Piaget believes that a child can learn through two different ways. Accommodation and assimilation. When a child learns through accommodation, they must alter existing schemas about existing reality to understand the new information. However by learning through assimilation, a child merely adds the new information into existing schemata’s to try to make sense of the new information.
However, when children learn sometimes they can go into a state of internal conflict, or disequilibriation. In order to maintain equilibration, the child must try to assimilate the new information being learned into their mind. Piaget also believed the basic building blocks of thinking to be schemata’s. It is something as specific as recognizing a dog, or as elaborate as categorizing different types of dogs. Schemata’s are important in accommodation and assimilation because accommodation involves the changing of preexisting schemata to adapt to a new event while assimilation is the attempt to organize an existing schemata to better understand events in the external world.
Finally, Piaget uses four different stages to describe the stages of cognitive development in children. The first stage, sensorimotor, begins at birth and lasts until 18 months-2 years of age. This stage is mainly characterized as when infants learn about object permanence, the fact that an object remains, even after it cannot be seen.
The second of Piaget’s stages is the preoperational stage, which occurs between 18 and 24 months. In this stage, children begin to use language, memory and also can begin to understand relationships between the past and the present.
The third of Piaget’s stages is the concrete operational stage, which occurs between the ages of 7 and 11. In this stage, the child begins to understand symbols, and can manipulate them. They also begin the think less egocentrically.
Piaget’s final stage is formal operations, which occurs from 11 to adulthood. In this stage, the person begins to think more abstractly, and can make connections between abstract relationships and concepts.
