Welcome to That's Psych!

No syllabus required here - just an interest in Psychology!  Part of why I love teaching Psychology is that it is a topic that we can all relate to:  why people do the weird things that they do. Let's face it, people - especially OTHER people - are funny.  And where there is humor there is usually a meme.

But what is behind that meme?  Often it's Psychology!

Each week I'll post a meme or a hot topic and relate it to Psych.  Real Psychology based on theory and research findings.  The big ideas in everyday language.

Why?  For fun and for my students.  And for anyone who likes Psychology. 

In fact, I invite you to send me things you see online that relate to Psychology.  Send me an email thatspsych@gmail.com if you see something online and think - That's Psych!

To start us off...

Back in the 1950s and 60s, Jean Piaget would say that this little guy is probably in the first stage of Cognitive Development:  the Sensorimotor Stage from birth until age two.  Piaget believed that at the beginning of this stage kids are missing something called "Object Permanence," meaning that once a kid can't see something - she believes that it has gone *poof* and disappeared out into the Universe.  He thought this was true because very young babies will give up searching for a rattle if it is covered up by a blanket - even if the rattle sound keeps going!  It is not until the child is about a year and a half old that she will understand that out of sight does not mean "gone forever" and will continue her quest for the rattle under the blanket.  At that point she would have developed Object Permanence.

Piaget's ideas came from observing children's behavior.  In the 1980s Renee Baillargeon and her colleagues tested Object Permanence in a lab and found results that suggest that a baby might not search for a hidden rattle even though, at least at some gut level, he believes that the rattle still exists in the Universe.  Baillargeon created an experiment in which four-and-a-half month old babies witnessed a screen rotating over a solid box.  Sometimes it would rotate over the box and stop as if it were blocked by the box. This is normal in our world and did not seem to surprise the babies.  Sometimes it would rotate all the way flat as if the box had disappeared (in fact, a trusty assistant had sneaked it out from behind the screen without the child seeing) - now THIS surprised the babies very much - they looked a lot longer at this impossible event!  I bet they looked like the little guy pictured above! If, as Piaget had thought, those babies had assumed that the box was gone once it was covered by the screen, they should not have been surprised when the screen rotated all the way down.

This demonstration suggests that the little boy in the picture may have a gut feeling that you don't actually disappear when you are playing peekaboo - even if he doesn't search behind your hands to see your face.  If that is true - can you think of why babies laugh so hard when you play peekaboo with them?

Further reading:

Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage

Baillargeon's study