Sensorimotor Stage: What It Is And How It Is Expressed According To Piaget

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development has been one of the great advances in the history of psychology, especially the branch focused on child development.

Its first stage, the sensorimotor stage, is one of fundamental importance in the cognitive growth of infants in addition to being in which an important aspect of the human mind appears: the permanence of the object.

Below we will see in more depth the characteristics of the sensorimotor stage, into which substages it is divided and criticisms that have been made to Piaget regarding some statements he said about cognitive development in the first 24 months of life.

    What is the sensorimotor stage?

    The sensorimotor stage is the first of the four stages of the theory of cognitive development, developed by Jean Piaget (1954, 1964). This stage extends from birth to 24 months of age, and is characterized by being a period in which the infant’s cognitive abilities develop very quickly.

    The boy or girl acquires a greater understanding of the world through trial and error, through their senses and actions. At the beginning of the stage, babies are characterized by extreme egocentrism, that is, they have no understanding of the world apart from their own current point of view. To put it one way, it’s as if they don’t know where the world is going when they close their eyes.

    The main achievement of this stage proposed by Piaget is to break with this egocentrism, understanding that objects and events exist regardless of whether they are perceived or not. This is known as object permanence, that is, knowing that an object continues to exist no matter how hidden it is. To achieve this achievement, it is necessary for the infant to have the ability to form a representation or mental scheme of said object or event.

    Piagetian methodology

    Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist and epistemologist who greatly influenced developmental psychology His research was fundamental to changing the scientific view of childhood. Before this Swiss psychologist emerged with his theories, it was believed that children were passive receptacles that were molded by their environment, without the ability to discover it for themselves.

    Piaget did not focus on what children know but on their ability to cope with the world, going from stage to stage of growth. This psychologist firmly believed that babies constructed knowledge by analyzing each object or expression they saw in other people. Based on what he found in his research, Piaget divided cognitive development into four stages.

      Each of these stages has different characteristics, and Piaget’s description of each of them It allows you to have a deep knowledge of what children’s behavior and thinking is like

      Below we will see in more depth into which substages the sensorimotor stage is divided, and what achievements are achieved in each of its subdivisions.

      Substages of the sensorimotor stage

      Jean Piaget developed his well-known theory of cognitive development based on his findings by carefully observing the behavior of his own children Jacqueline, Lucienne and Laurent. In 1952 he would begin to lay the foundations of the theory, although his research in the sixties would ultimately shape it. Based on what was observed, Piaget subdivided the sensorimotor stage into 6 substages

      1. Substage of reflex acts (from 0 to 1 month)

      The first substage, which is that of reflex actions, corresponds to the first month of life. The newborn responds to external stimulation through innate reflex actions For example, if someone puts an object or finger near the baby, the newborn will most likely instinctively try to suck on it as if it were a bottle.

      2. Substage of primary circular reactions (1 to 4 months)

      The substage of primary circular reactions goes from the first to the fourth month of life. In this phase the infant looks for the best way to give himself stimulation, whether moving his feet, his hands and even sucking the thumb of his hand. They are not reflex movements, but they are involuntary and accidental at first.

      Once he has discovered them, he repeats them again, because he discovers that some give him pleasure, such as sucking his thumbs, kicking his legs or moving his fingers. He repeats them over and over again, seeking to generate pleasant stimulation and putting them into practice.

        3. Secondary circular reactions substage (4 to 10 months)

        In the substage of secondary circular reactions, babies They are capable of making movements that are pleasant and interesting to them both with his own body and with objects.

        An example of this would be when the boy or girl shakes his or her rattle for the pleasure of hearing its sound, struggles with the crib to try to see if he can escape, or picks up a doll and throws it to see how far it can go.

        It is at the end of this substage, specifically at 8 months that, according to Piaget’s model, the baby begins to acquire the idea of ​​object permanence That is, you learn that, even if you do not see, touch or feel it, a certain object continues to exist, it has not disappeared as if by magic.

        4. Substage of coordination of secondary schemes (10 to 12 months)

        In the secondary schema substage the baby shows signs of skills that he had never shown before, in addition to understanding that there are objects that can be touched and placed from one place to another.

        Now the little one will not only shake the rattle with the intention of making it rattle, but he can also detect or imagine where it is when he cannot find it, and move whatever is necessary to find it.

        5. Substage of tertiary circular reactions (12 to 18 months)

        The main achievement during this substage is the growth of motor skills and have a better ability to develop mental schemes of a certain object
        Tertiary circular reactions differ from secondary circular reactions in that tertiary reactions are intentional adaptations to specific situations.

        For example, if the baby was playing with his toy car, he knows how to get it the next time he plays with it, and where to put it when he is done playing. Or, for example, If you were playing with toy pieces and you have separated them to see what they looked like separately, you can put them back to leave them as they were

        6. Beginning of thinking (18 to 24 months)

        In this last substage of the sensorimotor stage, the beginning of symbolic thinking originates. It is a transition phase towards the next stage of development within the Piagetian model: the preoperational stage of cognitive development.

