Piaget's Habituation Analysis

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. In the sensorimotor stage, children experience the world through senses and actions such as looking, hearing, touching, mouthing and grasping. The sensorimotor stage is the first stage of Piaget’s theory and starts from birth to approximately the age of two. This stages allows children to rely on their sensory knowledge and motor movements. There are six sub stages of the sensorimotor stages: reflexes,
The results bear strongly on the experimental hypothesis. 4a. The experimental hypothesis by using Piaget’s theory is the five month olds have no numerical knowledge and have little or no level of intelligence. The alternative hypothesis by using the McCrink and Wynn’s theory is the five month olds have some numerical knowledge that can solve simple math problems.4b. A possible outcome of the current experiment is there no difference in five month olds in the experimental group and control group. A possible outcome that would support the alternative hypothesis is five month olds use dishabituation in the experimental group compared to the control group. This outcome would support alternative hypothesis by demonstrating the infants used their development of habituation to solve the simple numerical problems and use habituation when exposed to numerical problems in school or
These results are the explanation of infants who were exposed to the possible outcome and the impossible outcome could not remember what they saw in the case. These results do not support the conclusion I made in 4d. Both results could be true if the same infants were used in both trails, all of the infants had a short attention period or they are easily distracted from the experiment. 5b. The results that could support Piagetian hypothesis is the longer period increases and that object removed behind the screen, the infants demonstrate they do not have the skill of object permanence. Piaget would dismiss the results of Figure 2 and figure 3 supports his theory that the infants are only focused on the temporary action of the object at the moment. The infants are unable to remember or understand the numerical knowledge behind the experiment. 5c. The follow up experiment that McCrink and Wynn was exposing the different infants and same infants would be exposed to difficult math problems that may include equations, variables, or different operations such as division and multiplication. The different and same infants would be in a different age group such as seven years old. To address the critic’s concern, a plausible explanation would be that the follow up experiment the infants’ numerical knowledge had expanded as they grew older and mature. Although their brains are continuing to develop, the infants are able to solve these numerical problems with little or no issues.