Object Permanence

Object permanence:is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched.

It seems that when a baby hears a sudden sound they will look at the direction of the object. In this case the baby turned her attention to the rattling sound, once the object was covered with a cloth the object was "invisible". I have recently read that once an object "disappears" and can not be found, a child will give up trying and turn it's attention to something else, exactly how the baby in the video did.

Sensorimotor Stage 0-2

This video proves that object permanence is not the only task during this stage that infants have to solve. After watching this video, I have slowly started to observe a baby's reaction when they play "peek a boo" with an adult. I did not give it much thought before but it is intriguing to see how a baby will believe that the adult is in fact "invisible" even if they can see their hands, hair and clothing.

In the video it is said that, "Everything has a life of it's own even if it is out of sight." I recently tested this idea with my one-year-old cousin. I placed a toy air plane in front of him then hid it behind my back. When I asked him where the plane went he said, "It flew away into the sky!" This is an example of an inanimate object having a life of it's own even if it is nowhere in sight.

Piaget's Concrete Operations Stage. Stage 3

Piaget's third stage of cognitive development is referred to as the concrete operations stage. This generally occurs between the ages of 7-12 years, however each individual reaches this stage and completes it at different rates. At this stage, the child is able to understand the cause and effect of his/her actions, but he/she can still not think abstractly. The child, at this stage, is able to manipulate the environment internally.

Children at this stage are fairly good at thinking logically about concrete events, and they use inductive logic. Inductive logic is when you use a specific experience and relate it to a general principle. However, children have difficulties using deductive logic, which uses a general principle to determine an outcome of an event. Children also begin to understand the concept of reversibility, or that things are the same even if you say it backwards. An example of this is saying that she is my sister, I am her sister, we are family, and the child at this stage is able to understand that these three sentences mean the same thing.

This video shows the girl understanding the concept of reversibility because she can understand that the liquid was poured from one glass into another, but it is still the same amount of liquid even though the glass shape is different. In the stages before this, children think that the taller glass has more liquid in it, even when they saw the experimenter pour it from one glass to another, based on it being taller so it looks like it has more in it.

This video also shows reversibility because the two kids are able to understand what the experimenter means when she says, "If you hit a glass with a hammer, the glass will break. Dawn hit a glass with a hammer. What happened to the glass?" The child responded, "It broke," because he was able to understand how to draw a conclusion based on cause and effect.

When children are learning during this stage, the teachers are encouraged to give them the opportunity to ask a lot of questions and to have the children explain things back. This way, they understand and can mentally manipulate the information.

Piaget's Preoperational Stage

According to Piaget, the preoperational stage lasts from 2-7 years of age. This is now believed to be incorrect; we now believe it is over by the age of 6 in most children. This stages are not concrete however and a child is usually in more than one stage at a time, as this image illustrates. This chart is from the IEApedia online education oriented encyclopedia, the chart is from 1977. Since then we have come to realize that children develop faster than is shown in the chart. Although the time may be a little bit off, this chart does a great job illustrating how children are typically in more than one stage at a time, and the stages are not concrete.


During the preoperational stage children start to use symbols to represent the world, and understand the principals of conservation.This is a video that shows a study that illustrates how children in the beginning of the preoperational stage do not understand the principals of conservation.


The example with the coins really caught my attention. I thought it was really interesting that the child counted the coins the first time around to see if they were the same, but when they were spread out she didn't bother to count. She was very sure that there were more in the line where they were spread apart.

Another thing I found interesting about this video on youtube is that some of the comments on it are people saying that this kids are stupid. The children are in fact not stupid; they just do not yet understand the principles of conservation. To adults this seems so obvious that some people may look at these children and think they are unintelligent, because we can't imagine how someone could not have these basic understandings. It is sometimes hard to wrap our heads around this concept.


Piaget also said that children in this age group are egocentric and have trouble seeing things through other people's view points. He says that at this age children do not understand that other people have feelings too and they believe the world revolves around them. Through my own experience working at a daycare, I do not believe this is true:
One day I was working in one of the toddler rooms and a little girl was crying because she wanted her mommy. A boy who was only a little older than 2 made a bracelet out of the toys to make this little girl feel better. This shows that even toddlers understand that other people have feelings and care about their friend’s happiness.
Another example of this from my daycare experience is when I was working in a daycare room with 3 and 4 year olds and I overheard one of the boys asking his friend "Are you curious?" This seems like a funny question but it shows that he is starting to understand that other people have thoughts and things on their minds as well as him. This same boy also asked me later on that day if I ever miss my mommy. He was missing his mommy and he was becoming aware that other people could relate to this and he was not the only one who had these types of thoughts.