Cognitive Development

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to

coordinate existing cognitive structures, or schemas, and combine them into more

complex systems. Upon encountering a new object or situation, the child attempts to

understand it in terms of preexisting knowledge, this is called assimilation. Piaget also

thought that if the new experience did not fit into an existing schema it will try and alter

the schema in such a way that it can incorporate the new information and thereby

extending the child’s perception of the world; this process is called accommodation.

(Cohen 2002). Now with the knowledge of these existing schema’s Piaget divided

cognitive development into four stages: The sensori-motor stage, The pre-operational

stage, the concrete operational and the formal operational stage. Piaget recognized that

children pass through these stages at different rates, however the order of the stages is the

same for all children.(Crain, 1992) You must pass through each stage fully to be able to

move on to the next one. We start of with the sensori-motor stage, which occurs from 0 to

24 months. This stage is basically about infants discovering the relationship between their

actions and the consequences of these actions e.g kicking an object above them and

making it move. In this way they begin to develop a concept of themselves as separate

from the external world. (Cohen, 2002) An important discovery during this stage is the

concept of object permanence, which is the awareness that an object continues to exist,

even when it is not present or visible. By the end of the sensori- motor period, the child

has thus developed

efficient and organised actions for dealing with the immediate environment. (Crain 1992)

A child will continue to use sensori-motor skills throughout life, but the next period,

that of preoperational thought, influences development immensely by the introduct...