Cognitive development during the five developmental stages

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Normal cognitive development during the five stages of development can be effectively outlined using Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. His theory is based on the notion that cognitive abilities are developed as individuals mature physiologically, and have opportunities to interact with their environment. He describes such interactions as the equilibration of assimilation (fitting together the new information or experiences into the child's existing schema or current understanding of the world) and accomodation (new information or experiences cannot be fitted into the child's current understanding, so it either has to alter existing schema or create a whole new schema) processes. It means that when individuals who are innately endowed with certain cognitive abilities encounter a novel stimulus, they experience a state of disequilibrium. It is essential for learning. Learning takes place through Adaptation. It refers to how a child changes over time as it makes sense of the world in which it lives. Adaptation emerges through the processes of assimilation and accommodation. However, through the complementary processes of accomodation and assimilation, they get to understand the novel stimulus. Once again, individuals come reach a state of equilibrium where they remain until the next encounter of an unfamiliar situation. Thus, learning takes place. According to Piaget, learning takes place based on schemata which are the internal representation of the world. They act as a framework on which the child bases its knowledge of its environment. According to Piaget, there are four stages of cognitive development. They are:

1. The sensorimotor stage (infancy): This stage describes the cognitive development of individuals since birth to two years.
During this stage, infants perceive the world around them through their senses and motor skills. According to Piaget, infants will not yet be able to use symbols or images to represent objects which exist in the external world. ...