COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT.

Research and Educational Psychology Department

Cristina Casado Lumbreras, PhD

2021/2022
Lesson 3. Sensorimotor period and perceptual
development.

•0 – 2 years.
Piaget´s cognitive processes.

•Piaget believed that the basic building blocks of the way we understand the
world are mental structures called schemes.

•Schemes are organized patterns of functioning that adapt and change with
mental development.

•At first, schemes are related to physical, or sensorimotor activity, such as

picking up or reaching for toys.

•As children develop, their schemes move to a mental level, reflecting

thought.

•Schemes are similar to computer software: They direct and determine how
data from the world, such as new events or objects, are considered and dealt
with.
3
•There is a very important assumption that underlies Piaget’s
view of intelligence: If children are to know something, they
must construct that knowledge themselves.

•Indeed, Piaget described the child as a constructivist — an

individual who acts on novel objects and events and thereby gains
some understanding of their essential features.

4
Assimilation.
•Is the process by which people understand an experience in terms of their
current stage of cognitive development and way of thinking.

•Assimilation occurs, then, when a stimulus or event is acted upon, perceived,

and understood in accordance with existing patterns of thought.

•For example, an infant who tries to suck on any toy in the same way is
assimilating the objects to her existing sucking scheme. Similarly, a child who
encounters a flying squirrel at a zoo and calls it a "bird" is assimilating the
squirrel to his existing scheme of bird.

5
Accommodation.
•In contrast, when we change our existing ways of thinking,
understanding, or behaving in response to encounters with new stimuli or
events, accommodation takes place.

•For instance, when a child sees a flying squirrel and calls it "a bird with a
tail," he is beginning to accommodate new knowledge, modifying his
scheme of bird.

•Piaget believed that the earliest schemes are primarily limited to the
reflexes with which we are all born, such as sucking and rooting. Infants
start to modify these simple early schemes almost immediately, through
the processes of assimilation and accommodation, in response to their
exploration of the environment.

6
Organization.
•Is the process by which children combine existing schemes into
new and more complex intellectual schemes.

•For example, an infant who has “gazing,” “reaching,” and

“grasping” reflexes soon organizes these initially unrelated
schemes into a more complex structure—visually directed
reaching—that enables him to reach out and discover the
characteristics of many interesting objects in the environment.

7
 Summary of the piagetian concepts.
Table 3.1. Piagetian concepts.

Start Piagetian Definition Example

concept.
Equilibrium. Harmony between one´s scheme and one´s Toddler who has never seen anything fly but bird thinks
experience. all flying objects are “birdies”.

Assimilation. Tries to adapt to new experience by Seeing an airplane in the sky prompts child to call the
interpreting it in terms of existing flying object a “birdie”.
schemes.

Accommodation Modifies existing schemes to better
account for puzzling new experience.
Toddler experiences conflict or disequilibrium upon
noticing that the new birdie has no feathers and doesn’t
flap its wings. Concludes it is not a bird and invents a
new name for it (or asks, “What dat?”). Successful
accommodation restores equilibrium—for the moment,
at least.

Organization. Rearranges existing schemes into a new Forms hierarchical scheme consisting of a
and more complex structures. superordinate class (flying objects) and two
Finish subordinate classes (birdies and airplanes).

8
Piaget´s stages of Cognitive Development.

•Piaget identified four major periods, or stages, of cognitive

development:

•The sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years).

•The preoperational stage (2 to 7 years).
•The stage of concrete operations (7 to 11 years).
•And the stage of formal operations (11 years and beyond).

9
Piaget´s stages of Cognitive Development.

•These stages of intellectual growth represent qualitatively

different levels of functioning and form what Piaget calls an
invariant developmental sequence; that is, all children progress
through the stages in the same order.

•Piaget argued that stages can never be skipped because each

successive stage builds on the accomplishments of previous
stages.

