Exam Tip
The sensorimotor stage
You can refer to Piaget’s stage theory of cognitive/intellectual development when answering a question on Piaget’s theory: his four stages of cognitive development form the core of his theory as well as his schema theory.
- The sensorimotor stage spans the ages from birth to around 2 years old and is marked by the child’s body schema and the physical exploration of their environment
- Young children in this stage learn via a set of physical schemas e.g. sucking schema,trajectory schema etc. which are not reflexes; they are performed intentionally as the child derives pleasure from them (this explains why a baby might hurl their dish from their highchair and then laugh uproariously)
- A key marker of this stage of cognitive development is when a baby acquires Object permanence , usually around the age of 8 months
- Object permanence can be tested using the ‘A-not-B’ task which involves hiding a toy under location A in front of the child for several times in a row and asking the child to retrieve the toy; the toy is then hidden under location B and if the child continues to look for the toy under location A they have failed the task (i.e. they have not acquired object permanence)
- Passing the ‘A-not-B’ task shows that the child understands that the toy still exists even though it cannot be seen and their initial reinforced (via several trials) movement to retrieve it from location A can be overridden by their new knowledge that the toy is in now in location B
The ‘A-not-B’ error - the child still thinks the toy has been hidden in its original position.