The Importance of Imitation in Early Child Development? Essay

Piaget was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development. Piaget’s work includes a detailed observational study of cognition in children. Piaget showed that young children think in different ways to adults. According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent knowledge is based.

Jean Piaget developed his theory of cognitive development to show how humans develop intelligence. The first stage in Piaget’s theory is the sensorimotor period which lasts from birth to around the age of two. In this stage infants begin to develop their intelligence by interacting with the world around them. One of the primary way infants interact with the world is though natural reflexes, which exist cross-cultural, and by physically and visually observing the world around them. In the film all the infants are shown growing and learning from what are very different environments, but each child is still learning the same lessons through their environment. One moment in the film this is shown is when the infants are playing with toys, specifically a crib mobile. While not every child has a crib or a mobile as we think of one in western culture, the film cuts between each child playing with some form of toy that either hangs above their sleeping area or is held by a parent or sibling. Another part of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage is the development of habits. The film shows these habits forming in all the infants in simple ways, Panijao reaching for something or Hattie reaching for a finger to place in her mouth. The film shows that despite the infants developing in different environments and cultures they still grow and learn in much

I handed my infant niece, Harper, a set of keys, thinking she would shake them and giggle at the noise they made. I thought this because in Piaget’s developmental stage, sensorimotor, it states that infants learn from experimenting and their main focus is what is happening in that very moment. My prediction was correct. As soon as I held the keys in front of her she began to reach for them. Then once I handed the keys to her, she rattled them making a clanging noise.

Cognitively, the way infants process information undergoes rapid changes during the infant’s first year. For instance, the Piagetian theory of cognitive development includes (1) the sensorimotor stage in which infants, through trial an error, build their understanding of things around the world (e.g. imitation of familiar behaviour); (p. 203, Chapter 6); (2) building schemas (e.g. a 5 month old child can move or drop an object fairly rigidly, whereas an older child can do the same action but with more intentional and creative movement);(p. 202, Chapter 6) and (3) the concept of object permanence (e.g. an infant knows that an object exists even though it is hidden encourages the child’s perceptual skills and awareness of the objects ‘realness’ in the world (p.

I enjoyed learning about Piaget’s beliefs that infants are smart and active learners who adapt to experience. He theorizes there are four distinct periods of cognitive

| Piaget's second stage of cognitive development in which the preschool child learns to use language as a means of exploring the world

Today’s child development system, in many ways, has been heavily influenced by the work of Jean Piaget. We can observe the use of his ideas in a wide range of facilities and environments. Infant’s abilities vary incredibly between birth to two years. These differences can be found even in the period of a month. Piaget was intrigued by these differences; therefore, he used his vast knowledge on children to divide development into six stages known as Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage. Throughout his observations he used children that he spent a large amount of time with, his very own children.

Piaget believe that children are active thinkers. He recognized that the mind develops through a series of irreversible stages. He also acknowledged that a child’s maturing brain builds schemas that are constantly assimilating and accommodating to the world around them. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is split into four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The sensorimotor stage occurs from birth to nearly two years of age. At this stage, infants learn about the world around them by sensing it and interacting within it. It is also in this stage that the idea of object permanence develops, that is, the awareness that things continue to exist even when they are not being observed. In my personal life, I am certain that in this stage of development I would have enjoyed peek-a-boo, because if I didn’t see it, to my developing mind, it wasn’t there at all. The second stage, preoperational, lasts from two years of age to seven years of

Piaget stated that from birth to age 2, an infant’s knowledge of the world is limited to their sensory perceptions and motor activities, thus the child learns about him/herself and his/her environment through motor and reflex actions. Thought derives from sensation and movement. The child learns that he/ she is separate from his/her environment and that aspects of his/ her environment, the parents or favourite toy, continue to exist even though they may be outside the

This paper is going to carry out a literature review on cognitive development in infants. The paper will review cognitive development in infants at different stages. Effects of early experience on mental development in infants will also be discussed. The research question and the hypothesis of the research will also be given.

Successful levels and stages of development are majorly associated with the increasing efficiency and memory capacity. These explain a progression to higher stages and individual differences which increases by same age persons and cognitive performance. Research indicates that the performance of children at a given age is changeable from domain to domain such as the understanding of social, mathematical, and spatial concepts that it is impossible to place the child in a single stage. This level involves processes that define the volume and kind of information that the individual child can process. For example, reflexes arise before birth and are still present in newborns. Sometimes, prenatal development and birth complications may also be connected to neurodevelopmental disorders. Young children react to various motivations in various ways (Damon & Lerner, 2006). For example infants’ sight blurry in early stages improves over time.

Piaget claims that during theinitial Sensorimotor period a child's cognitive system is prominently limited to motor reflexes, which in turn is built apron to develop more sophisticated procedures. They learn to expand their activities to a variety situations ultimately increasing them via lengthy chains of behaviour. It is here that children begin to understand object permanence and construct their view of reality this is important as it is the foundation

In the first, or sensorimotor, stage (birth to two years), knowledge is gained primarily through sensory impressions and motor activity. Through these two modes of learning, experienced both separately and in combination, infants gradually learn to control their own bodies and objects in the external world. Toward the end of Piaget¡¦s career, he brought about the idea that action is actually the primary source of knowledge and that perception and language are more secondary roles. He claimed that action is not random, but has organization, as well as logic. Infants from birth to four months however, are incapable of thought and are unable to differentiate themselves from others or from the environment. To infants, objects only exist when they are insight

Several years ago, an insightful and profound man, Jean Piaget, established a theory of cognitive growth during childhood. This theory was viewed as a major model for understanding the intricate steps of mental development from the thinking to understanding for a child. This theory also gave rise to the mentality that cognitive processes during childhood are not minuscule versions of adults but rather an irrational yet unique process with its own rules. Even though Piaget’s theory seems quite reasonable and logical, under the light of recent speculation his theory has been widely challenged. However, Piaget’s theory holds great impact in today’s psychology.

The first stage of Piaget’s development theory is the sensorimotor stage which takes place in children most commonly 0 to 2 years old. In this stage, thought is developed through direct physical interactions with the environment. Three major cognitive leaps in this stage are the development of early schemes, the development of goal-oriented behavior, and the development of object permanence. During the early stages, infants are only aware of what is immediately in front of them. They focus on what they