Learning occurs when a child experience disequilibrium which involves either assimilation or accommodation. This process involves schemas which are the basic structure for organising information. Piaget identifies three types of schemas, behavioural, symbolic and operation. Behavioural is the mental representation of physical actions, symbolic is the language based representations of objects and events and operation is a mental action or mental manipulation carried out to solve a problem or to reason …show more content…
He believes that early cognitive development involves processes based upon actions and later progresses into changes in mental operations. This is shown in the 5 stages of cognitive development which are sensorimotor (infancy to 2 years), preoperational (2 to 7 years), concrete operations (7-11 years) and formal operations (11 years and older). In the first stage of Sensorimotor, most behaviours are reflex and instinct, which later develop into goal related behaviours. At this stage, the infant begins to understand that even though something may not be seen, that it still exists (object