Infancy Task 6 Object permanence and continuity principle
Learning goals:
1. Object ppermanence
2. Delopment of continuity principle
3. Measuring both
1. Object permanence
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) crafted a theory of cognitive development. Infants use equilibration
to adapt to their changing environment: seeking to achieve balance between the demands of
the environment and their own cognitive processes and structures.
Sensorimotor stage
From birth – 2 years. Infants acquire their understanding of the world through senory
experiences and motor activities. Progress is due to circular reactions: simple behaviours that
give pleasure to the infant and learn to repeat.
Substages: happens gradually as schemas elaborate until the infants has developed the ability
to perform the behavior or mental actions that characterize a new substage
- Substage 1: (birth – 1 month). With practice, they gain control over their reflexes.
They are not just passive but contribute to active learning.
- Substage 2: (1 – 4 months). They start to adapt and fine-tune reflexes to their
environment through experience. Adapt through primary circular reflexes: simple,
repetitive acts discovered by chance that involve the infant’s own body and thay they
reproduce because of the pleasure they experience from it (sucking, making sounds)
- Substage 3: (4 – 8 months). Infants begin to manipulate objects which enables them to
engage in secondary circular reactions: simple repetitive actions first learned by
chance that involve objects or other people and brings pleasure so they reproduce it:
shaking a rattle or smiling at people.
- Substage 4: (8 – 12 months). Infants show signs of goal-directed behavior. They
realize these goals by elaborating and coordinating their schemas that previously were
tied to fixed contexts. These schemas represent complex adaptations to objects and
people.
- Substage 5: (12 – 18 months). Tertiary circular reactions enable infants to explore the
results from different versions of the actions that they make. They purposefully
explore and variate with previously stereotyped behavior patterns. The variations are
random. Piaget calls infants in this stage little scientists: a child learns to formulate
general theories and specific hypotheses about the world, conducts miniature
experiments to test them but these are not well designed so they may or may not lead
to proper conclusions. But they become better at this process.
- Substage 6: (18 – 24 months). Children become capable of mentally systematically
representing events and chains of events. They make deliberate plans for events and
trial-and-error thinking begins. A child will vary their behavior systematically. The
infant can use mental combinations: it can mentally represent the course of action.
Infants can now use symbol systems, abstract ways of representing ideas, things and
events.
Object permanence
This is a major accomplishment of the sensorimotor stage. It is the awareness that an object
continues to exist even when out of sight. Piaget: hide toy and see if infants looks for it, so it
Learning goals:
1. Object ppermanence
2. Delopment of continuity principle
3. Measuring both
1. Object permanence
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) crafted a theory of cognitive development. Infants use equilibration
to adapt to their changing environment: seeking to achieve balance between the demands of
the environment and their own cognitive processes and structures.
Sensorimotor stage
From birth – 2 years. Infants acquire their understanding of the world through senory
experiences and motor activities. Progress is due to circular reactions: simple behaviours that
give pleasure to the infant and learn to repeat.
Substages: happens gradually as schemas elaborate until the infants has developed the ability
to perform the behavior or mental actions that characterize a new substage
- Substage 1: (birth – 1 month). With practice, they gain control over their reflexes.
They are not just passive but contribute to active learning.
- Substage 2: (1 – 4 months). They start to adapt and fine-tune reflexes to their
environment through experience. Adapt through primary circular reflexes: simple,
repetitive acts discovered by chance that involve the infant’s own body and thay they
reproduce because of the pleasure they experience from it (sucking, making sounds)
- Substage 3: (4 – 8 months). Infants begin to manipulate objects which enables them to
engage in secondary circular reactions: simple repetitive actions first learned by
chance that involve objects or other people and brings pleasure so they reproduce it:
shaking a rattle or smiling at people.
- Substage 4: (8 – 12 months). Infants show signs of goal-directed behavior. They
realize these goals by elaborating and coordinating their schemas that previously were
tied to fixed contexts. These schemas represent complex adaptations to objects and
people.
- Substage 5: (12 – 18 months). Tertiary circular reactions enable infants to explore the
results from different versions of the actions that they make. They purposefully
explore and variate with previously stereotyped behavior patterns. The variations are
random. Piaget calls infants in this stage little scientists: a child learns to formulate
general theories and specific hypotheses about the world, conducts miniature
experiments to test them but these are not well designed so they may or may not lead
to proper conclusions. But they become better at this process.
- Substage 6: (18 – 24 months). Children become capable of mentally systematically
representing events and chains of events. They make deliberate plans for events and
trial-and-error thinking begins. A child will vary their behavior systematically. The
infant can use mental combinations: it can mentally represent the course of action.
Infants can now use symbol systems, abstract ways of representing ideas, things and
events.
Object permanence
This is a major accomplishment of the sensorimotor stage. It is the awareness that an object
continues to exist even when out of sight. Piaget: hide toy and see if infants looks for it, so it
