In very general terms, the development of abilities necessary for understanding and organizing the world and including, for example, the acquisition of those required for discrimination, memory and problem solving. Piaget‘s genetic epistemology had a major impact on conceptualising and studying cognitive development, with his functional universals of assimilation and accommodation interacting in the process of equilibration. In more recent times, the theory of embodiment is beginning to have an impact on theorising about the nature of cognitive development: the acquisition of knowledge is attained through exploratory cycles of perception and action that result from a brain interacting with a body and the body interacting with the external world.
See Accommodation, Assimilation, Bourbaki, Category learning; Cognition, Cognitive immaturity hypothesis, Cognitive structures, Constructivism, Cognitive structures, Developmental epistemology, Embodied cognition, Embodiment, Equilibration, Iterative cycle of construction, Méthode clinique, Modularity, Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development, Perceptual development, Reflective abstraction, Sensorimotor actions, Sensorimotor realm, Stage of cognitive development