Jean Piaget best described the stages from birth to two years in what he called the sensorimotor stage. It is a stage based on infants and toddlers cognitive development. An infant uses his or her senses and motor abilities to understand the world, beginning with reflexes and ending with complex combinations of sensorimotor skills (Boeree, G.C. (2009). During the first four months of life, according to Piaget, infants interact with the world through primary circular reactions.
In their sensorimotor stage, from birth to age 2, children experience the world through their senses and actions (Myers, 2013). 1b. According to Piaget, within that stage, between 1- 6 months, babies live in the present because they lack in object permanence. Meaning, they are unaware that objects exist even when they are not visible at that moment. By 8 months of age, object of permanence begin to emerge because infants begin to develop memory for objects that are not perceived (Myers, 2013).
This is achieved through the actions of the developing person on the world” (Cherry, 2010). Piaget created a theory of cognitive development of children, which breaks down into four different stages: Sensorimotor Stage Preoperational Stage Concrete Operational Stage Formal Operations Stage Piaget’s notion that infants were born with schemes beginning at birth called “reflexes”. Infants begin to use these reflexes to adapt to their environments, and then the schemes are replaced with more constructed schemes. Apart of Piaget’s theory was that what a child processes at a early age are based on actions then as the child gets older the processes later turn to mental operations. Piaget called these processes Assimilation and Accommodation.
Physical development is usually very rapid early on in the child’s development. Within weeks of being born a baby will start to smile and respond to sounds and environments around them. By 6 months as their muscles begin to develop they will reach for and hold objects which they will also put into their mouths. By one year old they are beginning to crawl or shuffle, pulling or pushing on furniture to stand and then cruise using furniture or adult for support. Sitting has progressed to unaided and they are rolling from their front to their back.
What is distinct and important about Piaget's views is that he considered imagination and play to be crucial to enable every child to develop his own sense of self and to foster healthy learning habits. Erikson's Theory Erickson proposed nine stages of life, the earlier of which overlap with Piaget's. Erikson's first stage, infancy, lasts from birth until 18 months and involves a child learning to trust the world and the people in it. Early childhood -- lasting until about the third year of life -- requires individuals to learn their own bodies, skills and existence. During the play age, from 3 until 5, a child learns to create imaginative play situations and imagine new roles.
“Kiddy Thinks” In “Kiddy Thinks”, Alison Gopnik discusses the stages of thinking abilities of babies and young children. Using examples from her personal experiences as a parent and her experiments as a developmental psychologist, she defines these stages and explains the learning processes that take place during them. Through process analysis, Gopnik develops her thesis that babies and young children use the same learning strategies as scientists. Gopnik explains the stages of cognitive development for children from birth to the age of 4 years old. At birth, babies already know they are similar to other people.
In the first several days of life, most newborns lose 5 to 7 percent of their body weight before they adjust to feeding by sucking, swallowing, and digesting. Then they grow rapidly, gaining an average of 5 to 6 ounces per week during the first month. They have doubled their birth weight by the age of 4 months and have nearly tripled it by their first birthday. Infants grow about 1 inch per month during the first year, approximately doubling their birth length by their first birthday. Growth slows considerably in the second year of life (Burns & others, 2013).
For example, children must first learn to crawl and to pull up to a standing position before they are able to walk. Each milestone that a child acquires builds on the last milestone developed. We now know that our brains are not fully developed at birth. In fact, a baby's brain weighs about one quarter (1/4) of what an adult's brain weighs! The brain grows very rapidly during the first several years of life.
(For full explanation on schemas, conservation, assimilation and accommodation and explanations of terminology see appendix 2). He put forward a theory of cognitive developmental stages and theorised that children would operate at a certain level/stage (this would also apply to adults in the Formal Operations stage). His particular insight was the role of maturation (growing up) in children's increasing capacity to understand their world: they cannot undertake certain tasks until they are psychologically mature enough to do so. He put forward a theory of 4 stages of development: Sensori-motor Birth – 2 years Preoperational 2 – 7 Years Concrete Operational 7 – 12 Years Formal Operational 12 Years and up (See appendix 1 for detailed description of four stages) Example of sensorimotor and contradiction of Piaget’s theory Children can be more cognitively skilled than Piaget recognised. For example, babies as young as four months appear to have a concept of object permanence and young children are capable of conservation if given meaningful context.
Piaget’s Stages of Development Jean Piaget was a developmental psychologist who introduced a theory about the cognitive development occurring in stages. The first three stages take place during childhood, with the fourth being the most advanced. The stages were sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational. The first stage, sensorimotor, happens during the first two years of life. The child gathers information about the world through senses and motor functions.