Out of all the things that we have been studying in
Psychology recently the one thing that stood out to me the most was Piaget’s
study on object permanence.
Piaget was an important Swiss psychologist that came up with
the idea of Stages of Cognitive Development. One of his most important
contributions to psychology that we studied was the idea of Object Permanence. One
particular thing about object permanence that I found particularly fascinating
is Stage 4, where the child sees you hide an object right in front of them –
while they’re still watching – they immediately stop looking for it because it
is no longer in their range of vision
and it is effectively gone from their mind.
I started to wonder about what relation the idea of object
permanence could have with Alzheimer’s disease. Often people with Alzheimer’s
will forget where they put things, or they cannot remember what they were going
to do when they got to where they were going. Some things that happen to
Alzheimer’s patients seem connected to Piaget’s ideas. One bit from Piaget
says, “I offer Lucienne a celluloid goose which she has never seen before… I
place the goose beside her and cover it before her eyes… when the goose
disappears completely, Lucienne immediately stops searching even when she is on
the point of grasping it…” (Hock, 2014) when I read this bit, it reminded me of
how a person with Alzheimer’s could go somewhere, and when they came, it was
like the blanket dropped over the goose, what they were planning to do no
longer existed at all to them. The idea
of object permanence has been very influential in many things, but what I think
is most important about it is the insight it gives you on how people might be
thinking. Seeing things from the other person’s point of view makes a huge
difference in how you understand and treat others.
by: Anna Derewianka
Works cited:
Piaget's 1954 study (as cited in Hock 2013).
