Piaget developed theories to explain the cognitive development and logical thinking in children. His interest in the cognition of children was motivated by the fact that all children appeared to go through the same discoveries in the same sequences and appeared to make to make the same mistakes and thought of the same solutions, according to Boyd and Bee (2008). Piaget recognized three important processes in children's cognition in their creating of schemes. A scheme is described as an internal cognitive structure that provides an individual with a procedure to follow in a specific circumstance, plainly, it's the way we know how to do something, e.g. if an individual is thirsty and needs water, their scheme allows them to lift a glass of water to their mouth. Piaget believed that each person was born with a set of sensory and motor schemes. Assimilation is how we make sense of a scheme, accommodation allows us to edit a scheme in order to add new information and equilibrium is balancing accommodation and assimilation.
Piaget's Ideas on the First Two Years of Life - Sensorimotor Stage.
Piaget calls the before mentioned information, sensorimotor intelligence. Therefore the stage where this intelligence is developed is called the sensorimotor stage, this is described as the stage where infants use information from their senses and motor actions to learn about the world.(Bee) Piaget breaks this stage down into three sub stages : .
1. Reflexes (birth - 1 month)- Using their innate schemes and using accommodation to edit schemes.
2. Primary circular ( 1-4 months)- The baby begins accommodation and learns coordination of schemes sounds and use of its limbs , they also become more fascinated with the sucking sensation. E.g. the infant places everything in its mouth.
3. Secondary circular (4-8 months)- The baby becomes more aware of its surroundings and engages in trial and error learning E.g. a baby dropping his toy for the first time and recognizes that the sound is made when the toy is dropped, so he drops it again to see if it will be repeated.
