Dr. Laura Schulz’s TED talk “The surprising logical minds of babies,” brings new discoveries made in infant and child developmental psychology/neurology to light, that are in contrast to the prior beliefs of Piaget, Vygotsky and other pioneers in child developmental psychology. For many years developmental psychologists (mainly Piaget and peers) believed that infants and toddlers were in the state of precausal reasoning in the preoperational stage which is from twelve months to seven years of age , and afterwards they would then transition to the concrete operational stage where they would now be capable of causal reasoning.
Piaget’s theory of precausal thinking believed that infants and toddlers were not capable of performing deductive …show more content…
It was not until the late twentieth century that psychologists started to pursue research and conduct studies to investigate that infants were infact, capable of causal reasoning. Even to this day, it is only the cream of the crop of developmental psychologists like Dr. Schulz who are at the forefront of current research and developments. There is usually a lag or gap of twenty five to thirty years for a field to change, update, and incorporate new findings and discoveries.
Dr. Schulz in her talk presents findings regarding studies conducted that measures infants and toddlers ability to perform causal reasoning, statistical inference, generalization, cognition of randomized sampling and more. These findings are of great significance to the field of child and developmental psychology, because they disprove Piaget’s precausal theory, and establish that at an early age infants have the ability to think like a mini-scientist and use statistical …show more content…
Then in contrast, I build off of the themes of Dr. Schulz’s work, and explore and analyze similar research that shows children do indeed have causal inference/rational thinking. Lastly, I provided tangible examples of causal reasoning from my eighteen month old niece, that I personally observed and measured. In closing, Dr. Schulz’s TED talk gives us in the developmental psychology domain much hope and excitement for the advancement, knowledge, discoveries, and technological breakthroughs that will benefit the children of our
Piaget’s theory of precausal thinking believed that infants and toddlers were not capable of performing deductive …show more content…
It was not until the late twentieth century that psychologists started to pursue research and conduct studies to investigate that infants were infact, capable of causal reasoning. Even to this day, it is only the cream of the crop of developmental psychologists like Dr. Schulz who are at the forefront of current research and developments. There is usually a lag or gap of twenty five to thirty years for a field to change, update, and incorporate new findings and discoveries.
Dr. Schulz in her talk presents findings regarding studies conducted that measures infants and toddlers ability to perform causal reasoning, statistical inference, generalization, cognition of randomized sampling and more. These findings are of great significance to the field of child and developmental psychology, because they disprove Piaget’s precausal theory, and establish that at an early age infants have the ability to think like a mini-scientist and use statistical …show more content…
Then in contrast, I build off of the themes of Dr. Schulz’s work, and explore and analyze similar research that shows children do indeed have causal inference/rational thinking. Lastly, I provided tangible examples of causal reasoning from my eighteen month old niece, that I personally observed and measured. In closing, Dr. Schulz’s TED talk gives us in the developmental psychology domain much hope and excitement for the advancement, knowledge, discoveries, and technological breakthroughs that will benefit the children of our