Analyze the significant developments of each substage in Piaget's stage of Sensorimotor development; explain in terms of object permanence and imitation. Contrast these with information-processing perspectives.

Piaget proposed that humans, from birth to age two years, infants pass through six stages of sensorimotor intelligence development before progressing to practical intelligence (Piaget, 1955). Berger (2013) describes stage one, birth to one month as reflexive responses, and stage two, one to four months as reflexive with "acquired adaptation" (p. 115), accommodation and basic coordination, of the six stages of sensorimotor intelligence, as primary circular reactions. Imitation of basic facial gestures with the tongue (Heyes, 2016) and lips (Meltzoff, Williamson, & Marshall, 2013) have been noted in infants as early as stage two. Stages three and four are classified as secondary circular reactions (Berger, 2013) as infants interact with people and the objects around them. Stage three, age four to eight months old, infants "make interesting sights last" (Berger, 2013, p. 115) and at stage four, age eight to twelve months, Piaget believed infants could grasp the concept of object permanence. Some research models are not in agreement citing findings that indicate this may occur at a much younger age as assessment techniques become more sophisticated (Bremner, Stater, & Johnson, 2015; Cacchione, 2013; Sirois& Jackson, 2012; Watanabe, Forssman, Green, Bohlin, & Linda Forssman, 2012). Stage five, the "little scientist" phase and stage six, associated with goal directed actions and consideration of consequences are classified as tertiary circular reactions (Berger, 2013, p. 115).

References

Berger, K. S. (2013). Invitation to the Life Span (2nd ed.). New York: Worth Publishers.

Bremner, J. G., Stater, A. M., & Johnson, S. P. (2015). Perception of object persistence: The origins of object permanence in infancy. Child Development Perspectives, 9(1), 7-13.doi: 10.1111/cdep.12098.

Cacchione, T. (2013). The foundations of object permanence: Does perceived cohesion determine infants' appreciation of the continuous existence of material objects? Cognition, 128(3), 397-406.doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.05.006.

Heyes, C. (2016). Homo imitans? Seven reasons why imitation couldn't possibly be associative.Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 371(1686), 20150069.ttp://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0069.

Meltzoff, A. N., Williamson, R. A., & Marshall, P. J. (2013). Developmental perspectives on action science: Lessons from infant imitation and cognitive neuroscience. In W. Prinz, M. Beisert, & A. Herwig, Action science: Foundations of an emerging discipline (pp. 281-306). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Piaget, J. (1955). The construction of reality in the child.Routledge and Kegan Paul. Retrieved from http://pages.uoregon.edu/rosem/Timeline_files/The%20Construction%20of%20Reality%20in%20the%20Child.pdf.

Sirois, S., & Jackson, I. R. (2012). Pupil dilation and object permanence in infants.International Society on Infant Studies (ISIS), 17(1), 61-78.doi: 10.1111/j.1532-7078.2011.00096.x.

Watanabe, H., Forssman, L., Green, D., Bohlin, G., & Linda Forssman, D. G. (2012). Attention demands influence 10- and 12- month old infants' perseverative behavior. Developmental Psychology, 42(1), 46-55.doi: 10.1037/a0025412.