Piaget Observation Paper

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The purpose of this paper is to use the habituation technique in young infants to evaluate one hypothesis derived from Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. I will compare 5-months olds in a task that involves possible and impossible outcomes. Piaget’s theory specifies the cognitive competencies of children of this age. 1a. Children in the sensorimotor experience the world and familiarize themselves with their surroundings by using their five senses such as looking, hearing, touching, mouthing and moving. At this point in their lives, children still fail at object permanence as well as experience stranger anxiety. 1b. Object permanence is defined as one’s understanding that an object remains to exist even when they cannot be sensed by…show more content…
Object permanence would emerge at this certain age because the toddler’s memory would be far more developed. 1c. Stranger anxiety is a form of suffering that toddler’s may experience when they are exposed to unknown people. Certain symptoms pertaining to stranger anxiety are the quietness and the way the toddler looks at the unknown person, as well as hiding behind a parent and crying as a sign of protest. According to Piaget, stranger anxiety is present in toddlers at the age of 8 months around the same time that object permanence emerges in a toddler as well. Being already accustomed to their surroundings and recognizing people around them, is the reason why stranger anxiety and object permanence may develop at the same time. 1d. Today there are many psychologists that recognize Piaget and his theory of cognitive development. However, even though psychologists recognize his theory, they see development as more untouched or extended than Piaget did. McCrink and Wynn described their theory which demonstrated that toddlers could in fact recognize and know the answer of simple math question. However, this theory of cognitive competency opposed Piaget’s view on this subject in which it said that toddlers have the ability to comprehend numbers and simple math questions, something that Piaget believed toddlers were not capable

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