10
 The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years).

•During the sensorimotor period, infants coordinate their

sensory inputs and motor capabilities, forming behavioral
schemes that permit them to “act on” and to get to “know” their
environment

•During the first 2 years, infants develop from reflexive

creatures with very limited knowledge into problem solvers
who have already learned a great deal about themselves, their
close companions, and the objects and events in their everyday
world.

11
The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years).

•So drastic is the infant’s cognitive growth that Piaget divided

the sensorimotor period into six substages (see Table 3.2) that
describe the child’s gradual transition from a reflexive to a
reflective being.

•Our review will focus on three important aspects of

sensorimotor development: problem-solving skills (or means/
ends activities), imitation, and the growth of the object
concept.

12
 The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years).
• Table 3.2. Summary of Piaget’s Account of Sensorimotor Development.
Substage Methods of solving problems or Imitation Object concept
producing interesting outcomes

1. Reflex activity (0–1 month) Exercising and accommodation of Some reflexive imitation of motor Tracks moving object but ignores its
inborn reflexes. responses disappearance.

2. Primary circular reactions (1-4 Repeating interesting acts that are Repetition of own behavior that is Looks intently at the spot where an
months) centered on one’s own body. mimicked by a companion. object disappeared.

3. Secondary circular reactions (4– Repeating interesting acts that are Same as in Substage 2. Searches for partly concealed object.
8 months) directed toward external objects.

4. Coordination of secondary Combining actions to solve simple Gradual imitation of novel Clear signs of emerging object
schemes (8–12 months) problems (first evidence of responses; deferred imitation of concept; searches for and finds
intentionality) very simple motor acts after a brief concealed object that has not been
delay. visibly displaced.

5. Tertiary circular reactions (12– Experimenting to find new ways to Systematic imitation of novel Searches for and finds object that has
18 months) solve problems or reproduce responses; deferred imitation of been visibly displaced.
interesting outcomes simple motor acts after a long
delay.

6. Invention of new means First evidence of insight as the child Deferred imitation of complex Object concept is complete; searches
through mental combinations (18– solves problems at an internal, behavioral sequences. for and finds objects that have been
24 months) symbolic level hidden through invisible
displacements.

13
Substage 1: Simple reflexes.
•The first substage of the sensorimotor period, encompassing the first month of
life.

•During this time, the various inborn reflexes, are at the center of a baby's
physical and cognitive life, determining the nature of his or her interactions
with the world.

•At the same time, some of the reflexes begin to accommodate the infant's
experience with the nature of the world.

•For instance, an infant who is being breastfed, but who also receives supplemental
bottles, may start to change the way he or she sucks, depending on whether a nipple is on
a breast or a bottle.

•Newborn Reflexes Assessment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHYk1sYsge0

14
Substage 2: First Habits and Primary Circular Reactions.

•Occurs from 1 to 4 months of age. In this period, infants begin to coordinate what
were separate actions into single, integrated activities. For instance, an infant might
combine grasping an object with sucking on it, or staring at something while touching
it.

•If an activity engages a baby's interests, he or she may repeat it over and over, simply
for the sake of continuing to experience it.

•This repetition of a chance motor event helps the baby start building cognitive
schemes through a process known as a circular reaction.

•Primary circular reactions are schemes reflecting an infant's repetition of

interesting or enjoyable actions, just for the enjoyment of doing them, which focus
on the infant's own body.

•Baby sucks thumb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZBaeYc2FRc

15
 Substage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions.
•The infant's actions are more purposeful.
•According to Piaget, this third stage of cognitive development in infancy occurs from
4 to 8 months of age.

•During this period, a child begins to act upon the outside world. For instance,
infants now seek to repeat enjoyable events in their environments if they happen to
produce them through chance activities.

•She is engaging in what Piaget calls secondary circular reactions, which are schemes
regarding repeated actions that bring about a desirable consequence.

