What Is The Sensorimotor Stages Of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor Cognition; the Stages Development Between 0-24 Months

The development of a child is quite fascinating when it is observed from the outside. However, when it comes to the cognitive development inside a child’s mind the real fascination should be focused on this process. When examining the cognitive development of a child it is important to explore what the sensorimotor stage is all about. To begin with, psychologist Jean Piaget notice that cognitive development changed, or more so evolved, throughout the first two years of life. This lead Piaget to found the sensorimotor stages of cognitive development. Author Barry J. Wadsworth writes that Piaget classifies the sensorimotor stage into six different substages. These stages consist of the following: Reflex, First differentiations, Reproduction, Coordination of schemata, Experimentation, and Representation (Wadsworth, 1996). Now, all of these stages evoke different levels of development within their given time period. The first substage of sensorimotor is reflex. Reflex stage occurs between 0 to 1 month after to birth. It is at this stage that the basic or fundamental reflexes are present in a child. These reflexes consist of

A child starts to have-mouth coordination. In other words, this is differentiation in context to suckng and grasping. It is apparent that within a short amount of time a baby is becoming a more complex organism that has had extreme development in their cognitive process (p. 37). Like stage two, stage three, reproduction is very similar. This period is from 4 to 8 months and has to deal with hand-eye coordination. At this stage of life a child should be more aware with its space. Seeing objects and reaching for them tells that there is growing coordination between vision and tactile senses (p. 41). Now, moving forward with cognitive development, there is stage four; coordination of