The Sensorimotor Stage of Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget suggests that development in children occurs in four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational.

Beginning with cognitive skill, babies have an innate ability to not only make facial expressions of their desires but also

Extending from birth to one month, the first stage is known as reflexive schemes. This stage emphasizes the reflexes newborns are born with that allow for

When looking at the cognition infancy stage of birth to age 2 that is considered the sensorimotor stage. Within the sensorimotor stage children are learning though observation

In Piaget's first stage of development, the sensorimotor period, which occurs from birth until the age of two, deals with infants discovering the world through their five senses; the infants learn also through applying their motor skills and polishing them. They can also only distinguish things that are present--which are able to be seen, touched, or heard--and ends when the infant can create mental representations in their minds of those objects.

The first stage is called the Sensorimotor stage. It occupies the first two years of a child's life, from birth to 2 years old. It is called the Sensorimotor stage because in it children are occupied with sensing things and moving them. From these activities they learn what makes things happen, what the connections are between actions and their consequences. They learn to grasp and hold and what happens when they let go.

The second sub-stage is primary circular reactions that occur around one to four months of age. In this stage infants start to organize schemes for sensory and motor activities, actions are voluntarily repeated, but the infant actions are still centered on bodily experiences and instinct satisfaction. The third sub-stage is when the baby starts to focus on the external world and secondary circular reactions; this happens around four to eight months. Babies also develop schemes for repeating actions with interesting effects on things and people in the world during this sub-stage. The fourth sub-stage is coordinating the secondary circular reactions around eight to twelve months. In this stage infants can organize a series of mental structures for various actions and develop intentionality of behavior, they can separate schemes for means and ends, and facilitate the accomplishment of simple goals. The fifth sub-stage is when the external-oriented attention generates and tertiary circular reactions, this is from twelve to eighteen months. Around this time infants grow into toddlers and they seek discovery of new information about how things and people work. The final/sixth sub-stage is pretty important and several development milestones occur, this is eighteen to twenty four months. In this sub-stage object permanence is acquired and toddlers understand objects continue to exist independent from self-generated actions and sensory experiences. (Petrill,

I will be using the movie Look Who’s Talking to give examples of Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggest children develop learning skills through four stages of mental development. The child moves on to the next stage once he/she has developed the learning skills of that stage. The first stage is the sensorimotor stage and it is broken down into six substages. During these stages a baby is adapting to the new world around them through different reflexes like the sucking reflex. For instance, Mikey (the baby) is in the nursery sucking on his pacifier quietly while the other babies around him are crying because their pacifier fell out of their mouths. Mikey’s thoughts are he needs to find his own place. The next substage starts at about two months old and this is called primary circular reaction which means the baby does repetition of enjoyable actions that focuses on the infant’s own body. An example is when Mickey is at home, with his mommy, sitting in his chair, watching his fingers as he wiggles them and he is saying “out, down, in, out,” then he says “well we got that.” The third substage is secondary circular reactions, it starts around four to eight months old and this is when the baby now notices the environment around him. For example, when Mickey and James ( cab driver and friend) are visiting his grandfather, Mikey takes notice of the grandfather’s big eyebrows and ask “what are those hairy jobs

These reflexes eventually develop into higher and more complex mental activities like controlling the reflexes and using this new control to manipulate surrounding objects in the environment. Reflexes are biological and they are not cognitively understood. The cognitive understanding of concepts doesn’t occur until around the age of 7 – 12 years of age. The Piaget’s theory identifies four developmental stages and the processes by which children progress through them.

The primary circular reaction is the focus on the infant’s own body rather than on the external environment, it usually lasts from one to four months of age. Whereas secondary circular reaction is where the patterns of activity are repeated because of the effect on the environment, this stage lasts from four to eight months. The tertiary circular reaction is the “purposeful adaptations of established schemes to specific situations.” This stage last from 12 to 18 months.

Jean Piaget came up with the theory of cognitive development, which is basically the way that a child learns and thinks. Spodek and Saracho (1994) quoted one of Piaget 's articles that stated a child 's system of thought develops through a series of stages, common to all children of all cultures. Piaget 's theory is broken down into four stages; Sensorimotor stage, Preoperational stage, Concrete Operational stage and Formal Operations stage. The first stage, Sensorimotor, is applied from birth to the age of two. Infants use their sensory systems and reflexes, in time the child

Jean Piaget is considered to be very influential in the field of developmental psychology. Piaget had many influences in his life which ultimately led him to create the Theory of Cognitive Development. His theory has multiple stages and components. The research done in the early 1900’s is still used today in many schools and homes. People from various cultures use his theory when it comes to child development. Although there are criticisms and alternatives to his theory, it is still largely used today around the world.

For this paper I will be exploring Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget, theorized that children progress through four key stages of cognitive development that change their understanding of the world. By observing his own children, Piaget came up with four different stages of intellectual development that included: the sensorimotor stage, which starts from birth to age two; the preoperational stage, starts from age two to about age seven; the concrete operational stage, starts from age seven to eleven; and final stage, the formal operational stage, which begins in adolescence and continues into adulthood. In this paper I will only be focusing on the

In the sensorimotor stage the child discovers the environment through physical actions such as sucking, grabbing, shaking and pushing. During these first two years of life children realize objects still exist, even if it is out of view. This concept is known as object permanence. Children in the preoperational stage develop language skills, but may only grasp an idea with repeated exposure. As Piaget describes in the next stage, children draw on knowledge that is based on real life situations to provide more logical explanations and predictions. Lastly, in the formal operational stage children use higher levels of thinking and present abstract ideas.

Jean Piaget, a cognitivist, believed children progressed through a series of four key stages of cognitive development. These four major stages, sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational, are marked by shifts in how people understand the world. Although the stages correspond with an approximate age, Piaget’s stages are flexible in that if the child is ready they can reach a stage. Jean Piaget developed the Piagetian cognitive development theory. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development proposes that a child’s intellect, or cognitive ability, progresses through four distinct stages. The emergence of new abilities and ways of processing information characterize each stage. Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of mental development. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence.