Six substages of the sensorimotor stage

1. Six substages of the sensorimotor stage • Reflexes • Primary circular reactions • Secondary circular reactions • Coordination phase • Tertiary circular reactions • Symbolic problem solving

2. Reflexes substage • First month of life • First display of assimilation and accommodation • Basic cognitive schemas are formed (e.g., sucking on objects is pleasurable) • Imitate facial gestures, but only in the first month—may be an attempt to elicit social contact & ensure survival (reflexive smiling) • Newborn is completely tied to immediate present—no memory or planning for future

3. Primary circular reactions • Ages 1-4 months • First nonreflexive schemas emerge as baby discovers by chance that responses they make are satisfying and worthy of repetition • These acts are always centered around infant’s own body • Example: making cooing sounds, sucking thumbs

4. Secondary circular reactions • 4-8 months • Infants discover by chance that they can make interesting things happen to external objects (make rubber duck quack) • These reactions are repeated because they’re pleasurable. • Piaget thought secondary circular reactions represented the infant’s sense of his own boundaries—realizes that he’s separate from the rest of the world • First beginnings of object permanence

5. Coordination phase • 8-12 months • Infant shows truly planned responding to solve simple problems • First display of voluntary imitation of novel responses • Can coordinate different senses (smell, sight, touch, etc.) to solve a problem • Example: lifting a pillow to retrieve pacifier

6. Tertiary circular reactions • 12-18 months • Infants start to experiment with objects to see what will happen • Lots of trial and error as infant discovers on his own what works to create a desired response and what doesn’t • Emergence of true curiosity

7. Symbolic problem solving • 18-24 months • Children begin to internalize their behavioral schemas to construct mental symbols or images • Capable of inner experimentation—solving problems mentally without overt trial-and-error • Uses symbols to represent real objects, and recognizes that the symbol is different from the real object • Capable of make-believe play and deferred imitation

8. Object permanence • The understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight • Unclear when this develops. A 1-4 month-old doesn’t have it; a 4-8 month old will look for partially concealed objects but not totally concealed ones. • Babies between 8-12 months still do NOT have a complete grasp of object permanence. They make errors.

9. A-not B-error • Between 8-12 months • A child looks for the object where it was last found, not where it was last seen. • Child acts as if his own behavior determines where the object will be found (thinks that because she found it in place A the first time, it will still be there, even though she saw her mother put it under place B)

10. Object permanence between 12-18 months of age • Clear improvement in this age range • Infant will look for objects where they were last seen; they don’t make the A-not B-error • Still don’t understand invisible displacements (if the toy goes completely out of view, then they’ll look for it where they last saw it…e.g, in your hand)

11. Deferred Imitation • The ability to reproduce a previously seen action at some later time. • Piaget loved this concept; he saw it as a highly adaptive activity • He thought this was only present during the last substage of sensorimotor phase (symbolic problem solving) • Actually, it seems to be present at 6 weeks of age in a primitive form. • Child isn’t proficient at it until 14 months or so.

12. Learning • Recall the three types of learning from section 1 • Classical conditioning • Operant conditioning • Observational learning (modeling)

13. Memory • It’s now known that infants (3 months old) can remember a variety of complex associations and visual sequences; these memories can last for 3 months and even up to 9 months or more. • Studies show that very long-term retention of memories is the exception, not the rule. • The nature of infant memories is highly controversial.

14. Rovee-Collier’s paradigm (1987, 2004) • Baby placed in a crib underneath an elaborate mobile; ankle is tied to the mobile so that when the baby kicks, the mobile moves. • Baby comes back weeks later with foot untied; question is: Will the baby kick? • Findings: Baby will kick but only if the mobile is exactly the same as it was before. • Rovee-Collier says that infants as young as 2 months can remember some experiences through 1 ½ to 2 years of age.

15. Critics of Rovee-Collier • Critics say the babies are showing only implicit memory (memory of skills and routine procedures that are performed automatically; no conscious recollection) not explicit memory (conscious memory of facts and experiences). • Most researchers find that babies do not have explicit memory until the 2nd half of the first year; it improves dramatically during the 2nd year of life. • Most infant memories are fragile and short-lived, except for memories of perceptual-motor actions.

16. Infantile amnesia • The inability to remember events that occurred before the age of 2-3 • Highly debated; some researchers claim that people remember birth and intrauterine experiences. No scientific evidence for this. • Could be because the prefrontal lobes aren’t matured enough to store memories properly. • Could have to do with language—before the age of 2-3, we don’t have enough language skills to store memories.

17. Autobiographical memories • Memories of your special, one-time events in your own life that have personal meaning for you • Must have a well-developed sense of self for autobiographical memories to be stored. • Self-awareness doesn’t occur until 18-24 months, which is the earliest time that scientists believe autobiographical events can be recalled. • Must be able to integrate personal experiences into a meaningful life story • Adult must talk to child about the event to solidify the memory.

18. Infant Intelligence Tests • Best-known test is the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, for children between 1 month and 3 ½ years. • Includes a Mental Scale and Motor scale, and you get a score similar to IQ score. • Correlates poorly with adult IQ; variations of 10-20 points or more • IQ is NOT a stable inborn ability, although it is strongly genetically influenced. It changes with experience and age.

19. Infant Intelligence Tests cont. • It’s not easy to get scores (called “developmental quotients”) that reflect an infant/toddler’s true ability. Child is often distracted, bored, or tired. • They predict better for extremely low-scoring babies. • Today, they’re used mainly for identifying children whose very low scores may mean they have developmental delays and need early intervention. • Piaget’s object permanence tasks predict later IQ better than “infant IQ” tests.

20. Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence • Increasingly being used since the 1990s • Focuses on infant’s ability to process information (e.g., encoding attributes of objects, detecting similarities/differences in objects). • Uses the amount of time babies take to look at a new object vs. familiar one to estimate their intelligence. • Fagan test IS correlated with measures of intelligence in older children.

21. Habituation vs. dishabituation • Evidence is mounting that measures of habituation & dishabituation (recovery of a habituated response after a change in stimulation) predict intelligence in childhood and adolescence. • Quicker habituation and greater amounts of looking in dishabituation reflect more efficient information processing. • Average correlation between measures at 3-12 months and measures in childhood & adolescence: .37.