Laura Lopez is a 3 year old girl, born on March 15, 2013. She lives in the Oakland area with her mother, father, and older brother Daniel. Laura recently started attending preschool in August of this year. Her parents are both very loving and her brother Daniel is already in high school and very much obsessed with his little sister. Laura and her family having been living in the Bay Area since their first son, Daniel, was born. I started by asking Laura’s mother, Cristy Lopez, and her father, Luis Lopez, questions concerning their daughter’s infanthood up until now. Then I moved on to experiment with Laura herself, to which she was more than willing to participate in. The experiment was to test what Jean Piaget called the concept of conservation.
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I explained to them that according to Erik Erikson’s theory, identity development, was something they would notice in Laura’s adolescent years when she began to deal with questions like “who am I?” or “who will I be?” In an attempt to get understand Laura and get comfortable with her I switched my attention to her briefly and asked what she wanted to be when she grew up and why. She replied with wanting to be a doctor because they were nice to her whenever she went. Although James Marcia’s theory with respect to identity development is most often applicable later in the adolescent stage, Laura’s commitment to becoming a doctor based on acts of kindness expressed to her by doctors was made on simple foundations. Seeing herself as a doctor with little knowledge on the subject would categorize her under identity foreclosure because she has made this decision about her future without giving it much thought, Even if she had done some research it would have limited to resources such as her parents or possible her school teacher. She also would not have been able to comprehend entirely the extensive route one has to take to become a doctor (Kalat, 2014, p. …show more content…
Piaget proposed four stages of cognitive development. They were as follow: the sensorimotor stage (birth-2 years old), the preoperational stage (just before 2-7 years old), the concrete operations stage (from about 7-11 years old), and the formal operations stage(from 11 years and on) (Kalat, 2014. p.154). On this timescale, Laura has already moved passed or has at least moved passed most of the sensorimotor stage and is currently in the preoperational stage. During the sensorimotor stage, Laura had no knowledge of what object permanence was in other words she did not yet know or understand that something did not stop existing just because you did not see it. Piaget describes 3 aspects of the preoperational stage. The first is egocentrism, it basically means that the child won’t understand or know about the existence of a different perspective than their own. They will think that you see things just as they see them because they may not yet be aware that people have minds of their own. According to Piaget the second aspect of this stage is the inability or difficulty to distinguish reality from appearance. Even though an object may look like a certain thing, you and I know that it is actually something else but a 3 year old like Laura could not make that difference obvious. The final component of this stage is lacking what Piaget calls a concept of conservation. Laura doesn’t
I explained to them that according to Erik Erikson’s theory, identity development, was something they would notice in Laura’s adolescent years when she began to deal with questions like “who am I?” or “who will I be?” In an attempt to get understand Laura and get comfortable with her I switched my attention to her briefly and asked what she wanted to be when she grew up and why. She replied with wanting to be a doctor because they were nice to her whenever she went. Although James Marcia’s theory with respect to identity development is most often applicable later in the adolescent stage, Laura’s commitment to becoming a doctor based on acts of kindness expressed to her by doctors was made on simple foundations. Seeing herself as a doctor with little knowledge on the subject would categorize her under identity foreclosure because she has made this decision about her future without giving it much thought, Even if she had done some research it would have limited to resources such as her parents or possible her school teacher. She also would not have been able to comprehend entirely the extensive route one has to take to become a doctor (Kalat, 2014, p. …show more content…
Piaget proposed four stages of cognitive development. They were as follow: the sensorimotor stage (birth-2 years old), the preoperational stage (just before 2-7 years old), the concrete operations stage (from about 7-11 years old), and the formal operations stage(from 11 years and on) (Kalat, 2014. p.154). On this timescale, Laura has already moved passed or has at least moved passed most of the sensorimotor stage and is currently in the preoperational stage. During the sensorimotor stage, Laura had no knowledge of what object permanence was in other words she did not yet know or understand that something did not stop existing just because you did not see it. Piaget describes 3 aspects of the preoperational stage. The first is egocentrism, it basically means that the child won’t understand or know about the existence of a different perspective than their own. They will think that you see things just as they see them because they may not yet be aware that people have minds of their own. According to Piaget the second aspect of this stage is the inability or difficulty to distinguish reality from appearance. Even though an object may look like a certain thing, you and I know that it is actually something else but a 3 year old like Laura could not make that difference obvious. The final component of this stage is lacking what Piaget calls a concept of conservation. Laura doesn’t