The Theory Of Object Hood

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. Children in the sensorimotor stage experience the world through their senses and actions by looking, hearing, and touching. Object permanence is the recognition that things continue to exist even when they do not. Piaget would explain the absence of object permanence in young infants in which that infants

Cognitively, the way infants process information undergoes rapid changes during the infant’s first year. For instance, the Piagetian theory of cognitive development includes (1) the sensorimotor stage in which infants, through trial an error, build their understanding of things around the world (e.g. imitation of familiar behaviour); (p. 203, Chapter 6); (2) building schemas (e.g. a 5 month old child can move or drop an object fairly rigidly, whereas an older child can do the same action but with more intentional and creative movement);(p. 202, Chapter 6) and (3) the concept of object permanence (e.g. an infant knows that an object exists even though it is hidden encourages the child’s perceptual skills and awareness of the objects ‘realness’ in the world (p.

Most of the criticism of Piaget’s work is in regards to his research methods. A major source of his inspiration for the theory was based on his observations of his own children. And because of this small sample group, people believe that it is difficult and incorrect to generalise his findings to a larger population. Similarly, many psychologists believe that Piaget underestimated the age which children could accomplish certain tasks and that sometimes children understand a concept before they are able to demonstrate their understanding of it. For example, children in the Sensorimotor stage may not search for a hidden object because their motor skills are not developed, rather than because they lack object permanence. This has been supported by evidence from Bower & Wishart (1972). They found that the way that an object is made to disappear influences the child’s response. As well as this, Piaget’s theory has been said to overestimate that every child and adult reaches the formal operational stage of knowledge development. Dasen (1994) claims that only a third of adults ever reach this stage.

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. During the first few months of life to the age of two, children are developing senses and motor movements that allow them to experience the world. The more the child interacts with any aspect of their environment, the more the child gains an emotional understanding of the world. 1b. Object permanence is a skill that a child developed over time that allows the child to realize that an object or a living thing still exists even while unseen or unheard. Piaget explains the absence of object permanence by talking about the six substages of the development of object permanence. Through the six substages, Piaget talks about how an infant’s initial thought to look for a hidden toy would be the last place the toy was seen. In this case, the child has not yet fully developed object permanence. Object permanence begins to emerge at the age of two for an average child. It emerges because over the past 24 months or so, children develop their sensorimotor stage over trial and error. 1c. Stranger anxiety is when a child

Object permanence is a concept that was proposed by Jean Piaget, a highly influential infancy researcher (Piaget & Cook, 1954). Object permanence is the ability to perceive that an object still exists even when the object is no longer observed (Keen, Berthier, Sylvia, et al., 2008; Krøjgaard, 2005; Shinskey, 2008; Piaget & Cook, 1954). The concept of object permanence develops during infancy, specifically within the first two years of life (Keen, et al., 2008). Piaget theorized that infants were not fully able to achieve object permanence until eighteen to twenty-four months of age, but that the development of object permanence was proposed to begin at eight to nine months (Keen, et al., 2008; Carey, & Xu, 2001; Streri, de Hevia, Izard, & Coubart, 2013; Piaget & Cook, 1954). Recent studies have demonstrated that infants as young as two and a half months are capable of object permeance (Streri, et al., 2013).

Piaget believe that children are active thinkers. He recognized that the mind develops through a series of irreversible stages. He also acknowledged that a child’s maturing brain builds schemas that are constantly assimilating and accommodating to the world around them. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is split into four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The sensorimotor stage occurs from birth to nearly two years of age. At this stage, infants learn about the world around them by sensing it and interacting within it. It is also in this stage that the idea of object permanence develops, that is, the awareness that things continue to exist even when they are not being observed. In my personal life, I am certain that in this stage of development I would have enjoyed peek-a-boo, because if I didn’t see it, to my developing mind, it wasn’t there at all. The second stage, preoperational, lasts from two years of age to seven years of

