journal

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT in INFANCY and TODDLERHOOD

Jean Piaget and Cognitive Development

PIAGET’S COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY

• Piaget believed children move through four stages of development between infancy and

adolescence

– The Sensorimotor stage of Cognitive Development is Piaget’s first stage.

– During the sensorimotor stage, infants and toddlers “think” with their eyes, ears, hands,

and other sensorimotor equipment.

– What Changes With Development

• Piaget believed a child’s schemes (organized ways of making sense of

experience) change with age.

• At first, schemes are motor action patterns and later move to a mental level.

• How Cognitive Change Takes Place for Infants – Adapting to a New Environment

– Adaptation is the process of building schemes through direct interaction with the

environment.

– Assimilation is a part of adaptation in which the external world is interpreted through

existing schemes.

– Accommodation is the part of adaptation in which new schemes are created or old ones

adjusted to produce a better fit with the environment.

How Cognitive Change Takes Place

– State of Equilibrium exists when children are not changing very much and they are in a

steady, comfortable cognitive state; assimilation is used more than accommodation.

– State of Disequilibrium is the state of cognitive discomfort which occurs during times of

rapid change; accommodation is used more than assimilation.

– Back-and-forth movement between equilibrium and disequilibrium leads to the

development of more effective schemes.

– Organization is an internal process of rearranging and linking together schemes to form

an interconnected cognitive system.

– Schemes reach a true state of equilibrium when they become part of a broad network of

structures that can be jointly applied to the surrounding world.

The Sensorimotor Stage

Circular reactions are the means by which infants explore the environment and build schemes by trying

to repeat chance events caused by their own motor activity.

Reflexes

• Piaget regarded newborn reflexes as the building blocks of sensorimotor

intelligence.

• At first, babies suck, grasp, and look in much the same way, no matter what the

circumstances.

• The Sensorimotor Stage

The First Learned Adaptations (1 to 4 Months)

• Infants develop simple motor skills and change their behavior in response to

environmental demands.

• The first circular reactions are centered on the infant’s own body and motivated

by basic needs.

• Subsequently, they change to manipulating objects and then to producing novel

effects in the environment.

The Sensorimotor Stage

Making Interesting Sights Last (4 to 8 Months)

• Infants can repeat actions that affect the environment.

• Infants can imitate actions that they have practiced many times

• Intentional, or goal-directed, behavior is the combination of schemes to solve

problems.

• Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist when

they are out of sight

• A-not-B search errors are committed by infants. Infants 8- to 12-months-old

only look for an object in hiding place A even after the object is moved from A

to hiding place B.

The concept of object permanence – objects continue to exist even though we can’t see them..

The child does not look for the object when the object is out of sight.

Discovering New Means Through Active Experimentation (12 to 18 Months)

• The infant repeats actions with variation–exploring the environment and

bringing about new outcomes.

• Experimentation leads to a more advanced understanding of object

permanence. Toddlers no longer make the AB search error.

Mental Representation-Inventing New Ways of looking at the world Through Mental

Combinations (18 Months to 2 Years)

• Mental representations are internal images of absent objects and past events.

• The toddler can now solve problems symbolically instead of through trial-and-

error

• Functional play is motor activity with or without objects during the first year

and a half in which sensorimotor schemes are practiced.

• At the end of the second year, representation permits toddlers to engage in

make-believe play.

• Play is important for Cognitive Development

Evaluation of the Sensorimotor Stage

Object Permanence - Some capacities, such as understanding of object properties, emerge

much earlier than Piaget believed.

Berk, L. E., (2016). Infants, Children, and Adolescents. Boston, MA: Pearson. EIGHTH EDITION