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SENSORIMOTOR STAGE

o Infants learn about the world primarily through theirsenses (sensori-), and bydoing (motor).

o The infant explores its world by using its senses (seeing, hearing, and

tasting) and applying its developing motor skills (moving, reaching, andtouching). Hence the term, sensorimotor.

For example:

The baby in the picture is holding a toy. She doesn't know anything about the toy unless

she has a direct sensory or motor contact with it. As she is grasping or shaking the toy,

she now knows how it feels, moves, sounds when she shakes it. However, when she

drops it to the floor and has no contact with it anymore she has no way of maintaining

an internalized representation of the toy. Hence, Piaget says that babies lack

Representational thought ability to think through the use of symbols.

Evidence of representational thought emerges with the concept Piaget called object

permanence.

Object Permanence - Objects and events continue to exist even when they cannot be

directly seen, heard or touched.

The most common way to study object permanence is to show an infant an interesting

toy and then block the infant's view of the toy.

If infants understand that the toy still exists they will search for it and vice versa. No

wonder, babies Can be surprised by disappearance/reappearance of a face (peek-a-boo). Because for them objects that are out of sight are out of mind.

Piaget proposed six substages of sensorimotor thought that describe how

representational thought emerges during infancy.

Substage1 - Birth to 1month

Babies rely on their inborn reflexes such as Rooting, sucking, grasping reflexes.

Substage2 - 1 to 4months

At first thumb comes to mouth by accident. Through trial and error infants learn to

reproduce the event until a thumb-sucking scheme becomes established.

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Substage3 - 4 to 8months

Holding a rattle, an infant may accidentally shake the rattle and enjoy the noise.

Through trial and error the infant learns to reproduce the event until a shaking scheme

becomes established.

Substage4 - 10 to 12months

An infant sees a toy behind a box, pushes the box aside, then reaches for the toy. The

infant intentionally combined pushing and reaching schemes to reach the goal (the toy).

Substage5 - 12 to 18months

A baby drops a ball from shoulder height and watches what happens. The baby then

explores the dropping scheme by dropping the ball from hip height, then from head

height, then from knee height, observing each new result.

Substage6 - 18 to 24 months

A 1-year-old girl would like to open the lid of a box, and to think about this she opens

and closes her hand repeatedly. Rather than work directly on the box, she first uses her

hand motion as a way to think about how to open it. She is thinking about the box

using a symbolic representation (her hand).

PREOPERATIONAL STAGE

During this stage, the use of symbolic thought expands rapidly especially the use of

language. Childrens rapidly increasing vocabularies enable them to represent and thinkabout people, objects, events, and feelings.

o They gain the ability to represent mentally objects that are not present.

o They also begin to draw people, animals, and objects.

o Having, these flourishing mental representations preoperational children even

playfully exaggerate their new symbolic or mental representation abilities.

Symbolic play-children use one object to stand for another, such as when theypretend that a blanket is a magic carpet or a banana is a telephone.

Fantasy play-

in which they pretend to be something they are not (like a tiger or asuperhero) or to engage in activities that are impossible (like having their teddy bearread them a story).

Make-believe playchildren use toys as props to carry out some procedure, such asusing a kitchen set and dishes to pretend to cook dinner, or using a doll to pretend tofeed and rock a baby.

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Egocentrism - Children of this stage experience egocentrism or the tendencyto see

the world of others from their own viewpoints. They assume that everyone else share

their feelings, reactions, andperspectives.

Egocentric thinking doesn't mean the child is selfish or unconcerned about others,

rather the child at this stage lacks the cognitive ability to take another's point of view orperspective. In the child's mind, he or she is the center of the universe.

Examples: A boy assumes that all people enjoy watching Power Rangers as he does.

Mountain Task

Piagets three-mountain problem: Young preoperational children are egocentric.

They cannot easily assume another persons perspective and often say that another

child viewing the mountain from a different vantage point sees exactly what they see

from their own location.

CONSERVATION

Unable to understand that certain physical characteristics stay the same even though

outward appearance changes.

o A preoperational child cannot understand that the amount of liquid stays the

same regardless of the containers shape

o A preoperational child would conclude that the tall skinny glass had more water

because the level of water was higher.

and because ofcentration , the child focuses on only one thing: the height of the

column of water.

And because ofirreversibilty, the child fails to recognize that the process can be

restored to its starting point- that pouring the water back to its original container would

restore it to its original state.

Irreversibility refers to the failure to understand that certain processes can be undone

or reversed.

ANIMISM - This is the tendency to attribute life to objects that are not alive.

Example: A child says, My teddy bear wants a cup of milk too. ; A child begged his

mother to stop the washing machine because the clothes would drown.

Artificialism - This means that children think that natural occurances are human made.

As an example the child think that clouds, the sun, the mountains are all made by

human.