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Thursday, June 07, 2007

Perception Is Half The Battle

Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development defines the acquiring of “schemata,” the scheme of how one perceives the world. It begins in childhood and covers the developmental stages of gathering information. There are four stages, and within the third stage, the Preoperational stage, exists a process called “theory of conservation,” or the “inability to conserve.” This is the stage where children lack perception of conservation of mass, volume, and number after an original “scheme” changes.

Example 1: Peek-a-boo. A child sees you, but when he covers his eyes his perception is that you are no longer there.

Example 2: A major plumbing blowout this morning, water leaking on three levels. I say, “I’ll call a plumber” and Matt says, “I turned off the water upstairs so the problem stopped.”

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

I conclude: “Honey, go be a lawyer; I’ll take care of this.”

He's a dear.

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