Final answer:
Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development explores how children gather and organize information through various distinct stages, differing from Freud's and Erikson's theories which focus on psychosexual and psychosocial development, respectively.
Step-by-step explanation:
The theory of cognitive development that describes how humans gather and organize information and how the process changes developmentally was proposed by Jean Piaget. Piaget focused on children's cognitive growth, positing that thinking is a central aspect of development but recognizes that children's thinking differs significantly from adults. Piaget identified four key stages of cognitive development: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages.
Unlike Freud's psychosexual stages or Erikson's psychosocial stages, or even Kohlberg's moral stages, which built on Piaget's work, Piaget's theory is exclusively concerned with cognitive processes and how they evolve through distinct stages over the course of childhood to adulthood.