Piaget

So Yaoqi and I sat down with 2 year old Joy and prepared to conduct a psychological experiment on object permanence in young children. Having immense knowledge in developmental psychology, we knew that children (according to Piaget) do not have object permanence till about age 7. In other words, if an object is out of sight, it is as good as being out of existence to the child.

We began by habituating her to the packet of M&M chocolates. It caught her attention as I dropped it to the floor in front of her, which was crucial to the experiment. Following that, I covered the packet with a pillow, and put another pillow beside it. This was the control situation. I asked her where the chocolate was.

She pointed to the correct pillow and I revealed the chocolate to her delight. She clapped and we clapped along too. All was going as expected. Now for the real experiment.


I put the chocolate packet on the floor again, and covered it with the pillow. Then I reached under the pillow and transferred the packet to the other pillow. She could not see the packet being transferred, but would be able to see my hand was moving something from under the pillow to the other.

Now Piaget predicted that young children cannot do invisible displacements. They need to see an object move in order to know that it has moved. So would little 2 year old joy prove Piaget right?

She pointed to the correct pillow again to my absolute surprise.


Experiment 2 involved an even more difficult task, this time to test ego-centrism. Yaoqi held an Elmo toy up and I showed both Joy and Elmo that I had put the M&M packet under the first pillow. Then Yaoqi moved Elmo away and I showed only Joy that I moved the packet of M&Ms to the other pillow. Now Elmo returns and I asked Joy: "Which pillow does Elmo think the chocolate is under?"

Now children this young, according to Piaget, are ego-centric. As they do not have a theory of the mind, they are unable to imagine that others have different thoughts as they do. So in this case, Joy would most probably think Elmo would know what she knows.

But Joy pointed to the original pillow that I placed the chocolate under in view of Elmo. I was totally stunned.


An older girl talking to me this evening asked me if there was a field of study that allows us to know what people are like just by watching them. Yaoqi said she sounds like she's thinking of psychology.

But I said no, there is no such thing.