Psych 150: Child Study Project

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Child study project Alfredo Sanchez Psych 150 Professor Dugan January 22, 2014 Introduction I had the pleasure today of observing a young 5-year old Hispanic boy at his home. The child seems to have a tight-knit family, with both parents taking an active part in the child's daily life. The child has an older and younger brother, ages 8 and 4, making him the middle child of the family. The boy lives with both parents, but spends more time with his mother than her father. I thought it would be of best interest, in this case, to interview the mother and ask her few questions about their lifestyle with the boy, what his particular strengths and weaknesses are and various milestones the boy was able to reach throughout the course…show more content…
This is the concept Piaget studied and further grouped his findings into a two-stage theory. The moral reasoning task he developed to assess moral judgment involved two questions; the first question asked what is a lie, and why it is wrong to tell a lie. This is the first question I asked the boy, to which he said that a lie means to not tell the truth, and that it is wrong to tell a lie because you could get punished. This response fits in line with Piaget's theory that the moral judgment of child younger than 10 years old tend to regard lies in terms of the objective outcome and consequences, rather than the intentions of these deceptions; this is the basis of immanent justice, or the notion that rules that are broken deserve immediate punishment. The second questions asked involved a scenario where one boy breaks 5 glasses on accident, and the other boy breaks 1 glass on purpose; the question asked which boy deserved to be in more trouble. The boy responded that the boy who broke 5 glasses should be in more trouble than the one who just broke 1 glass. This is also in line with Piaget's heteronomous morality stage, which state that children in this stage do not take the factor of intention into account. It is only when they move beyond this stage that they begin to factor in intentions into their…show more content…
Another toy, Anne goes to the blue box, removes the marble and put it in another box. I have Anne walk off, while Sally comes back. Just then, Sally reappears, and at this point I asked the boy where Sally would go look for the marble. Unsurprisingly, the boy answers that Sally will look where she last put it: In the black box. I was unsurprised with this answer, as five-year-olds often pass such tasks. This shows that the child knows Sally's actions depends on her belief rather than the real situation which presented itself. Most children, around the age of 3 years old, would fail in these tasks, and say that Sally will look in the blue box, where Anne left the marble. Children of this age simply don't have the mental capacity to understand that other's mental representation of the situation is different from one's own, and they therefore predict behavior based on this
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