Understanding Piaget’s Stages of Development: Insights into Cognitive Growth

Introduction This report aims to explore Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, focusing on his four distinct stages: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages. Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, proposed that children progress through these stages in a fixed order, fundamentally changing their understanding of the world as they mature. The purpose of this report is to elucidate the characteristics of each stage, examine the implications of Piaget’s theory on education and child development, and assess how these insights contribute to our understanding of cognitive growth.

Main Body Piaget’s theory posits that cognitive development occurs through a series of stages that reflect qualitative differences in thinking. The

sensorimotor stage

, which spans from birth to approximately two years of age, is characterized by the infant’s understanding of the