The area of the infant's actual perception becomes his or her entire world for the time being. He or she may also perceive blankets, a rattle, hands and fingers, feet and toes. In perceiving, the infant will use all of his or her senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste) as rapidly as he or she can organize them and can begin to employ them.

There will be some items that the infant only perceives, but does not identify. Of those things that he does identify, he begins to classify according to their similarities and apparent relation to each other and himself. Still, some items that he perceives and identifies he will not classify.

Humans, in order to deal with the world around them, cannot do so by treating every event, fact, and object as a unique, isolated thing.

In order to make the world intelligible and manageable in their mind, humans classify things into categories, or groups of similar things, or according to their distinctions from other facts or things that are not part of that category.

At this stage, we detect the infant's excercising it's ability to choose (or to make selections), which both results from, and influences, the on-going process of perception, identification, and classification. The infant will choose to become familiar with certain phenomena, and he or she will choose to ignore other phenomena.