According to Jean Piaget how are children different from adults?

Piaget's theory of cognitive development holds that children do not simply think like adults with a smaller quantity of the same kind of knowledge. Instead, cognitive development proceeds through distinct stages -- sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational -- each defined by a different underlying structure of reasoning (schemas), built through the processes of assimilation and accommodation.

Applying this to the question: a child in the preoperational stage (roughly ages 2-7) typically lacks the logical operation of conservation -- for example, they may judge that pouring the same liquid into a taller, thinner glass changes the amount, not because they know fewer facts but because their reasoning structure has not yet developed that logical operation. Once a person has developed conservation and other concrete/formal operational reasoning, they approach the same situation differently -- using logical operations that the child's current stage does not yet support. This is a difference in the kind of thinking employed at each stage, not merely a smaller quantity of the same kind of thinking.

Contrasting the other options by what they actually claim:

• Children are dependent on adults while adults are independent -- describes a social/caregiving relationship, not the type of cognitive processing Piaget's theory addresses.

• Adults are much more knowledgeable than children -- frames the difference purely as an amount-of-facts gap, the kind of accumulation view Piaget's stage theory moves beyond.

• Children's thinking is quantitatively different from that of adults -- also frames the difference as one of degree or amount, the opposite of Piaget's structural, stage-based account.

So among the offered options, the description matching Piaget's stage theory is the one identifying a difference in kind, not degree.