Piaget stages of development chart

Ages: Birth to 2 Years

During the sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2) infants develop basic motor skills and learn to perceive and interact with their environment through physical sensations and body coordination.

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

• The infant learns about the world through their senses and through their actions (moving around and exploring their environment).
• During the sensorimotor stage, a range of cognitive abilities develop. These include: object permanence; self-recognition (the child realizes that other people are separate from them); deferred imitation; and representational play.
• Cognitive abilities relate to the emergence of the general symbolic function, which is the capacity to represent the world mentally.
• At about 8 months, the infant will understand the permanence of objects and that they will still exist even if they can’t see them, and the infant will search for them when they disappear.