SENSORIMOTOR STAGE o Infants learn about the world primarily through their senses (sensori-), and by doing (motor).

o The infant explores its world by using its senses (seeing, hearing, and tasting) and applying its developing motor skills (moving, reaching, and touching). Hence the term, sensorimotor. For example: The baby in the picture is holding a toy. She doesn't know anything about the toy unless she has a direct sensory or motor contact with it. As she is grasping or shaking the toy, she now knows how it feels, moves, sounds when she shakes it. However, when she drops it to the floor and has no contact with it anymore she has no way of maintaining an internalized representation of the toy. Hence, Piaget says that babies lack Representational thought ability to think through the use of symbols. Evidence of representational thought emerges with the concept Piaget called object permanence. Object Permanence - Objects and events continue to exist even when they cannot be directly seen, heard or touched. The most common way to study object permanence is to show an infant an interesting toy and then block the infant's view of the toy. If infants understand that the toy still exists they will search for it and vice versa. No wonder, babies Can be surprised by disappearance/reappearance of a face (peek-aboo). Because for them objects that are out of sight are out of mind. Piaget proposed six substages of sensorimotor thought that describe how representational thought emerges during infancy. Substage1 - Birth to 1month Babies rely on their inborn reflexes such as Rooting, sucking, grasping reflexes. Substage2 - 1 to 4months At first thumb comes to mouth by accident. Through trial and error infants learn to reproduce the event until a thumb-sucking scheme becomes established.

Substage3 - 4 to 8months Holding a rattle, an infant may accidentally shake the rattle and enjoy the noise. Through trial and error the infant learns to reproduce the event until a shaking scheme becomes established. Substage4 - 10 to 12months An infant sees a toy behind a box, pushes the box aside, then reaches for the toy. The infant intentionally combined pushing and reaching schemes to reach the goal (the toy). Substage5 - 12 to 18months A baby drops a ball from shoulder height and watches what happens. The baby then explores the dropping scheme by dropping the ball from hip height, then from head height, then from knee height, observing each new result. Substage6 - 18 to 24 months A 1-year-old girl would like to open the lid of a box, and to think about this she opens and closes her hand repeatedly. Rather than work directly on the box, she first uses her hand motion as a way to think about how to open it. She is thinking about the box using a symbolic representation (her hand). PREOPERATIONAL STAGE During this stage, the use of symbolic thought expands rapidly especially the use of language. Childrens rapidly increasing vocabularies enable them to represent and think about people, objects, events, and feelings. o They gain the ability to represent mentally objects that are not present. o They also begin to draw people, animals, and objects. o Having, these flourishing mental representations preoperational children even playfully exaggerate their new symbolic or mental representation abilities. Symbolic play - children use one object to stand for another, such as when they pretend that a blanket is a magic carpet or a banana is a telephone. Fantasy play - in which they pretend to be something they are not (like a tiger or a superhero) or to engage in activities that are impossible (like having their teddy bear read them a story). Make-believe play children use toys as props to carry out some procedure, such as using a kitchen set and dishes to pretend to cook dinner, or using a doll to pretend to feed and rock a baby.

Egocentrism - Children of this stage experience egocentrism or the tendency to see the world of others from their own viewpoints. They assume that everyone else share their feelings, reactions, and perspectives. Egocentric thinking doesn't mean the child is selfish or unconcerned about others, rather the child at this stage lacks the cognitive ability to take another's point of view or perspective. In the child's mind, he or she is the center of the universe. Examples: A boy assumes that all people enjoy watching Power Rangers as he does. Mountain Task Piagets three-mountain problem: Young preoperational children are egocentric. They cannot easily assume another persons perspective and often say that another child viewing the mountain from a different vantage point sees exactly what they see from their own location. CONSERVATION Unable to understand that certain physical characteristics stay the same even though outward appearance changes. o A preoperational child cannot understand that the amount of liquid stays the same regardless of the containers shape o A preoperational child would conclude that the tall skinny glass had more water because the level of water was higher. and because of centration , the child focuses on only one thing: the height of the column of water. And because of irreversibilty, the child fails to recognize that the process can be restored to its starting point- that pouring the water back to its original container would restore it to its original state. Irreversibility refers to the failure to understand that certain processes can be undone or reversed. ANIMISM - This is the tendency to attribute life to objects that are not alive. Example: A child says, My teddy bear wants a cup of milk too. ; A child begged his mother to stop the washing machine because the clothes would drown. Artificialism - This means that children think that natural occurances are human made. As an example the child think that clouds, the sun, the mountains are all made by human.