•The major difference between primary circular reactions and secondary circular
reactions is whether the infant's activity is focused on the infant and his or her
own body (primary circular reactions), or involves actions relating to the world
outside (secondary circular reactions).
•Baby makes cute cooing noises: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yCSrb26MLc
16
Substage 4: Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions.

•Which lasts from around 8 months to 12 months.

•Infants begin to employ goal-directed behavior, in which several
schemes are combined and coordinated to generate a single act to
solve a problem.
•For instance, they will push one toy out of the way to reach another
toy that is lying, partially exposed, under it. They also begin to
anticipate upcoming events.
•Infants' newfound purposefulness, their ability to use means to attain
particular ends, and their skill in anticipating future circumstances
owe their appearance in part to the developmental achievement of
object permanence that emerges in Substage 4.

17
Substage 5: Tertiary Circular Reactions.

•Is reached at around the age of 12 months and extends to 18 months.

•As the name of the stage indicates, during this period infants develop
tertiary circular reactions, which are schemes regarding the
deliberate variation of actions that bring desirable consequences.

•Rather than just repeating enjoyable activities, as they do with

secondary circular reactions, infants appear to carry out miniature
experiments to observe the consequences.

18
 19
Figure 3.1
Substage 6: Beginnings of Thought.

•Lasts from around 18 months to 2 years.

•The major achievement of Substage 6 is the capacity for mental

representation, or symbolic thought.

•A mental representation is an internal image of a past event

or object. Piaget argued that by this stage infants can imagine
where objects might be that they cannot see. They can even plot in
their heads unseen trajectories of objects, so if a ball rolls under a
piece of furniture, they can figure out where it is likely to emerge
on the other side.
20
Development of Imitation.
•According to Piaget, deferred imitation — the ability to
reproduce the behavior of an absent model—first appears at
18 to 24 months of age. Piaget believed that older infants are
capable of deferred imitation because they can now construct
mental symbols, or images.

•Other investigators disagree with Piaget, arguing that deferred

imitation, and thus symbolic representation, begins much earlier.
For example, Meltzoff´s research has shown that 6-month-olds are
able to imitate very simple acts (e.g., button-pressing to activate a
noise-making toy) after 24 hours.

21
 22
Figure 3.2
Object permanence.
•Is the realization that people and objects exist even when they cannot be
seen.

•Indeed, Piaget (1954) and others have found that 1- to 4-month-olds will
not search for attractive objects that are hidden from view. If a watch that
interests them is covered by a mug, they soon lose interest, almost as if they
believe that the watch no longer exists or has been transformed into a mug.

• At age 4 to 8 months, infants will retrieve toys that are partially

concealed or placed beneath a semitransparent cover.

•Clearer signs of an emerging object concept appear by 8 to 12 months of

age. However, object permanence is far from complete.
23
Object permanence.

•Although the understanding of object permanence emerges in Substage 4 (8-

12 months), it is only a rudimentary understanding.

•They show A-not-B error: tendency to search for a hidden object where
they previously found it even after they have seen it moved to a new location.
They often are fooled when a toy is hidden first under one blanket and then under
a second blanket. In seeking out the toy, Substage 4 infants most often turn to the
first hiding place, ignoring the second blanket under which the toy is currently
located—even if the hiding was done in plain view.

•The attainment of object permanence extends not only to inanimate objects, but
to people,too. It gives child the security that his father and mother still exist even
when they have left the room. This awareness is likely a key element in the
development of social attachments.
24
Perceptual development.
Visual Perception in Infancy.
Although newborn infants see well enough to detect and even discriminate some
patterns, we might wonder what they “see” when looking at these stimuli.

•If we show them a , do they see a square, or must they learn to construct a square from
an assortment of lines and angles?

•When do they interpret faces as meaningful social stimuli or begin to distinguish the
faces of close companions from those of strangers?

•Can neonates perceive depth?

•Do they think receding objects shrink, or do they know that these objects remain the
same size and only look smaller when moved away?

