Which cognitive development theory emphasizes sequential stages in child development?

Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development emphasizes that children progress through distinct, sequential stages in their cognitive abilities. This theory outlines four major stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Each stage represents a different level of understanding and processing information, indicating how children's thinking evolves as they grow.

In each stage, children develop specific cognitive skills and capabilities, such as object permanence in the sensorimotor stage or abstract logic in the formal operational stage. Piaget proposed that this progression is universal across children, suggesting that all children experience these stages in the same order, but may vary in the age at which they reach each stage. This framework has significantly influenced the fields of education and child psychology by highlighting how cognitive abilities develop systematically over time.