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Domains of Development

z The Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)
The first stage of cognitive development as proposed by Piaget is known as the
Notes sensorimotor stage. It extends from birth to two years of age. Piaget believed
that infants are active learners who are responsive to stimulation in their
environment. They learn quickly and distinguish between various features of the
immediate environment. For example, an infant learns to distinguish between a
spoon and mother’s milk and opens his mouth differently for the two.

Reflex actions such as sucking, grasping inherited by the infant become the
building blocks for cognitive learning. With time, they learn to act intentionally.
Infants learn to imitate others in their environment. As they grow, they can also
imitate a person who is not present in the immediate environment. This is called
‘deferred imitation.’
Gradually, infants develop object permanence i.e. the understanding that objects
continue to exist even when out of sight. For example, a four month old child
does not look out for a ball with which she/he was playing if went out of sight
but a child about 15 months old will definitely do.

z The Pre-Operational Stage (2-7 years)
This is the second stage of cognitive development which is basically a pre-logical
stage as logic has not yet fully developed. It extends from two to seven years of
age. There are a few cognitive limitations that characterise children’s cognition at
this stage. They are:

Animistic and illogical thinking: At this stage, children think that non-living objects
also possess life like qualities. For example, children may reason that if an object
is moving, it is alive; if it is not moving, it is not alive. Thus, to a child at this
stage, clouds are living thing.

Egocentrism: Children think that everyone thinks the same way as they do and
fail to recognize another person’s perspective.

Reversibility: Children do not understand that for any activity, the events can be
traced back to the original starting point. For example, if water from a tall glass
is poured in a wide empty glass, the water can be poured back into the tall glass
to bring it to the original state.
Conservation: Children lack the ability to conserve at this stage which means
they fail to understand that the external appearance of an object changes but the
physical properties of that object remain the same. For example, if we pour equal
amount of water into two glasses, one tall and one wide and if we ask children
which glass has more water, children intuitively point to the glass that they
perceive has more water.

Children also fail to understand multiple perspectives and categorise objects
into sub-categories based on more than one characteristic feature of the object.

96 EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION