Children begin in the sensorimotor stage from birth to two years of age. In the sensorimotor stage, children use mostly senses and simple actions to guide themselves, and begin to understand that they are separate from the people and the objects, which surround them. Most significantly in the sensorimotor stage is that the child cognizes that an object gone from sight, still exists, known as object permanence. As children progress to the preoperational stage from approximately ages 2-7 years, thinking becomes more symbolic. However, even as the children can express themselves in various forms, behaviors remain egocentric and most concepts are absolute.
Sensorimotor stage. Beginning at birth to about 2 years, the first stage is characterized by perceptual and motor activities. The behavior of children during this stage can be described as nonverbal, reflex actions, play, imitating others, and object permanence. Early in this stage of development, if an object which the child has seen is removed from view, the object is forgotten (Out of sight, out of mind). However, later in this stage, if a child was playing with an object, and it gets hidden from view, the child will look for the object.
This stage is from 2 years to 7 years. During this stage, children are able to develop language and they will able to use symbols, words gestures, signs and images to represent objects. In addition, children do not have notion of time, they only think in the present. The third stage is named the concrete operational because during this stage children are able to think logically about concrete problems and organize things into categories and series. In fact, children are able to reverse thinking to mentally “undo” actions.
The years leading up to the concrete operational stage brought about some aspects of these abilities yet it is only during middle childhood that the child begins to understand and interpret them. The ability to conserve, one which is vital and most prominent in children of this age develops as well as the improved ability of flexible problem solving. The skill of interpreting others behaviours, interrelating the things around with your increasing knowledge and the understanding of reversibility are all cognitive abilities which are gradually mastered over the period of middle childhood. This stage of childhood evidently brings about a big change to the child’s process of thinking. They have now developed a more analytical and abstract mind set which will soon develop even further as they mature into the next stage of
As each stage is accomplished, a person achieves a higher level of functioning. The sensorimotor stage (birth – 2 years) is where a child develops a sense of themselves as separate for the world and palpable objects still exist even though they cannot be seen. In the preoperational stage (2 – 6 years) the child develops the ability to express themselves through language, they understand the meaning of symbols, and they can classify objects. Concrete operations (6 – 12 years) is the stage when the child applies logic to thinking, is able to understand time and space, broadens social interactions, and is can apply rules; but thinking is still concrete. Egocentrism is central to their thought process with the inability to consider that other people have differing opinions.
According to this theory children undergo various stage series of cognitive development such as formal operational periods, sensory motor, concrete operational, and pre-operational (Doherty and Hughes, 2009). The child clearly displays that he is currently at the sensory motor stage that happen from birth to 2 years of age. Children at this stage understand the world through adopting their actions and senses through trial and error (Piaget & Cook, 1952). This is particularly interesting because he curiously puts things in his mouth and also like to feels things. For example, he will taste accessories such as earphones, phones covers and even one time he tried to put a razor blade in his mouth.
The first stage between birth to 2 years old, children learn the external through senses and action, instinctively. They sense object permanently and they usually show anxiety to strangers. The second stage is between age of 2 to 6 years old, children form ideas with words and images, which is tend to be over generalizing. Developmental phenomena of this stage include pretending play, egocentrism and language development. And then the third stage from 7 to 11 years old, children think logically about concrete events and understand similar events.
Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who regarded cognitive development as a maturational process (Martin, Carlson & Buskist, 2010). Piaget constructed his conclusions through the observation of his own children and children at his Centre of Genetic Epistemology in Geneva. Piaget observed that children depend on an altered type of thinking when compared to the way in which adults think. A child’s thinking is qualitatively different than an adult’s thinking. Through his study, Piaget found that children of a similar age are inclined to behave in a similar manner and make similar mistakes when problem-solving.
To Piaget, children are like “little scientist”. They learn many things by themselves through environmental experience, exploring, discovering and making sense of the world and develop their understanding progressively. Children learn actively and they always focus on their on view of thingking and they aspect their surrounding people will have the same tough and same feel with them. Piaget discovered that child progress in for diffirent stages. All children are vary in learning speed but everyone would have to go through the same sequence of development stages.
The second substage of Pre-operational stage is known as Intuitive Thought that is between the children of four and seven years old.at this substage, children develop curiosity within them as they try to know everything surrounding them, as they become to the realization that they have a lot of knowledge, but are unaware where they got it from. They tend to each time that they are next to their teachers, parents, relative or anyone who is older than them as their brothers and sisters, questions of How, When and Why. They are able to understand things and even analyses them. They do also perform tasks which earlier they were not able