Parents, teachers and anyone who has lived with children for a long time have observed the development process that occurs in the first years of life, and it is precisely this cognitive progress that is integrated into Piaget’s development theory, which we will talk about later in the first chapter. phase (the sensory-motor stage).
The psychologist Jean Piaget has described one of the most relevant theories of child development of recent times, which is divided into four stages by which children develop their cognitive skills, the first (from birth to two years), is distinguished by the rapid expansion of knowledge.
- During these early years of life.
- Children begin to explore and discover the environment through the senses.
- In this sense Piaget highlights assimilation and accommodation as the main learning processes.
- However.
- To understand these concepts it is important to know that the child’s brain works based on mental patterns modified according to experience.
Thus, assimilation occurs when the child uses his existing patterns to refer to a new object or event, this occurs, for example, during the first suction of the bottle, repeating the movement that allowed him to suck the mother’s chest.
On the other hand, accommodation occurs when the reality facing the child does not fit into his pre-existing patterns and therefore must change them, is the case of a child with a family conception based on the father, mother and children, who knows a family in which the father died.
Another fundamental element of the sensory-motor stage is the egocentrism of the child, which refers to the child being unable to perceive the opinions of others, that is, the child assumes that everyone sees, thinks and feels the same. Then you will have to learn to look like an individual being, separated from reality and from others.
One of the main concepts that the baby learns during the sensory-motor phase is the permanence of the object, that is, to learn that objects, people and events still exist even if he cannot see, hear or perceive them.
At the end of this phase, the child will be able to understand, for example, that his mother still exists even when it is beyond reach and perception. Before that, he thinks that when he leaves, he disappears.
At each point in this phase you can observe the mechanisms that the child uses to develop cognitively, which in general terms are:
In short, this first phase lays the foundation for the future cognitive development of the baby, the learning and skills acquired during these years allow the child to begin to develop in the world, making it a very important step in the development of the child. The phase is over, the child still has a long and fascinating way to go.