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.

The first stage of it, 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.

Next we will see in more depth the characteristics of the sensorimotor stage, in which sub-stages it is divided and criticisms that Piaget has been made with some claims he made about cognitive development in the first 24 months of lifetime.

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What is the sensorimotor stage?

The sensorimotor stage is the first of the four stages of the theory of cognitive development, elaborated 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 rapidly.

The child is acquiring a greater understanding of the world through trial and error, through their senses and their actions. Babies at the beginning of the stage are characterized by extreme self-centeredness, that is, they have no understanding of the world apart from their own current point of view. In a way, it's like 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 egocentricity, understanding that objects and events exist regardless of whether they are perceived or not. This is known as the permanence of the object, 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.

The Piagetian methodology

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist and epistemologist who greatly influenced developmental psychology. His investigations were fundamental to change the scientific vision that was had on childhood. Before this Swiss psychologist broke in with his theories, it was believed that children were passive receptacles that were shaped 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 built knowledge by analyzing every object or expression they saw in other people. Based on what he found in his research, Piaget divided cognitive development into four stages.

• Sensorimotor stage
• Pre-operational stage
• Stage of concrete operations
• Formal operations stage

Each of these stages presents different characteristics, and the Piagetian description of each of them allows you to have a deep understanding of what children's behavior and thinking is like.

Next, we will see in more depth what sub-stages the sensorimotor stage is divided into, and what achievements are achieved in each of its subdivisions.

Substages of the sensorimotor stage

Jean Piaget elaborated his well-known theory of cognitive development from his findings by carefully observing the behavior of his own children Jacqueline, Lucienne and Laurent. In 1952 he began to lay the foundations of the theory, although his research in the sixties would end up shaping 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 sub-stage, which is that of reflex acts, corresponds to the first month of life. The newborn responds to external stimulation through innate reflex actions. For example, if someone places an object or finger near the baby, the newborn will most likely instinctively try to suck it like a bottle.

2. Primary circular reactions sub-stage (1 to 4 months)

The sub-stage 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 itself stimulation, either moving the feet, the hands and even sucking the thumb of his hand. They are not reflex movements, but they are involuntary and accidental at first.

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

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3. Substage of secondary circular reactions (4 to 10 months)

Babies in the sub-stage of secondary circular reactions are able to perform movements that are pleasant and interesting to themher, both with her own body and with objects.

An example of this would be when the child shakes their rattle for the pleasure of hearing the sound of it, she struggles with the crib to see if she can escape or grabs a doll and throws it to see how far it goes.

It is at the end of this sub-stage, specifically at 8 months, that, according to the Piaget model, the baby begins to acquire the idea of ​​the permanence of the object. That is, she learns that, although she does not see, touch or feel it, a certain object still exists, it has not disappeared as if by magic.

4. Sub-stage of coordination of secondary schemes (10 to 12 months)

In the sub-stage of secondary diagrams, the baby shows signs of abilities that she 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 sound, but he can also detect or imagine where you are when you are not finding it, and move whatever is necessary to find it.

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

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

For example, if the baby was playing with her toy car, she knows how to get it the next time she plays with it, and where to put it when she is done playing. Or, for example, If she was playing with toy pieces and has been separating them to see how they were separately, she can put them back to leave them as they were.

6. Principle of thought (18 to 24 months)

In this last sub-stage of the sensorimotor stage the beginning of symbolic thought 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 thought, according to the Piagetian model, children have the idea of the permanence of the object fully settled, being the main and greatest achievement of the stage sensorimotor.

Although it was already a capacity that began to settle at 8 months, at the end of the sub-stage of secondary circular reactions, it is in this that babies are able to have complete mental representations of objects. They can even assume where an object has gone without having to see it, only assuming aspects such as its trajectory, behavior or alternative place to look.

Blanket and ball experiment

As we have already mentioned, it is during the sensorimotor stage, specifically in the third sub-stage of this, that the development of the idea of ​​the permanence of the object occurs. Babies begin to understand that objects continue to existeven if they can't see, touch or hear them at the time

In fact, it is the absence of the permanence of the object in the first months that it is possible to play with the babies the game of “Where is it??? Here it is!". For a baby who still doesn't know where the world is going when she closes her eyes, an adult covering her 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 found out about 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 the demonstration that he had a mental representation of it.

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

Criticisms of Piaget

Although Piaget's model is undoubtedly a breakthrough in developmental psychology in the last century, it is not without its critics. Later experiments have cast doubt on his claim that it is after 8 months 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 in thinking that if the baby did not show interest in looking for an object it automatically meant that she did not have a representation of it. It could have happened that he actually had subjects who had no interest in the ball, but who did know they were under the blanket, or that the children did not have enough psychomotor ability to go in search of them, but knowing that the ball had not gone anywhere part.

Bower and Wishart Studies

An example of this we have with the experiments of T. G. Bower and Jennifer G. Wishart in 1972. These researchers, instead of using the Piaget technique with the blanket and the ball, what they did was wait for their experiment subject to reach an object in a room.

Then, when the child had already become familiar with the 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 boy with an infrared camera and observed what happened. They saw that for at least a minute and a half the children searched for the object in the dark, going where they thought it might be.

But like everything else in science, the studies by Bower and Wishart were also criticized. One of them has to do with the time that the children were given 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, by chance 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 they would find the object totally by chance, being something that gave them safety.

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Renée Baillargeon Studies

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

In an experiment in the transgression of expectation, infants are introduced to a new situation. A stimulus is repeatedly shown to them until it no longer appears striking or new. To know if they have already become familiar with this stimulus, it is enough to see when the infants turn the head to the other side, indicating that it is not something new to them, nor does the attention.

In Baillargeon's studio a 5-month-old baby was taken and presented with a scenario. Among its elements there was a ramp, a path that a toy truck would go along, a colorful box 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 road for the toy truck to go and a box that could either be behind the road or could get in the way.

The possible event was, first, teaching the baby that the box was not in the way, then it was she would lower the screen so that she would stop seeing the box and she would release the truck down the ramp so that it would pass by 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 getting in the way, lowering the screen so that she would stop seeing it, releasing the truck And, despite the fact that logically it should not follow the path because the box would be obstructing, the experimenter would have removed it without the child. she knew. Thus, on the left side of the screen, the child would see how the truck leaves. This surprised him, and in fact Baillargeon noticed that babies spent much more time looking at this impossible event than the possible.

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

Bibliographic references:

• Baillargeon, R., Spelke, E.S. & Wasserman, S. (1985). Object Permanence in Five-Month-Old Infants. Cognition, 20, 191-208.
• Bower, T. G. R., & Wishart, J. G. (1972). The effects of motor skill on object remains. Cognition, 1, 165–172.
• Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. New York: International Universities Press.
• Piaget, J. (1954). The construction of reality in the child (M. Cook, Trans.).
• Piaget, J. (1964). Part I: Cognitive development in children: Piaget development and learning. Journal of research in science teaching, 2 (3), 176-186.
• Piaget, J. (1963). The Psychology of Intelligence. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield Adams.