Question

Illustrate animism, egocentrism, and centration using children’s games or media. Find one example of each and explain how it reflects these concepts.

Answer 1

• Animism is the belief that objects that are inanimate (not living) have feelings, thoughts, and have the mental characteristics and qualities of living things. Animistic thinking is very common in young children and Piaget noted that this is a characteristic of the pre-operational stage of childhood development.
• Children frequently believe that their toys have feelings. For example, a child wouldn't want to leave their teddy bear outside for fear that it might get cold at night and be lonely without them. They are attaching human qualities and feelings to an inanimate object.
• Egocentrism, where the child views the world exclusively from her own perspective, helps her cope with her anxieties. It also encourages toddlers' explorations as they reach the milestones of toddlerhood, including walking and language.
• Because preschoolers' thinking is so often dominated by their own perceptions, they can become upset when they do not understand the idea that the same quantities can look quite different under certain circumstances.
• For instance, if the parent pours equal amounts of lemonade into both childrens cups, 3-year-old child objects-her short cup looks like it holds less than the other's tall cup. She demands to have as much juice as her friend, and there is no reasoning with her until she has a tall cup, too. This egocentric thinking can affect preschoolers' cognitive reasoning as well as their social interactions.
• A child playing hide-and-seek runs to the corner of the room and covers her eyes with a pillow while her father counts to ten, believing that if she cannot see her father, then her father cannot see her.
• In Piaget's theory of cognitive development, the second stage is called Preoperational Thought. During this stage, which occurs from age 4-7, the child begins to develop logic or reasoning.
• One of the processes that develops is that of Centration, which refers to the tendency to focus on only one aspect of a situation, problem or object.
• For example, a child may complain that there is little ice cream left in a big bowl. The child will be satisfied if the ice cream is transferred to a little bowl, even though nothing is added, because he only considers how full the bowl appears to be.
• Children in the preoperational stage are able to focus on only one aspect or dimension of problems (i.e. centration). For example, suppose you arrange two rows of blocks in such a way that a row of 5 blocks is longer than a row of 7 blocks.
• Preoperational children can generally count the blocks in each row and tell you the number contained in each. However, if you ask which row has more, they will likely say that it is the one that makes the longer line, because they cannot simultaneously focus on both the length and the number.