Substage Four: New Adaptations and Goal-Directed Behavior (8th through 12th months) During the repetition stage, this baby enjoys interacting with others and clapping her hands. Another example might be to clap their hands when a caregiver says “patty-cake.” Any sight of something delightful will trigger efforts for interaction.įigure 2. Substage Three: Repetition (4th through 8th months)ĭuring the next few months, the infant becomes more and more actively engaged in the outside world and takes delight in being able to make things happen by responding to people and objects. Babies try to continue any pleasing event. Repeated motion brings particular interest as the infant is able to bang two lids together or shake a rattle and laugh. The next two substages (3 and 4), involve the infant’s responses to objects and people, called secondary circular reactions. Reactions are no longer confined to the infant’s body and are now interactions between the baby and something else. For example, the infant may have different sucking motions for hunger and others for comfort (i.e. sucking a pacifier differently from a nipple or attempting to hold a bottle to suck it). At first, most actions have to do with the body, but in months to come, will be directed more toward objects.

Substage Two: First Adaptations to the Environment (1st through 4th months)įortunately, within a few days or weeks, the infant begins to discriminate between objects and adjust responses accordingly as reflexes are replaced with voluntary movements. An infant may accidentally engage in a behavior and find it interesting, such as making a vocalization. This interest motivates trying to do it again and helps the infant learn a new behavior that originally occurred by chance. The behavior is identified as circular and primary because it centers on the infant’s own body.

This adaptation demonstrates that infants have begun to make sense of sensations. Eventually, the use of these reflexes becomes more deliberate and purposeful as they move onto substage two. But this is also what happens with a sour lemon, much to the infant’s surprise! The baby’s first challenge is to learn to adapt the sucking reflex to bottles or breasts, pacifiers or fingers, each acquiring specific types of tongue movements to latch, suck, breathe, and repeat. This active learning begins with automatic movements or reflexes (sucking, grasping, staring, listening). A ball comes into contact with an infant’s cheek and is automatically sucked on and licked. Substage One: Reflexive Action (Birth through 1st month) During the first month first (substage one), the infant’s senses, as well motor reflexes are the foundation of thought. Stage 4 – Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactionsįor an overview of the substages of sensorimotor thought, it helps to group the six substages into pairs. The first two substages involve the infant’s responses to its own body, call primary circular reactions. He subdivided this period into six substages: Table 1. Piaget called this first stage of cognitive development sensorimotor intelligence (the sensorimotor period) because infants learn through their senses and motor skills. Let’s examine the transition that infants make from responding to the external world reflexively as newborns, to solving problems using mental strategies as two-year-olds. She now modifies her schema for dogs and forms a new one for sheep. Deja’s schema for dog was too broad since not all furry, four-legged creatures are dogs. When Deja’s mom tells her that the animal she sees is a sheep, not a dog, Deja must accommodate her schema for dogs to include more information based on her new experiences. One day, Deja sees a sheep for the first time and says, “Look mommy, dog!” Having a basic schema that a dog is an animal with four legs and fur, Deja thinks all furry, four-legged creatures are dogs. When Deja sees other dogs in her picture books, she says, “Look mommy, dog!” Thus, she has assimilated them into her schema for dogs.

Children develop schemas through the processes of assimilation and accommodation.įor example, 2-year-old Deja learned the schema for dogs because her family has a Poodle. All this new information needs to be organized, and a framework for organizing information is referred to as a schema.

Children have much more of a challenge in maintaining this balance because they are constantly being confronted with new situations, new words, new objects, etc. How do infants connect and make sense of what they are learning? Remember that Piaget believed that we are continuously trying to maintain cognitive equilibrium, or balance, between what we see and what we know (Piaget, 1954). Toddlers happily explore the world, engaged in purposeful goal-directed behavior.

Piaget creating memories