Piaget's third substage (around 4-8 months) involves repeating rewarding behaviors and exploring how they affect the environment. Which substage is this?

• A. Primary circular reactions
• B. Secondary circular reactions
• C. Coordination of Reactions
• D. Tertiary circular reactions

Answer: (A)

This describes how infants begin to act on the world outside themselves. In the substage around 4 to 8 months, babies repeat actions that produce interesting effects on objects or the environment to see what happens. This tendency to explore how their actions affect external things is called secondary circular reactions. It’s different from primary circular reactions, which are about repeating actions that involve the infant’s own body for pleasure (like sucking a thumb). Later sub-stages involve more deliberate experimentation and coordination, but at this stage the focus is on learning about objects and causes in the outside world. So the described behavior fits secondary circular reactions.