Week 4 Post 1

I found the video from this week's discussion to be very interesting. Before I watched this video, I did not know that Piaget's theory about object permanence has changed so significantly. Piaget believed that infants did not understand the concept of object permanence until they were about eight to nine months of age. The video explained that this belief is no longer true and that infants as young as three and a half months understand that objects continue to exist when hidden. The amount of knowledge that infants have is much greater than it was thought to be in the past. Another part of the video that I found to be very interesting if the visual cliff experiment. I was intrigued by the way infants would not cross the cliff after a specific age. The infants who were eight and a half months or older would not cross the cliff. Infants who are younger have not yet developed a fear of heights. The researchers explained that when infants are born, they come into the world ready to think and solve problems. I also found Dr. Deloache's experiment with cognitive development in older children to be very interesting. She measured the children's symbolic understanding using a small and large model of a room. She had them find objects in the rooms to measure how much they understand. I enjoyed watching this video because I liked being able to see real-life examples of the experiments instead of just reading and researching about them.