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The Swiss Psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Termed These As Schemas, And ...

The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) termed these as schemas, and by way of complex research of into the child's intellectual development, began to explain the evolution of thinking for a child. As the child progresses and grows, their senses of hearing, seeing and touch are used to great effect to understand all around them and learn. Through observing the forms of logic and reasoning of children, especially their spontaneous comments, Piaget developed his cognitive theory of qualitative changes, in that children think and reason differently at different periods in their lives whilst going through stages of intellectual development. From this research concept was introduced four fundamental neurological stages of child development: sensori-motor, pre-conceptional, intuitive, concrete operational, and formal operation (Child, 1997, pp 193-201).
For this paper concentration will only be on all stages leading up to concrete operational.
The first stage of development is sensori-motor: for a mental age approximately 0 to 2 years. Developmentally, the first two years of a child's life is very important. Mental structures of the child are mainly concerned with the mastery of concrete object's, very early actions, taking place from day 1 to 4 months) involve sucking and general body movements. These are primary actions, mainly the grasping of everything towards it that it comes in contact with.
As the senses and actions improve, from cycles repeating and the perfecting of co-ordination, Piaget refers to these cycles of action as significant primary circular reaction. Here new actives appear, with less demand on reflexes. At 4 to 8 months an increase in visual-motor co-ordination allows interests to take place outside of the child's body, these secondary circular reactions are basically sensory reflex grasping by limbs of all that comes in range. Next, at 8 to 12 months, these secondary circular reactions are more refined and incorporated into new situations that lead to that of purposeful behaviour. At 12 to 18 month's the child will experiment at extending these secondary circular reactions into tertiary circular reactions, by inventing and developing new ways of completing the required end-result. At plus 18 month's, towards the end of this initial stage the child begins to represent the world in mental images and symbols, and the inception of language allows the depiction of objects in their absence.
It was found that with the child's imagination, the act of play becomes very important, it allows assimilation and enables the complete union of sensory experience and motor activity development. Imitation is shown as an example of accommodation, where the child is attempting to modify behaviour to become someone or something else.


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