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Born on August 9, 1896 in Neuchâtel (Switzerland), Jean Piaget was the eldest child of a professor of literature in a university. At age 11, when he was in high school, he wrote a short article regarding an albino sparrow. This was noticed by his teacher and jumpstarted his scientific and scholarly career. He is most widely known for his developmental psychology theory. He segregated learning into components focusing more on cognitive development. He also concluded that in order to help a child fully develop, one must not skip or hasten a stage. These stages are permanent and are not culturally different. These stages are also related to one another, with each stage building on the previous stage.

These are the four cognitive levels. First the sensorimotor period, from birth to 24 months. The child is highly responsive to the stimuli in the environment through concrete actions such as grasping, shaking, pounding, sucking, and crying. Children at this stage also begin to figure out that there are objects that are hidden, and thus they are able to search for a missing toy. In the second, preoperational stage, from 24 months to 7 years, children are very visual and very observant, so they get involved in activities that they feel like doing. Cause and effect is learned if events recur. Children begin to learn skills once they are repetitively trained or exposed. At the third stage, concrete operational, 7-11 years old, the child begins to understand and grasp abstract concepts such as emotions and problem solving. At this point children can interpret actions such as why a parent is getting mad and they are able to predict the outcome of a situation. The fourth stage, formal operations, starts at 11- 15 years old. At this stage the child begins to think like an adult with reasoning and abstract capabilities expanding.

Piaget went on to develop various theories but his work on equilibrium and disequilibrium of children is considered to be one of the most substantial. It illustrates the child’s way of learning in that if a child encounters something unusual or new, she tends to go into a disequilibrium stage. If a child is able to experience something that has already been part of her mental imagery or her experience, it will result in equilibrium. If disequilibrium results, the child might throw a tantrum and cry to show frustration. If the child is properly guided, there can be an explanation and equilibrium will be reached faster. If the child is unsupervised, equilibrium may be reached by a recalibration of mental imagery, or equilibrium may not be attained. Some experts interpret this finding to encourage giving small tasks to children so their disequilibrium will not be magnified. Smaller states of disequilibrium can be more easily fixed than complex frustrating tasks.

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