Piaget Meets Santa Claus

Cognitive Development
Name:
Institution:
Course:
Date:
Cognitive Development
What are the general characteristics of the sensorimotor stage child?
Children go through a series of development stages before they are able to internalize the various aspects of life and their being along with interacting with other people and their environment. The sensorimotor stage of a child development is the first among the four stages established in the Piaget’s theory. At this stage, there are some several characteristics that the child will exhibit as a sign of their growth and development relative to cognitive abilities (Cherry, 2016). It is common for the children at the stage to exhibit reflexes. The child will experience their environment through the use of sensory reflexes, such as touch, looking and sucking (McLeod, 2015). They will also show some element of circular reactions, where they coordinate sensations and repeat them such as sucking a finger. They will also imitate those that they interact with and indicate early representation of thought (Cherry, 2016).
On encountering Santa, explain how the sensorimotor stage child would react and behave.
Given the age of the child, it is quite interesting to note that the child may not at all recognize who Santa is. This is relative to the fact that at this age, the child will mostly be learning from copying what they see from the adults and other children around them. In most of the cases, it is possible that the first reaction of the child will be trying to trace the face of Santa, from their memory. As such, the child will mostly be playing with Santa’s costume, which to the child may seem appealing. These includes such features such as the beards, the clothing or simply their hands and facial features.
What would this stage child observe and believe?
At this stage, the child is mostly going to be observing what the rest of the people are doing or in this case Santa. Mimicking is one of the key characteristics of the child at this stage, and as such, much of the reaction would be associated with copying what actions they see from people. Aspects such as singing are going to be key to the actions that they will mimic the adults. They may not believe anything about Santa, this is relative to the fact that at this age they do not have the ability to believe in any form of knowledge (Cherry, 2016). At this age, they are still developing their motor skills and much of their memory is not fully developed to store informati...