These are precisely the kinds of questions that have motivated curious investigators to
develop research methods to determine what infants see.
26
•Robert Fantz’s observations of infants demonstrate that
babies only 2 days old could easily discriminate visual
patterns (Fantz, 1961).

• In fact, of all the targets that Fantz presented, the most

preferred stimulus was a face!

•Does this imply that newborns already interpret faces as

a meaningful pattern?

27
Early pattern perception (0 to 2 months).

•Apparently not. When Fantz (1961) presented young

infants with a face, a stimulus consisting of scrambled
facial features, and a simpler stimulus that contained the
same amount of light and dark shading as the facelike
and scrambled face drawings, the infants were just as
interested in the scrambled face as the normal one.

28
Fantz’s test of young
infants’ pattern
preferences.

Infants preferred to
look at complex
stimuli rather than at
a simpler black-and-
white oval. However,
the infants did not
prefer the face like
figure to the
scrambled face.

Figure 3.3
29
•Later research revealed that very young infants prefer
to look at high-contrast patterns with many sharp
boundaries between light and dark areas, and at
moderately complex patterns that have curvilinear
feature.

•So faces and scrambled faces may have been equally

interesting to Fantz’s young subjects because these
targets had the same amount of contrast, curvature,
and complexity.

30
Early Pattern Perception (0 to 2 Months).
•Babies less than 2 months old see only a dark blob when
looking at a highly complex checkerboard, probably because
their immature eyes don’t accommodate well enough to resolve
the fine detail (Figure 3.4).

•In the figure, only the checkerboard on the left may have any
pattern left to it.

•Poor vision in early infancy helps to explain a preference for

moderately complex rather than highly complex stimuli.

31
What patterns look like to the
young eye. By the time these two
checkerboards are processed by
eyes with poor vision, only the
checkerboard on the left may have
any pattern left to it.
Poor vision in early infancy helps
to explain a preference for
moderately complex rather than
highly complex stimuli.

Figure 3.4.

32
 Early Pattern Perception (0 to 2 Months).

•In conclusion, babies prefer to look at whatever they see well

(Banks & Ginsburg, 1985), and the things they see best are
moderately complex, high-contrast targets, particularly those that
capture their attention by moving.

33
Later Form Perception (2 Months to 1 Year).

•Between 2 and 12 months of age, the infant’s visual

system is rapidly maturing. She now sees better and is
capable of making increasingly complex visual
discriminations, eventually even including temporal
movement sequencing into her discriminations.

•She is also organizing what she sees to perceive visual

forms and sets of separate forms.

34
•To demonstrate this new ability to perceive forms,
Philip Kellman and Elizabeth Spelke (1983) presented
infants with a display consisting of a rod partially
hidden by a block in front of it (Figure 3.5., displays A
and B).

•Would they perceive the rod as a whole object, even

though part of it was not visible, or would they act as
though they had seen two short and separate rods?

35
Figure 3.5
36
•To find out, 4-month-olds were first presented with either
display A (a stationary hidden rod) or display B (a moving
hidden rod) and allowed to look at it until they habituated and
were no longer interested. Then infants were shown displays C
(a whole rod) and D (two rod segments), and their looking
preferences were recorded.
•Infants who had habituated to the stationary hidden rod
(display A) showed no clear preference for display C or display
D in the later test.
•They were apparently not able to use available cues, such as the
two identical rod tips oriented along the same line, to perceive a
whole rod when part of the rod was hidden.

37
•Infants did apparently perceive the moving rod (display B) as
“whole,” for after habituating to this stimulus, they much
preferred to look at the two short rods (display D) than at a whole
rod (display C, which they now treated as familiar).

•It seems that these latter infants inferred the rod’s wholeness
from its synchronized movement— the fact that its parts moved
in the same direction at the same time. So infants rely heavily on
motion cues to identify distinct forms.

