From this he was able to come up with his theory on cognition. Piaget believed that children's minds developed slowly and went through steps in order to become abstract complex thinkers. Three important principles that came out of Piaget's work were organization, adaptation, and equilibration. Organization was the way a child organized their thoughts and experiences. Children formed schemas or theories about how the physical and social world around them operated. Younger children have simpler schemas while older children have more complex schemas due to more interactions with the environment around them. Adaptation is how a child deals with the new information that it attains. This involves assimilation, where the child tries to change the event in order for it to fit a schema, and accommodation, where a child modifies their schema in order to fit the new experience. Equilibration is the striving for a balance between assimilation and accommodation. With these two processes helping each other reach this balance the child is able to cognitively grow (Papalia et al, 2001, pg. 38). .
Piaget came up with different stages that described how a child's mind develops. The stages are Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational, and Formal Operational. The Sensorimotor stage takes place from birth to two years of age. This stage is often characterized by six events that occur, which are the exercise of reflexes, primary circular reactions, secondary circular reactions, coordination of secondary schemata and application to new situations, tertiary circular reactions, and inventions of new means through mental combinations. Exercises of reflexes are most commonly known as the activities that an infant does. "An infant's individuality is expressed by crying, sucking, and variations in the rhythm of breathing and resting" (Maier, 1988, pg. 31). A primary circular reaction deals with voluntary movement rather than reflexes.
