Piagetian Approach

• The Piagetian approach in infancy examines cognitive development during early life, particularly through Piaget's theory. It focuses on how infants progress through stages like the sensorimotor stage, where they learn through sensory experiences and motor actions, developing skills such as object permanence and symbolic thinking.
• Sensorimotor Stage


  Piaget’s first stage in cognitive development, in which infants learn through senses and motor activity.
• "Representational ability" is simply how good someone is at creating and remembering mental pictures or symbols of things they've encountered. It's like their brain's ability to store and recall images or symbols of objects and events they've experienced.
• "Schemes" are basically mental or behavioral templates that babies and children use to understand and interact with the world around them. They're like organized patterns of thinking and acting that help them make sense of different situations.
• "Assimilation" is when we incorporate new information or experiences into our existing mental frameworks or "schemas". It's like fitting new puzzle pieces into a puzzle we already have.
• "Accommodation" is when we adjust our existing mental frameworks to fit new information or experiences. It's like changing the shape of our puzzle pieces to fit new ones.
• "Organization" in Piaget's theory refers to the process of grouping separate behaviors and thoughts into a more advanced and cohesive cognitive system. It's like organizing individual puzzle pieces into a complete picture, helping our thinking become more integrated and efficient.
• "Equilibration" is Piaget's idea that children naturally seek balance or equilibrium between what they already know and what they encounter as they grow and learn. It's like a mental balancing act where they adjust their understanding to fit new experiences, helping them move from one stage of thinking to the next in their development.
• Circular reactions are what babies do when they try to do something again and again because it worked before. So, if a baby accidentally makes a noise with a toy and gets attention, they might keep doing it to get more attention.
• "Object permanence" is the concept introduced by Piaget, which describes the understanding that objects and people continue to exist even when they are no longer visible or present. In simpler terms, it's the realization that just because something is out of sight doesn't mean it has disappeared entirely.
• The "A-not-B error," or "AB error," is when babies choose to search for an object in a place where they've previously found it (A), rather than in a new spot (B), even after seeing it being moved there. So, imagine a baby consistently reaching for a toy hidden under blanket A, even after seeing it moved under blanket B. This shows that babies sometimes struggle to realize that objects still exist even if they're in a different spot.
• "Deferred imitation" is when someone reproduces a behavior they've seen before, but not immediately. Instead, they remember and mimic it later on, by recalling a mental symbol or memory of the behavior. It's like replaying a scene from memory after some time has passed.
• Dual representation hypothesis


  Suggests that children under the age of 3 struggle with understanding spatial relationships because they find it challenging to hold more than one mental representation in their minds simultaneously. In simpler terms, it's the idea that young children may have trouble grasping concepts like maps or models because they struggle to simultaneously hold both the representation (like a picture or model) and its real-world counterpart in their minds.
• "Internalization of schemes" is Piaget's final sensorimotor substage, occurring between 18 and 24 months of age. During this stage, infants begin to develop the ability to use primitive symbols. In simpler terms, it's when babies start to understand and use simple symbols or mental representations to represent objects or events in their minds.