38
•Interestingly, this impressive ability to use object
movement to perceive form is apparently not present
at birth (Slater et al., 1990), but has developed by 2
months of age.

39
Explaining Form Perception.

●Newborns are biologically prepared to seek visual stimulation and

make visual discriminations. These early visual experiences are
important, for they keep the visual neurons firing and contribute to the
maturation of the visual centers of the brain (Nelson, 1995).

•By about 2 to 3 months of age, maturation has progressed to the

point of allowing an infant to see more detail, scan more
systematically, and begin to construct visual forms, including one
for faces in general, as well as more specific configurations that
represent the faces of familiar companions.

40
Perception of Three-Dimensional Space.

When are infants capable of perceiving depth and

making reasonably accurate inferences about size and
spatial relations?

41
 Size Constancy.
• A 1-month-old reacts defensively by blinking his eyes as a looming
object approaches his face.

• Until recently, researchers claimed that size constancy could not

emerge until 3 to 5 months of age, after infants had developed good
binocular vision (stereopsis) that would help them to make accurate
spatial inferences. But even newborns know something about an
object’s real size, although this ability is not yet fully developed.

•Size constancy steadily improves throughout the first year;

however, this ability is not fully mature until 10 to 11 years of age
(Day, 1987).

42
Development of Depth Perception.

•Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk (1960)

developed an apparatus they called the
visual cliff to determine whether infants
can perceive depth.

•The visual cliff consists of an elevated

glass platform divided into two sections
by a center board. On the “shallow” side,
a checkerboard pattern is placed directly
under the glass. On the “deep” side, the
pattern is placed several feet below the
glass, creating the illusion of a sharp drop-
off, or a “visual cliff.” Figure 3.6

43
Development of Depth Perception.

•The investigator tests an infant for depth perception by placing

him on the center board and then asking the child’s mother to try
to coax the infant to cross both the “shallow” and the “deep”
sides.

•Testing infants 6 to 6½ months of age and older, found that 90

percent of them would cross the shallow side but fewer than 10
percent would cross the deep side. Apparently, most infants of
crawling age clearly perceive depth and are afraid of drop-
offs.

44
Development of Depth Perception.

•One reason that many 6- to 7-month olds come to

fear drop-offs is that they are more sensitive to
kinetic, binocular, and monocular depth cues than
younger infants are.

45
Development of Depth Perception.
•Infants who have crawled for a couple of weeks are
much more afraid of drop-offs than infants of the same
age who are not yet crawling.

•In fact, precrawlers quickly develop a healthy fear of

heights when given special walkers that allow them to move
about on their own.

•So motor development provides experiences that change

infants’ interpretation of the meaning of depth.

46
Development of Depth Perception.

•Why does self-produced movement make such a difference?

Probably because young creepers and crawlers have discovered that the
visual environment changes when they move, so that they are more
inclined to use a spatial landmark to help them define where they (and
hidden objects) are in relation to the larger spatial layout.

•Self-produced movement also makes an infant more sensitive to

optical flow — the sensation that other objects move when she does—
which may promote the development of new neural pathways in the
sensory and motor areas of the brain that underlie improvements in both
motor skills and spatial perception.

47
 Summary of Development of Visual Perception.

Table 3.3. Birth-1 Month. 2-4 Months. 5-12 Months.

Depth Sensitivity to motion cues. Sensitivity to binocular cues. Sensitivity to pictorial cues;
perception. wariness of heights.

Pattern Preference for patterns with Visual exploration of entire stimulus, Detection of increasingly complex,
perception. large elements. including internal features. meaningful patterns.

Visual exploration limited to Combining pattern elements into an

border of a stimulus and organized whole.
single, high-contrast features.

Face Preference for a simple, Preference for a complex facial
perception. facelike pattern. pattern over other, equally complex
patterns and for mother’s facial
features over those of unfamiliar
woman.
More fine-grained discriminitation
of faces, including ability to
perceive emotional expressions as
organized wholes.

48