Aussie Childcare Network Forum

According to Piaget, newborns interact with their environment entirely through reflexive behaviors. They do not think about what they're going to do, but rather follow their instincts and involuntary reactions to get what they need: food, air, and attention. Piaget believed that as babies begin to grow and learn about their environment through their senses, they begin to engage in intentional, goal-directed behaviors. In other words, they begin to think about what they want to accomplish, how to accomplish it, and then they do it. This is also when infants develop object permanence, which is the ability to understand that something still exists even if it can't be seen. These two milestones, goal-directed behavior and object permanence, are the highlights and major accomplishments of infant cognitive development.

Piaget separated infancy into six sub-stages, which have been adjusted somewhat over the years as new research and discoveries have occurred The sub-stages include: reflexive activity, primary circular reactions, secondary circular reactions, coordination of secondary schemes, tertiary circular reactions, and beginning or representational thought. While these sub-stages sound highly confusing and complicated, they will be explained in more detail in the next paragraphs in order to simplify them and highlight the important aspects of each.

The first sub-stage is reflexive activity, which lasts from birth to approximately 1 month. According to Piaget, while babies are engaging in reflexive actions such as sucking when offered a bottle or the breast, or other reflexes covered earlier in this article, they are learning about their environment and how they can interact with it. Babies don't think about behaving reflexively; they simply act out those reflexes automatically.

Ref: Infancy & Cognivite Development

Hope this helps,

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Lorina