Sensorimotor

• Sensorimotor Stage


  The first stage of Jean Piaget's cognitive development
• Sensorimotor Stage


  • Approx. from birth to 2 years old
• Circular Reactions


  An infant learns to reproduce events originally discovered by chance
• Schemes


  Actions or mental representations that can be performed on objects
• Assimilation


  Occurs when children use their existing schemes to deal with new information
• Accommodation


  Occurs when children adjust their schemes to take new information and experiences into account
• Organization


  Grouping of isolated behaviors and thoughts into higher-order system
• Disequilibrium


  Cognitive conflict
• Children constantly assimilate and accommodate


  As they seek equilibrium
• Equilibration


  Children shift from one stage of thought to the next
• Sensorimotor Stage Substages


  • Use of Reflexes (Birth to 1 Month)
  • Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months)
  • Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months)
  • Coordination of Secondary Schemes (8-12 months)
  • Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months)
  • Mental Combinations
• Use of Reflexes


  Exercise their inborn reflexes and gain some control over them
• Primary Circular Reactions


  Repeat pleasurable behaviors that first occur by chance, begin to coordinate sensory information and grasp objects, turn towards sounds
• Secondary Circular Reactions


  Repeat actions that brings interesting results, learn about causality
• Coordination of Secondary Schemes

  Coordinate previously learned schemes and use previously learned behaviors to attain their goals, can anticipate events
• Tertiary Circular Reactions


  Purposefully vary their actions to see results, actively explore the world, trial and error in solving problems
• Mental Combinations


  Can think about events and anticipate consequences without always resorting action, can use symbols such as gestures and words, and can pretend, transition to Pre-operational stage, learn about numbers
• Representational Ability


  The ability to mentally represent objects and actions in memory, largely through symbols such as words, numbers, and mental picture
• Visible Imitation


  Develops first, uses body parts that babies can see
• Invisible Imitation


  Involves with parts of the body that babies cannot see
• Piaget believed that children under 18 months could not engage in Deferred Imitation
• Deferred Imitation


  Reproduction of an observed behavior after the passage of time
• Children lacked the ability to retain mental representations
• Object Permanence


  The realization that something continues to exist when out of sight
• Infants under the age of about 8 months act as if an object no longer exists once it is out their line of sight
• Until about 15 months, infants use their hands to explore pictures as if they were objects
• By 19 months, children are able to point at a picture of an object while saying its name, demonstrating an understanding that a picture is a symbol of something else
• Dual Representation Hypothesis


  Proposal that children under age of 3 have difficulty grasping spatial relationships because of the need to keep more than one mental representation in mind at the same time