During the first two stages of infancy, which correspond to the period before the child is able to reach for a visually perceived object, none of these criteria for a cognitive map is met. The permanence of perceived objects is best investigated by studying the child’s reaction to the disappearance of an object. During this period the child does not search for an object that is gone, nor does he anticipate where it might have gone. At best, he continues to feel or look at the place where it disappeared-i.e., he continues doing what he was doing at the time it disappeared. During this period, there is some integration of the senses. The child learns to look at an object that is making a noise; he can tie together tactual sensations from the hand, kinaesthetic sensations from limbs, and tactual sensations from the mouth. He can put what he touches into his mouth and suck it.
This is not yet space or object perception, but it is the beginning of them. When the same object is involved in two different schemata, or behavior patterns, so that it is touched by the hands and also sucked, the child gets two sources of information about it. Gradually this recognition that something fits into all the various schemata leads to its being unified into an object, but this does not happen for some time STAGE 3: Moving on now to stage 3, corresponding to the period between the acquisition of visual motor prehension and the ability to engage in goal directed meansend behavior, we find that the various senses are much better integrated than before. This is one of the characteristics signified by visually guided reaching for an object. This same behavior also puts the child in the position to observe the relationship between two objects rather than merely the relation of an object to his own actions.
His anger was in a sense a response to the frustration even though his motive to have the bottle disappeared when the bottle was invisible. If he had in any way cognized the bottle under the table, his behavior would have been quite different, as illustrated by the effect of making only part of the bottle disappear. When Piaget partly covered the bottle, Laurent’s cries remained strong; if anything, they increased in strength.
Further observations show clearly the peculiar situation that exists in the child’s cognition at this time. Laurent is unable to turn the bottle around if the nipple is invisible. As long as the nipple can be seen, he is quite capable of rotating it to get the nipple to his mouth, but if he sees only the bottom of the bottle, he does not turn it around but tries to suck from the bottom. Similarly, he recognizes the bottle no matter which part of it protrudes from under the cloth; it does not need to be the nipple in order to set off the crying.
Along with the achievement of true searching behavior we find that the child’s understanding of possible movements of the object is much enlarged. At this time the child can do such things as throwing an object in back of him in one direction and turning around in the other direction to look for it. He can follow the trajectory of an object and look for it where it probably came to rest. Part of the information for such an adjustment may come from one sense modality and part from another; there is an integration of the various modalities. This is not the end of development during infancy. The final step, according to Piaget, is stage 6, marked by the achievement of a cognition that contains representations of absent objects, events that no longer exist, events that represent possibilities but were never observed, or events that would produce desired effects if they were carried out. In other words, the child is capable of memory, of imagination, of pretending, of hypothesizing about an unknown event, of planning events and foreseeing effects. This cognition takes place only at the level of action and only under simple circumstances, but it nevertheless represents quite an achievement. Let us look at the evidence for these statements about children in the sixth stage of infancy, which usually occurs close to the age of eighteen months.
