<P> Through his study of the field of education, Piaget focused on two processes, which he named assimilation and accommodation . To Piaget, assimilation meant integrating external elements into structures of lives or environments, or those we could have through experience . Assimilation is how humans perceive and adapt to new information . It is the process of fitting new information into pre-existing cognitive schemas . Assimilation in which new experiences are reinterpreted to fit into, or assimilate with, old ideas . It occurs when humans are faced with new or unfamiliar information and refer to previously learned information in order to make sense of it . In contrast, accommodation is the process of taking new information in one's environment and altering pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the new information . This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to deal with a new object or situation . Accommodation is imperative because it is how people will continue to interpret new concepts, schemas, frameworks, and more . Piaget believed that the human brain has been programmed through evolution to bring equilibrium, which is what he believed ultimately influences structures by the internal and external processes through assimilation and accommodation . </P> <P> Piaget's understanding was that assimilation and accommodation cannot exist without the other . They are two sides of a coin . To assimilate an object into an existing mental schema, one first needs to take into account or accommodate to the particularities of this object to a certain extent . For instance, to recognize (assimilate) an apple as an apple, one must first focus (accommodate) on the contour of this object . To do this, one needs to roughly recognize the size of the object . Development increases the balance, or equilibration, between these two functions . When in balance with each other, assimilation and accommodation generate mental schemas of the operative intelligence . When one function dominates over the other, they generate representations which belong to figurative intelligence . </P> <P> In his theory of Cognitive development, Jean Piaget proposed that humans progress through four developmental stages: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational period . The first of these, the sensorimotor stage "extends from birth to the acquisition of language ." In this stage, infants progressively construct knowledge and understanding of the world by coordinating experiences (such as vision and hearing) with physical interactions with objects (such as grasping, sucking, and stepping). Infants gain knowledge of the world from the physical actions they perform within it . They progress from reflexive, instinctual action at birth to the beginning of symbolic thought toward the end of the stage . </P> <P> Children learn that they are separate from the environment . They can think about aspects of the environment, even though these may be outside the reach of the child's senses . In this stage, according to Piaget, the development of object permanence is one of the most important accomplishments . Object permanence is a child's understanding that an object continues to exist even though they cannot see or hear it . Peek - a-boo is a game in which children who have yet to fully develop object permanence respond to sudden hiding and revealing of a face . By the end of the sensorimotor period, children develop a permanent sense of self and object and will quickly lose interest in Peek - a-boo . </P>

What are the four stages of cognitive development proposed by piaget
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