STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT BY JEAN PIAGET

From birth to age two years old:

Children learn to coordinate sensory experiences with physical activity, motor. The senses of sight, touch, taste, hearing and smell put children in touch with things in different properties. They learn how far a ball is to reach or touch, to move the eyes and head to track a moving object, moving the hand and arm to pick up an object. The child not only see or hear a rattle, he learns to hold it, shake it or suck it. The task is learning to coordinate sensory motor sequences to solve simple problems.

Piaget, subdividing the sensorimotor period:
    0 to 1 Month:

Reflection Exercise. Infants use their innate reflexes and gain some control over them. For example, sucking whatever is near your mouth and wielding everything you touch his palm. Repeatedly practicing these and other reflections and become more skilled, but can not get to suck or grasp the object deliberately.

       1 to 4 months:

Primary circular reactions. Infants repeat pleasurable behaviors that occur by chance (like sucking the thumb). By chance, the child's thumb touches the mouth, which triggers the sucking reflex, which produces a pleasurable sensation and leads to a repetition of the response. This is called primary circular reaction because it is in the child's own body.

    4 to 8 months:

Secondary circular reactions. The child accidentally makes something interesting or enjoyable, as set in motion a mobile placed over his head. The action is then repeated deliberately to achieve the same result (action-reaction is circular). It is called secondary because it happens outside the body of the child.

8 to 12 months:

Coordination Purpose of Secondary Schemes. As the child coordinate motor activity with sensory information behavior becomes more deliberate and purposeful. In this way, children see and take a look rattle or a toy across the room and crawl towards him. Begin to anticipate events and to use previous schemes to solve problems in actual situations. For example, when they want to take an object that is not within reach of his arm, lean toward that object. Some children 5 months did not try to reach an object if they believe that even bending, the distance is too great to achieve it.

    12 to 18 Months:

Tertiary circular reactions. At this stage, babies begin to experiment with new shares to see what happens rather than simply repeating previously learned patterns of behavior. Served trial and error to find the most efficient way to reach new goals. The stage is called tertiary reactions because its purpose is exploration. For example, a child crawl into a box, you lie on it, then put it on your head or try to get it to the cat.

      18 to 24 months:

Mental solutions. Children begin to think about mental problems to find solutions, ie start interanalizar actions and their consequences, and no longer based solely on the trial and error. In this way begins to develop security on how to solve simple problems. This development is accompanied by an increased ability to use linguistic symbols to deal with people and situations.

From 2 to 7 years

Children acquire language and learn that they can manipulate symbols that represent the environment. At this stage can handle the world symbolically, but still not able to perform mental operations reversible. This is why Piaget (1967) called this period pre-operational stage of thought.