Matt Callegari

Chapter six blog

Chapter six had many interesting ideas and concepts on children and what they could do. I found it hard to conceive that babies had so things going into this. The concept that a baby can perceive sounds, motions, and begin putting words together must be so amazing for baby to try and do. Though for a person of older age it’s not that big a deal. After thinking about babies I wondered how they learned to speak and develop meaning for words and reactions to actions done by their parents. This is under the idea proposed by a Swedish scientist born in 1896, Jean Piaget. He proposed the idea of Sensorimotor intelligence, in the book called The Developing Person through the Life Span by Kathleen Stassen Berger (p.153); which defines Sensorimotor intelligence as, “Piaget’s term for the way infants think—by using their senses and motor skills—during the first period of cognitive development.”  

After reading this it was revolutionary at the time that babies where capable to look at motor speech and motion to learn. This eventually would develop into a set of steps or stages that covered an adolescent‘s learning period. It is six stages that look at how a baby learns and develops with his or her parent. This of course happens after the baby grasp, sucks, and listens to noises. By doing this the baby has entered the first stage.   It’s the idea that when a parent interacts with the child and also motions with the baby they start picking up on the actions. This would lead to step two which takes the previous step and improves upon what was learned.  The child enhances it by taking sucking on a nipple and putting to a bottle. The third and fourth step leads into them recognizing an action, responding to a person talking to them, and much more. The last two steps five and six deal with the child discovering actions and trying new things out and seeing what happens, good or bad. This section was detailed and very interesting. I look forward to more in depth studies on behavior on children for its different for each one.