any needs they may have. In terms of childcare, when choosing the quality care their infant and toddler should receive, parents will know the right questions to ask when deciding on where to place their child and be able to discuss any problems or delays the toddler may have with the caretaker.

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development helps us to understand the developmental stages of a child from birth to 7 years of age. According to Jean Piaget, children are forever processing information and adapting them to their environment. They become “aware” of their surroundings and act according to its demands. You see Piaget, while observing his own children and others, discovered that infants and toddlers learn through exploring and playing. During his four stages of cognitive development, children are constantly learning through a process of assimilation and accommodation.

These two processes relate to the schema or how we organize and interpret situations into groups and categories, because Piaget’s theory holds that because conflict is guaranteed, children assimilate and accommodate old and new information all the time – constantly “updating” knowledge – the child also has to organize and reorganize his way of thinking (Santrock, 2013) – again schema – in order to bring balance/equilibrium.

So how does this work? Through disequilibrium, which is the thing “. . . that causes cognitive conflict in trying to understand the world” (Sa...

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...6 Cognitive developmental approaches, 14e. McGraw-Hill.

Work Cited:

Illinois Early Learning Guidelines. (2014). Retrieved from Illinois Early Learning Project: http://illinoisearlylearning.org/guidelines/domains/domain4/symbolic.htm

About.com. (n.d.). About.com Pyschology. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/piagetstheory/a/keyconcepts.htm

McLeod, S. (2009, 2012). Jean Piaget. Retrieved from Simply Psychology: http://www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html#adaptation

Rempe, E. &. (2013, March 27). Activities Library. Retrieved from Productive Parenting. Com: http://www.productiveparenting.com/aspx/activitylibrary.aspx

Sage Publishing. (n.d.). Chapter 10: Play and the learning environment. Retrieved from http://www.uk.sagepub.com/upm-data/53567_ch_10.pdf

Santrock, J. (2013). Ch. 6 Cognitive developmental approaches, 14e. McGraw-Hill.