     Piaget proposed that object permanence doesn’t develop until during what he identifies as the sensorimotor stage. The sensorimotor stage he identifies as being from birth to about two years of age. Piaget broke the sensorimotor stage down into six sub stages. Piaget also broke down the idea of object permanence according to the sub stages of the sensorimotor stage. During the first stage of object permanence which is roughly between the ages of birth to one month old, an infant will look at an object only while it is directly in front of their eyes. However, if an object was to move to the left of right of an infants direct line of vision, the infant would no longer look at the object. During the second sub stage which lasted from one to four months, Piaget said that infants will look for an extended period of time to an area where an object had disappeared from. He said that an infant will not however, follow the object if it were to move out of their line of sight. In the third sub stage which is between the ages of four and eight months, an infant will anticipate where a moving object will go and they will begin to look for the object there. They will only do this though if the object is partially visible, they will not make

Since Piaget made these claims there have been many experiments done that sought to disprove the claims that Piaget made. These experiments thought that Piaget was giving infants far less credit than they deserved. Other developmental psychologist wanted to prove that in fact infants learned the concept of object permanence at a much earlier age than Piaget first proposed. People came up with many different ideas as to why the infants failed to reach or search for objects that were hidden. They wouldn 't go as far as to say that the infants just don

This essay will review the concept of objecthood and whether or not it is innate and can be found during very early on in infancy. Much research has been done looking into when exactly when a child will identify an object.

Following a ten second interruption, the child is permitted to hunt for the toy and naturally does so correctly. After many hide and seek games for the same object at location A, it is buried at another location-location B. Babies ages eight to ten months generally returned to search for the object at location A when it had just been hidden at the new location. This error is defined by Piaget as stage 4 which is development of the object concept. This fault shows not only important progress made in stage 4 of development but, also a problem in linking up object representation to the child’s prior knowledge of location. Psychologist have revealed many different explanations for this result. Examples of this are in terms of the egocentric representation of space (e.g., Acredolo, 1985; Bremner, 1978; Bremner&Bryant, 1977), the immaturity of the prefrontal cortex (e.g., Diamond, 1990a, 1990b; Diamond&Goldman-Rakic, 1989), and the fragility of object memory (e.g., Munakata, 1998; Munakata, McClelland, Johnson, &Siegler, 1997), and others. All of these studies share the commonality that this error results in the baby’s brain at a specific point in development. Smith and colleagues find justification of the error through multiple processes that result in self motivated actions, like reaching for an object at a familiar location throughout development; error is not specific to a set time in

Observations of the earliest experiences of a healthy toddler are expressed by its relationship with its first possession which is always a transitional object. Transitional objects also belong to the realm of illusion which is the basis of initiating development. This stage is made possible by the capacity of a mother to let the toddler have the illusion that what it creates really exists (Winncott, 1953).

Eventually, the child will begin to understand the visual objects and audio sounds that would be located in the closest proximity. This aspects of Piaget’s theory defines the important aspects of the infant’s perception of the world, which would begin at the 4 to 8 month stage:

Casts doubt on Piaget’s reasoning that a child cannot understand object permanence before they reach the age of one. Infants that are younger may actually have the ability to understand object permanence they just have poor memory at this age which may lead them to forget about the toy being concealed. Due to the experiment that Piaget ran and their limitations, many researchers believe that Piaget underestimated children and their true capabilities.

What Piaget found was that the baby would simply loose interest in the toy. Piaget’s findings in this case state that the baby believes the toy is no longer there because it is away from sight. For a child aged four to eight months the experiment develops to be a little more complex. We can make the experiment more complex because the child will now have improved control of vision, this means it has the capacity to follow an object with its eyes and when movement ceases it can fixate. Now if the experimenter moved the toy from baby’s sight it will search for its whereabouts.

According to studies, infants as young as six months old showed jealousy when their mothers interacted with another baby – which was actually a realistic-looking doll. The situation suggested that jealousy is an inborn emotion that is not learned and it had evolved to protect any type of social relationship from interlopers. It may also exist in other social animals.