Muzahidul Islam Section C 9/28/2015 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 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 sensorimotor stage, which is the first stage of Piaget’s 4 stages of development, children use their senses to experience the world around them. 1b. At the beginning part of sensorimotor stage, they lack the concept of object permanence, the awareness that an object does not stop existing if it is not in perceivable …show more content…
According to Piaget, children first start showing this object permanence at around age of 8 months. It starts to appear as children learn to create schemas, making up concepts that helps to interpret information received from world around, of objects by getting familiar with it through touching and handling them. 1c. And at this age, children develop stranger anxiety, fear of unknown people. This the result of learning to use schemas. When children see a unfamiliar face, their schemas from familiar people do not match with the unfamiliar people, causing them distress. The solution to lack of object permanence, schemas, causes the problem of stranger anxiety. 1d. While Piaget’s theories were more prominent when it came out, many scientist oppose in some of Piaget’s theories. Koleen McCrink and Karen Wynn of Yale University claims that the skills of different stages of appear on, instead of stately fashion, but comes in a contentious …show more content…
2a. It is the tendency of us, be it an infant or an adult, to decrease in response to a stimuli experienced numerous times. Dishabituation responding to a stimuli as if it is new even when it is supposed to be an old stimuli. The habituation technique is basically observing for how long one object is paid attention to when showed for the first time and then showing it again later on. When a new object is presented to an infant, the amount to time they will look at it will the longest. If this same object is shown over and over again, the staring time will decrease every time. Using this technique, researchers can assess children’s cognitive functions such as their memory. 2b. Using an FMRI to find children’s cognitive abilities can be possible by giving them a task such as putting different amount of cookies on different places and checking which part of brain is being used as well as the intensity of when infant makes a choice. 2c. However, habituation would a technique choice to use as it will not have some big problems that the technique with FMRI. While FMRI will be very costly, it will also be necessary for children to be wired all the time, restricting them and causing potential harm to their normal function. Using the habituation technique will allow researcher to have infant in their optimal condition, normal condition under least stress while being easy to replicate and require