Sensory Motor Stage (Birth - 2yrs)
Piaget's ideas surrounding the Sensory Motor Stage are centred on the basis of a 'schema'. Schemas are mental representations or ideas about what things are and how we deal with them. Piaget deduced that the first schemas of an infant are to do with movement. Piaget believed that much of a baby's behaviour is triggered by certain stimuli, in that they are reflexive. A few weeks after birth, the baby begins to understand some of the information it is receiving from it's senses, and learns to use some muscles and limbs for movement. These developments are known as 'action schemas'.
Babies are unable to consider anyone else's needs, wants or interests, and are therefore considered to be 'ego centric'.
During the Sensory Motor Stage, knowledge about objects and the ways that they can be manipulated is acquired. Through the acquisition of information about self and the world, and the people in it, the baby begins to understand how one thing can cause or affect another, and begins to develop simple ideas about time and space.
Babies have the ability to build up mental pictures of objects around them, from the knowledge that they have developed on what can be done with the object. Large amounts of an infant's experience is surrounding objects. What the objects are is irrelevant, more importance is placed on the baby being able to explore the object to see what can be done with it. At around the age of eight or nine months, infants are more interested in an object for the object's own sake.
A discovery by Piaget surrounding this stage of development, was that when an object is taken from their sight, babies act as though the object has ceased to exist. By around eight to twelve months, infants begin to look for objects hidden, this is what is defined as 'Object Permanence'. This view has been challenged however, by Tom Bower, who