PY 352 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Animism, Dual Representation, Magical Thinking

• School: University of Alabama
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PY 352
• Professor: Carolyn Gibson

Document Summary

Preoperational stage: 2 to 7 years: characterized by the increased use of mental representations, language, piaget believed it developed from sensorimotor experiences, make believe play, dual representation. Development of make believe play: with age, make believe gradually becomes, more detached from real life conditions, directed outward, more socially complex, sociodramatic play-make-believe that involves peers. Benefits of make believe play: develop understanding of others minds, peer interaction, social competence, attention, memory, logical reasoning. Limitations of preoperational thought: cannot perform mental operations, or represent actions that obey logical rules, cannot conserve, egocentrism and animistic thinking, lack hierarchical classification. Conservation: certain physical characteristics of objects stay the same even when the outward appearance changes. Limits of preoperational thinking: centration, focus on one aspect and neglect others. Irreversibility: cannot mentally reverse a set of steps. Egocentrism and animistic thinking: egocentrism failure to distinguish others" views from one"s own, animistic thinking give thoughts, wishes and intentions to inanimate objects.