1. Motor: In the Motor Stage, the level of neural development, at least for the baby, is a system of basic reflexes.
The child's center of attention (using the term loosely) is inward bound. Piaget refers to this as a time of "autistic thought."
Indeed, the child is responding to internal feelings mostly, of hunger, discomfort, a need to be touched, and a little later, boredom.
The major task for babies in the Motor Stage is to learn abaut themselves. They need to gain an awareness of the parts of their body--their arms, hands, fingers, legs, lips, jaw etc., etc.
This is originally completely a Haptic matter. As the child moves around reflexively, feedback begins to build a neural map of their body in the brain.
There is, to be sure, stimulation in the other modalities; and we have stressed the importance of providing stimulation to all modalities to facilitate development of the neural infra-structure for each.
But this information is un-integrated. In terms of basic knowledge about the self--the Haptic modality takes the lead.
Adults experience the Motor Stage anew when they take up a new musical instrument or physical activity.
Take Ballet, for example. An adult beginning this course of study discovers muscles and actions that are entirely new, and body positions that seem totally foreign.
Later, one acquires aches in muscles they never new existed.
For the baby one of many important areas for discovery is the vocal mechanism. The action here is originally totally reflexive. Cooing and Crying are instinctive, and every normal child can do these. Through use and maturation, however, more elaborate movements and sounds become possible, although they are still pretty much reflexive in nature.
But it is a beginning for the learning process that leads to an awareness of the tongue, the velum, the jaw and the larynx and what they can do.
2. Motor-Perceptual: The motor-perceptual stage does not wait for the Motor stage to be completely finished before it begins.
Indeed, we pass through the Motor stage repeatedly as we start to learn many new concepts.
Weeks after birth the child‰s attention is beginning to shift towards examining what is out there--in the world.
The significance of the word ‹MotorŠ in the name of the stage is that the major modalities for exploring the environment are theTactile, Kinesthetic and gustatory Modalities.
These are proximal modalities, which means that the child must come into contact with objects in the environment to understand them.
That means they must touch things with their hands, feet, lips, tongue and just about any other part of their body.
From these contacts they gain an a knowledge of texture; shape, size, weight, and a sense of space.
If ever there was a baby college, this is it. If you watch a baby crawling on the floor they are constantly probing with fingers and toes and mouth and anything else they can bring into contact with an object, which can be the rug, table legs or toys like blocks, balls, and dolls etc. Their activity may look like aimless fidgeting to an adult, but to the contrary, it is intense exploration of the world.
The word "Perceptual" in the Motor-Perceptual name also has important implications. It is a reminder that while the child is exploring the environment with the proximal modalities, he/she is also cross referencing the input with that from the distil modalities.
This would begin in earnest after three months when neural associations between modalities have been established.
Below an instance of the activity of FEELING/SEEING TEXTURE
Children use their jaws, fingers, and arms as calipers to judge size and then relates this information to the visual modality.
Below is an instance of arms being used as calipers to evaluate a SMALL DIAMETER and a LARGE DIAMETER
An understanding of space is obtained by measuring it against the length of the arms or the angle of the jaws.
Below is an instance of a child using body parts as calipers to measure A NARROW BAR and A WIDE SEAT.
The more encounters the child has , the more knowledge she/he gains and the more brain tissue he/she generates. But then, who wants a kid smarter then his/her parents?
The more objects the child can explore, the more opportunity she has to develop the neural infra-structure to process and associate input from more than one modality. This is an early in life opportunity but someone must be willing to be there to provide the stimuli, the intensity and the safety! Typically, only parents and enlightened extended family are motivated enough to do this. Below are illustrations of some close encounters of a terrestrial kind.
In terms of the vocal mechanism, the child is entering a stage called Babbling. This is a time of exploration of combinations of sounds which a baby can make. It is motor driven (reflexive); but it is perceived and correlated through the auditory modality (motor-perceptual)
Babbling, as we mentioned is an activity which is generated through genetic inheritance and is evidenced only in humans.
Below is an instance of the process of examining and evaluating a A TEDDY BEAR's SOFTNESS.
