An 8-month-old watches an experimenter hide a toy at location A and retrieves it correctly three times. The experimenter then visibly moves the toy to location B. The infant still reaches to A. What does this A-not-B error most directly demonstrate?
AThe infant has no object permanence — they believe the toy ceased to exist when hidden at B
BThe infant's object permanence is fragile and context-bound, governed by motor habit rather than flexible mental tracking of the object
CThe infant is confused about spatial locations because they lack the language to distinguish 'A' from 'B'
DThe infant is demonstrating centration — focusing on a single dimension (prior success at A) while ignoring the new location
The A-not-B error does not mean the infant has zero object permanence — looking-time studies show some representation of hidden objects. Rather, it shows that early object permanence is tied to action habit: the infant's search is dominated by the motor routine that worked before (reach to A). Flexible mental tracking — updating the object's location in a spatial model and searching based on that model rather than motor history — develops over the following months. Centration is Piaget's explanation for conservation failure, not the A-not-B error.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
A 6-year-old correctly conserves number (same number of coins whether spread out or bunched) but pours liquid from a short wide glass into a tall thin glass and insists the tall glass now has more. This pattern is best described as:
AA regression — the child had conservation but lost it under the more difficult liquid task
BHorizontal décalage — conservation is acquired domain by domain, not as a single unified logical operation applied everywhere at once
CCentration — the child centers on the height of the liquid and fails to consider width in both tasks
DSeriation failure — the child cannot order quantities and therefore makes errors on both tasks
Horizontal décalage (horizontal 'gap') refers to the staggered acquisition of conservation across domains: number is typically mastered around age 6, liquid conservation around 7, and volume conservation as late as 9-11. The same child can correctly conserve in one domain while failing in another, not because they regress, but because each domain requires constructing the relevant logical operations in its specific context before generalizing. This pattern challenges any view of cognitive development as a single stage flip.
Question 3 True / False
Once a child successfully demonstrates object permanence — correctly retrieving a hidden toy — they have fully and flexibly grasped the concept and will apply it correctly in most novel contexts.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
This is the misconception stated in the Common Misconceptions section. Object permanence emerges gradually and remains context-dependent for some time. A child who retrieves a toy from location B after seeing it moved may still fail 'invisible displacement' tasks (where the toy is secretly moved under a cup). Piaget's own data and subsequent research show that each advance applies in the specific task context where it was learned before generalizing. The A-not-B error itself is evidence that 8-12 month olds have partial but not flexible object permanence.
Question 4 True / False
Piaget may have underestimated when infants acquire object permanence because his search tasks required motor abilities (controlled reaching) that may have exceeded infants' capacities even when the underlying representation was present.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
This is a key finding from looking-time paradigms developed after Piaget. When researchers measured surprise reactions (longer looking at 'impossible' events where a hidden object should still exist), infants as young as 4-5 months showed evidence of representing hidden objects. These studies bypass the motor demands of reaching, suggesting that Piaget's search tasks conflated representational competence with motor planning ability. The revision does not invalidate Piaget's framework — the A-not-B error is real — but it pushes the developmental onset of representation earlier.
Question 5 Short Answer
What two logical operations allow a 7-year-old to correctly solve the liquid conservation task, and why does a 4-year-old fail?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Reversibility: the child understands that the transformation can be undone — pouring the liquid back into the original glass would restore the original appearance, proving nothing was added or removed. Compensation: the child simultaneously considers both dimensions — the tall glass is taller but narrower, and these two changes offset each other. The 4-year-old fails because of centration: they focus on only one salient perceptual dimension (height) and cannot simultaneously process the compensating change in width. They lack the ability to coordinate multiple dimensions in a single logical operation.
Piaget argued that preoperational children (ages 2-7) lack the concrete logical operations — reversibility and compensation — that would allow them to 'see through' perceptual transformations. The operational child treats the liquid as the same quantity despite the altered appearance because they can reason about the transformation rather than just perceiving the result. This shift from perception-dominated to logic-dominated reasoning is what Piaget saw as the core achievement of the concrete operational stage.