Piaget
...red every question correctly, with little to no hesitation. Because we are family, he was more relaxed and probably more confident in himself throughout the tests. I began my tests by first questioning Andrew about his family, and observe any signs of egocentrism. He was curious why I would ask him these things that he thought I already knew, and I could sense that he thought I was trying to trick him. He answered correctly, however, when I asked him how many brothers or sisters he had, because right now he is my sister’s only child. I then asked him to show me his left and right hands respectively, and he correctly waved to me with each hand as I asked. He had a little more trouble answering me when I was facing him and asked which of my hands was holding his hat. At first he said that the hat was in the hand that matched up to his because of how I was positioned, but he corrected himself before I could. We sat in my living room on a sofa in front of the coffee table where I laid out M&M candies to test his level of conservation of numbers. I first asked him to count as far as he could, and I stopped his counting after he got to about 15. As expected, Andrew counted the 11 M&M candies that I laid out with ease. He also correctly answered all of my questions each time I repositioned the candies that I had separated into two lines. According to Piaget, this was done to test his ability to sort out the confusing factor of space between the M&Ms in the lines given the illusion of more or less candies depending upon their space and alignment. Lastly, when I asked Andrew which row of candy he’d like to keep for himself, he counted them to find they were equal and chose row B because it had more of his favorite blue M&Ms. After giving him row B, I told him that the tests were over, and he then asked for Row A also since he did so well. It is impossible to say whether Andrew would have correctly answered the questions about his siblings or not, but the idea behind these questions, according to Piaget, is one of “Family Egocentrism.” This idea stems from the fact that if Joe has only one brother, Sam, and can tell me that Sam is his brother, but also tells me that Sam does not have a brother, that he is in a stage of cognitive development which confines him to having a premature concept of who he is as a family member. According to Piaget, he sees his family as just his own family, and is unable see the fact that he is just as much a part of it as his other siblings. This shows that he probably struggles with multiple-perspective taking, being only able to see his own perspective and not those of others. I feel that this is a somewhat improper interpretation of the child’s responses. I think that certain children have a different level of language or ability to communicate, and they may understand concepts (such as the concept of a family), but not connect certain terms to describe the relationships. Joe may have understood the meaning of my question differently for a number of reasons. Also, if a child has to decide whether someone’s elbow is their left or right elbow when that person is not facing the direction as they are, they tend to have difficulty understanding certain physical relationships such as space and position. If anything, the way children are first exposed to these terms may subconsciously make them “egocentric.” It isn’t taught that “You are Sam’s brother” or “This is my left hand.” This is one possible explanation for children’s faulty concepts of certain terms when they a...