ABSTRACT
Piaget's general theory was reviewed in Chapter 2 (see pp. 15–21). His theory of cognitive development aimed to explain the development of knowledge in humans, arguing that knowledge originates in the sensori-motor activities of the baby. Piaget stated that infants construct knowledge about the environment through their own actions. He believed that the infant's perception is inadequate to provide information about the world and he argued that perception is given structure by patterns of activity. However, as we saw in Chapter 4, it is difficult to sustain this aspect of his argument in the light of contemporary evidence on perception in young babies. Piaget does, however, offer a systematic classification of the changing patterns of activity in infancy into six sensori-motor sub-stages which may be useful in evaluating the evidence for and against his theory. Figure 6.1 and the panel on pp. 89–90 summarise the six sub-stages of the sensori-motor period.