        In the substage of the principle of thinking, according to the Piagetian model, children have the idea of ​​object permanence fully established, being the main and greatest achievement of the sensorimotor stage.

        Although it was already a capacity that began to establish itself at 8 months, at the end of the substage of secondary circular reactions, It is in this that babies are capable of having complete mental representations of objects They can even guess where an object has gone without having to see it, only assuming aspects such as its trajectory, behavior or alternative place to search.

        Blanket and ball experiment

        As we already mentioned, it is during the sensorimotor stage, specifically in the third substage of this, that the development of the idea of ​​the permanence of the object occurs. Babies begin to understand that objects continue to exist even if they cannot see, touch or hear them at that moment.

        In fact, it is the absence of object permanence in the first months that it is possible to play with babies the game of “Where is…?” Here it is!”. For a baby who still doesn’t know where the world goes when she closes her eyes, an adult covering his face is like a magic trick: she disappears and suddenly reappears. However, slightly older babies They will understand that the object or person continues to exist, no matter how much they close their eyes or the person covers their face

        Piaget discovered this ability through a simple experiment, carried out in 1963. In it he had a blanket and a ball, which showed the baby. The objective was to investigate at what age babies acquired the idea of ​​object permanence by hiding the ball under the blanket, while the child was observing it. When the baby looked for the ball it was a demonstration that he had a mental representation of it.

        As a result of all this, Piaget found that Babies began searching for the hidden toy when they were around 8 months old His conclusion was that it was from that age onwards that infants began to manifest object permanence, because they are capable of forming a mental representation of the object.

        Criticisms of Piaget

        Although Piaget’s model is, without a doubt, a great advance in the developmental psychology of the last century, it is not without criticism. Later experiments have cast doubt on his claim that it is from 8 months onwards that babies begin to show the idea of ​​object permanence. In fact, It has been suggested that it could be earlier and that even the capacity for symbolic representation would be highly developed in the first months of life

        Piaget must have made a mistake when he thought that if the baby did not show interest in searching for an object it automatically meant that he did not have a representation of it. It could have happened that, in reality, there would have been subjects who had no interest in the ball, but who did know that it was under the blanket, or that the children did not have sufficient psychomotor capacity to go in search of it, but knowing that the ball had not gone anywhere.

        Bower and Wishart studies

        We have an example of this with the experiments of TG Bower and Jennifer G. Wishart in 1972. These researchers, instead of using Piaget’s technique with the blanket and the ball, What they did was wait for their experimental subject to reach for an object in a room

        Then, when the child had become familiar with that object, they would put it in the same place where they had found it and turn off the lights. Once in the dark, the researchers filmed the child with an infrared camera and observed what happened. They saw that for at least a minute and a half the children were looking for the object in the dark, going towards where they thought it might be.

        But like everything in science, Bower and Wishart’s studies also had criticism. One of them has to do with the time given to the children to complete the task, which was 3 minutes. Within that period of time It could have happened that the children managed to reach the object by accident, casually and randomly Another criticism is that, being in the dark, it could have happened that the children were desperate to find something to hold on to, and found the object completely by chance, being something that gave them security.

          Studies by Renée Baillargeon

          Another study that questioned what Piaget discovered comes from the studies of Renée Baillargeon. This psychology professor used a technique that has become known as the paradigm of transgression of expectation which explores how babies tend to search longer for objects they have not found before.

          In an expectation violation experiment, infants are introduced to a new situation. They are repeatedly shown a stimulus until it no longer seems striking or new to them. To know if they have already become familiar with this stimulus, it is enough to see when the infants turn their heads to the other side, indicating that they are no longer finding something new nor does it attract their attention as much.

          In Baillargeon’s study, a 5-month-old baby was held and presented with a scenario Among its elements there was a ramp, a path along which a toy truck would go, a box of colors and a screen that covered the box. These elements would represent two situations.

          One was a possible event, that is, one that could occur physically, while the other was an impossible event, that is, one that could not occur logically. The child was presented with a scenario in which there was a path for the toy truck to go on and a box that could either be behind the path or could hinder it.

          The possible event consisted of first teaching the baby that the box was not in the way, then lowering the screen so that the baby could no longer see the box and releasing the truck down the ramp so that it passed along the road. Thus, since there were no obstacles, the truck would continue on its way.

          The impossible event consisted of teaching the baby that the box was blocking the path, lowering the screen so he could stop seeing it, releasing the truck and, even though logically he should not follow the path because the box would be blocking it, the experimenter would have withdrawn without the child knowing. Thus, on the left side of the screen, the child would see the truck leaving. This surprised him and, in fact, Baillargeon noticed that The babies spent much more time looking at this impossible event than the possible one

          Based on this Renee Baillargeon concluded that the surprise expressed by the infants indicated that they had expectations about the behavior of physical objects Seeing the truck “go through” the box that they thought was blocking the way and being surprised meant that, even though the screen had been lowered and he couldn’t see the box, the baby still thought she was there. This was a demonstration of object permanence at 5 months, and not at 8 as Piaget had said.