Question

Describe Piaget’s cognitive development during infancy.

Answer 1

The first stage of Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development is the sensory-motor stage. During this stage (birth – two years), infants learn about themselves and their world through their developing sensory and motor activities. Six sub-stages of Piaget’s sensory motor stage are:

Use of reflexes (birth to one month) :
Infants exercise their inborn reflexes and gain some control over them. They do not grasp an object they are looking at. For example- Dory begins sucking when her mother’s breast is in her mouth.

Primary circular reaction (one month to four months): Infants repeat pleasurable behaviour that first occurs by chance, such as thumb sucking. Activities focus on infant’s body rather than the effect of the behaviour on the environment. For example- when given a bottle, Jessie who is usually breast fed is able to adjust her sucking to the rubber nipple.

Secondary circular reaction (four months to eight months): Infants become more interested in the environment. They repeat actions that bring interesting results such as shaking a rattle. Actions are intentional but not goal-directed. For example- Benjamin pushes pieces of dry cereal over the edge of his chair tray one at a time and watches each piece as it falls on the floor.

Coordination of secondary schemes (eight months to twelve months): Behaviour is more deliberate and purposeful(intentional) as infants coordinate previously learned skills and use previously learned behaviours to attain their goals, such as crawling across the room to get a desired toy. For example- Nancy pushes the button of her musical rhyme book and ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ plays. She pushes this button over and over again, choosing it instead of the buttons for other sounds.

Tertiary circular reactions (twelve to eighteen months): Toddlers show curiosity and experimentation. They purposefully vary their actions to see results, such as shaking different rattles to hear their sounds. They actively explore the world. They try out new activities and use trial and error in solving problems. For example- When Tony’s elder sister holds his favorite board book up to his crib bars he reaches for it. His first effort to bring the book into his crib fails because the book is too wide. Soon Tony turns the book sideways and hugs it, delighted with his success.

Mental combinations (eighteen months to twenty-four months): Since toddlers can mentally represent events they are no longer confined to trial and error. Symbolic thought allows toddlers to begin to think about events and anticipate their consequences. For example- Jenny plays with her shape box searching carefully for the right hole for each shape, without trying and succeeding.

Other developments in the sensory-motor stage:
Object permanence: It develops gradually between three to six sub-stage. It is the understanding of an infant that an object or person continues to exist even when out of sight. This development in many cultures can be seen in the game of peek-a-boo.

Imitation: Piaget maintained that invisible imitation (imitation using a part of the body that a baby cannot see such as mouth) develops at about nine months after visible imitation- the use of hands or feet which babies can see.