According to Jean Piaget, how are children different from adults?

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children and adults think differently in terms of the quality of their cognitive processes, rather than just the quantity or amount of knowledge they have.

Key Points

• Piaget argued that children's thinking evolves through distinct stages, each characterized by different ways of understanding the world.
• For example, young children in the preoperational stage think differently from older children in the concrete operational or formal operational stages.
• The nature of their reasoning and problem-solving changes fundamentally at each stage, not just in terms of the amount of knowledge they possess.

Hence, we can conclude that children's thinking is qualitatively different from that of adults.