Analyzing Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage

. Piaget sensorimotor stage starts at birth and ends at around 2. Piaget chose the name for this stage because infants learn about the world through sensory experiences. This stage can be divided into 6 different stages, the first being simple reflexes. Infants are born with little to no reflexes and they quickly learn sucking and rooting to survive. The next stage is the first habits and primary circular reactions. This is when an infant picks up two different schemes. A schemes is a learned habit in which a “reflex that becomes completely separated from its eliciting stimulus.” For example, sucking becomes so routine after a couple of months that the baby will produce a sucking motion if a nipple or bottle is close by. The next is a circular
In this stage infants will repeat an action out of fascination or consequence. Some example of those actions are dropping a toy repeatedly on purpose to watch it fall. This is the stage where babies begin to produce facial gestures and babble. The next stage is the coordination of secondary circular reactions. Babies during this stage learn hand-eye coordination. They also begin to investigate their surrounds and use previously learned schemes to do so. The fifth stage of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage is tertiary circular reactions, novelty, and curiosity. This takes place from 12 to 18 months. During this stage babies explore objects through a trial and error process. This is where “infants become intrigued by the main properties of objects and by the many things they can make happen to objects” (Santrock 178). The final stage is the internalization of schemes. Piaget’s defines schemes as “mental representations that organize knowledge” (175). This happens at ages 18 to 24 months. They learn to use symbols or sensory images that represent an event. These “symbols permit the infant to think about concrete events without directly activing them out or perceiving them”
During this stage adolescent have the ability to think about thoughts and themselves along with the ability to solve verbal problems. Adolescents start to think about themselves and compare it to their peers. This sometimes can cause issues with themselves because they can “become impatient with these newfound ideal standards and to become perplexed over which of many ideal standards to adopt” (Santrock 186). These young children also adopt hypothetical-deductive reasoning, where they gain the ability to think about which path is best to take to solve a problem. Adolescent egocentrism is the next part of this stage. This is where the adolescents become a bit narcissistic and believes that others are truly interested in them, along with them believing they are unique and invincible. The book describes imaginary audience to describe how during this stage adolescent believe they are the center of attention and the world revolves around them. Personal fabe, or teen spirt; is a stage where preteen and teens feel like nobody could ever understand what they are going through. The book uses the example of a teen girl whose boyfriend broke up with her and the teenager believed her mother could not understand what she was going through