Learning is essential; it is the key structure in life that forms personalities and characteristics that we develop as humans and most of all beings on earth. We learn in so many different ways such as: sight, smell, touching, hearing, and even taste. There are four basic developmental stages I’m going to talk about and show how they are used throughout important parts of our lives. These stages were grouped from theories based on research of Swiss biologist and psychologist, Jean Piaget, and his studies of children’s cognitive behavioral development. Those groups, or stages, are the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. He developed these methods by observing his own children’s cognitive behavior throughout different ages in life. After becoming interested in the subject he started performing scientific behavioral experiments and studies in a lab. Dr. Piaget started using monkeys, performing experiments that many people did not agree with. But with his experiments he found a lot of important information that we use today in many different ways.
The first stage, the sensorimotor stage, begins from age zero and lasts until the age of two. This is the stage in human life when we learn extremely rapidly. Multiple things are learned each day. When we are in the sensorimotor stage we mostly learn from trial and error. As children we rely on reflexes. Eventually our reflexes change and we adapt to the world around us. The main development during this stage is the understanding that objects exist and events occur in the world independent of a person’s actions. Infants also learn action and reaction in this developmental stage. I could use my daughter as an example; she knows when she cries mommy or daddy will come to her rescue. She uses this to get whatever it is she wants or needs.
Infants rely on their senses to learn about the