Transcript
PETER WILLATTS
The newborn infant, the infant in the first two months, has no way of understanding, for example, the continued existence of objects when they can’t be perceived directly, or they can’t be acted upon. So with an object that goes out of view, the parent that leaves the field of view, goes out of the room, ceases to exist. Really, what Piaget is saying is that babies come into the world with the very minimum of knowledge. They have a set of actually fairly complicated reflex activities. But these are reflexes.
These are triggered by situations, such as, touching the baby’s hand will trigger a grasping activity. Seeing something move in the front of the baby will trigger tracking. But the baby only understands very, very little of what’s going on. Perceptual experiences are fleeting. They’re not organized. The baby doesn’t know anything about space and depth and distance, can’t interpret what’s happening. There is simply no understanding of the world, as you or I would understand it.
SPEAKER
Piaget’s ideas about the nature of early mental representations were based on simple but careful observations of babies searching for objects that have been placed out of view.
PETER WILLATTS
That’s good. There you are, down here.
SPEAKER
Piaget found that, with babies like Rebecca, who’s five months old, although she might be interested and excited by a toy, if it’s then hidden while she’s watching, then she behaves as if the toy simply ceases to exist. Piaget reported that there is a blank reaction. The baby just stops, doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t show any indication that she’s aware the toy continues to exist.
PETER WILLATTS
Here. There you are. I bet, if you did it with this one, and we’ll cover it over. If you’ll let her come forward, see if you can find it. Where’s it gone? It disappeared! Where’s it gone? Oh, where’s it gone? Look, here it is! Here it is.
Gradually, the baby begins to focus some attention on the cover, but only for its own sake. So the child will reach out, grab the cover, play with it in some way, and then would notice, this toy, this object, was hidden underneath, and would pick that up.
And gradually, through this repeated experience, and also other experiences, other activities, such as the baby handling an object, moving it out of view, bringing it back in again, moving it behind something else, seeing it go out of existence, out of sight, out of existence-- come back again, beginning to understand that the way to interpret what’s happening is that the object does continue to exist.