This document discusses cognitive development perspectives on sensory development in infants. It notes that infants can recognize voices shortly after birth and distinguish tastes, smells, pain, and touch. While vision is blurry at first, infants can perceive contrasts and prefer some visual stimuli over others. The document also summarizes Piaget's theories of cognitive development, including the stages of sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational periods. Piaget's work showed that cognitive abilities develop in stages through active learning, assimilation, and accommodation.

1. Cognitive-Developmental Perspectives

2. Sensory Development
Hearing: Can recognize voices within a day or two of birth
Practically from birth, infants can:
Distinguish tastes
Recognize mother’s smell
Experience pain, as well as soothing touch
Vision
Can perceive strong contrast
Blurry

3. “Looking Tasks”
Babies generally:
Prefer some stimuli over others
Notice new or different things
Can learn to repeat rewarding activities

4. Piaget
Active engagement
Manipulation
Organization
Schemes
Operations
Assimilation
Changing perception to fit existing scheme
Accommodation
Changing scheme to fit perception

5. Piaget

6. Piaget: Influential but too simplistic?

7. Stage 1: Sensorimotor

8. Stage 2: Preoperational

9. Theory of Mind

11. Stage 3: Concrete Operational

12. Formal Operational Period
Capuchin monkeys living in a group
Toddler morality

13. What do we learn from Piaget?
Biological constraints
Rate of development
Learning can occur in stages
Reasoning abilities build on each other
Importance of hands-on learning
Importance of skill building
Disequilibrium