Piaget Observation

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Using the Habituation Technique to Evaluate a Piagetian Hypothesis The purpose of this paper is to use the habituation technique in young infants to evaluate on hypothesis derived from Pagiet’s theory of cognitive development. I will compare 5-months olds in a task that involves possible and impossible outcomes. Pagiet’s theory specifies the cognitive competencies of children this age. 1a. Children in the sensorimotor stage experience the world by moving their limbs and using their senses to grasp, hear, and walk. 1b. Object permanence is recognizing an object or a person still exists even when not seen. 1b. Piaget would explain the absence of object permanence in young infants by lacking the ability to retain memories of an object or person…show more content…
The results bear strongly on the experimental hypothesis. 4a. The experimental hypothesis, using Piaget’s theory, is that infants at 5 months of age lack the ability to recognize that objects still exist even when not in their line sight, and also lack natural numerical computational abilities, because these skills develop at the age of 8 months. An alternative hypothesis, using McCrink and Wynn’s theory, is that 5-month-old infants go through the sensorimotor stage sooner than Piaget believed, and therefore infants develop numerical computational abilities sooner as well. 4b. The possible outcome would support the experimental hypothesis because, when the doll is taken away, the infant does not stare at where the doll once was because it now believes that the doll no longer exists, so it does not wonder about where it has gone due to the fact that the infant lacks object permanence, and it will not be using its numerical computational abilities, assuming it doesn’t have any. 4b. The impossible outcome would support the alternative hypothesis because, if the infant is presumed to have object permanence, the infant will remember the existence of the doll that was taken away. When the screen comes down and the infant sees there are still two dolls, the infant will stare longer because he/she knows one doll was taken away (subtraction), so there only should’ve been one doll remaining. This proves the infants’ numerical…show more content…
However, the future investigations may need to adopt techniques that improve upon those used here. 5a. The new results do not fit with the conclusion I previously made. They explain that the infants can calculate addition and subtraction and remember the following result for only a few seconds and then forget about what was presented in front of them after 10 seconds pass. Both results from Figure 2 and Figure 3 could be true if the group of infants used for this experiment hadn’t developed object permanence or numerical computational skills. The infants would be staring at the dolls pointlessly because they wouldn’t know what is going on. The staring time results would be inconsistent to the experiment. 5b. The results in Figure 3 would not fit a Piagetian hypothesis because there is no significant difference between the staring times of the possible outcome condition and the impossible outcome conditions, meaning the children lack object permanence. The infants are staring either pointlessly, or for other reasons that have nothing to do with the experiment. 5b. Piaget would not be able to explain the results in Figure 2 using his theory because the results clearly show that the infants staring have object permanence and numerical computational abilities, The infants are staring longer at the impossible outcome wondering why their mathematical processes aren’t reflecting what they are

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