Quite a number of cases of inspiration follow the sequence of: (1) encounters in a deeply moving event; (2) contextualization of the event within a symbolic environment/ place, and, finally; (3) interactions with a figure of authority who ends of influencing one’s understanding of the events (Gibbons et al., 2020). In other words, events often inspire attachment which is rooted to a place. This then inspires curiosity which pushes one to either carry out more research or to look for individuals whose roles in the said field are legendary (Gibbons et al., 2020). To the contrary, my outlook on life-making and, particularly, on the principles and theories of Cognitive Development are different; I first heard and read about a theorist, then ended up working in a place in which mannerisms bore the principles alluded to by the theorist, before eventually getting to witness an event that led me to understand, in detail, the ideals of Cognitive Development.
My personal history begins in 2014 when, out of curiosity, I decided to go through Khan Academy’s online lecture materials. I ended up stumbling upon a material titled “Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development”. In it, the speaker sought to review the Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concrete operational, and Formal operational stages of childhood development as were conceived and explored by Piaget. Up until then, it had never seemed to me that a child’s development could be as acutely defined in stages as Piaget had done. I thought that stages of development were, in what I now consider to have been superficial, categorically identifiable as childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, and adulthood. Apparently, my thoughts and interpretations had discounted the various physical, social, and cognitive needs and capacities to which Spielman (2014) makes reference in the book Psychology . The author notes, in Chapter 1, that these are needs and capacities that vary greatly from one age set to another, and within the age sets (Spielman, 2014). On this day, I was effectively introduced to a figure that I later learned to be have borne some of the greatest influences in Psychology, not just Cognitive Development. I was, however, more intrigued by his contributions to Developmental Psychology, having understood that his is a theory that has helped reform early childhood education and pediatric care.
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Despite the significance of the revelations that I had had, it was not until later that year when I participated in a Nanny Program that I got to witness, on the first account, the ideals that had been expressed by Piaget. I should clarify at this point that my participation in the program was not related to and had not been inspired by my discovery of Piaget and his theory on Cognitive Development. This merely happens to have been an occurrence that led me to a place/ home which would later make the stages of Childhood Development more apparent. My placement in a position that allowed me to observe child behavior and how they potentially reacted to events, actions, and possibilities that they perceived to bear impacts on their needs bore quick but mild relations to what I had read about Piaget. I observed, for instance, that the intensity of caregiving would vary depending on age, more specifically because age defined the extent to which a child could potentially interpret events around them and how their growth and development also affected their cognitive abilities.
Interestingly, it was not until a much later encounter with a younger child, about five months old, that my curiosity got elevated. This was a neighbor’s child. She had asked me to hold the child as she did her laundry. It did not take long for the baby to start crying in what I understood to be an expression of concern for his mother’s absence. I remembered the Khan Academy video I had watched and its demonstration of object permanence as had been illustrated by Jean Piaget. I immediately understood that older children did not have such fears; they seemed to understand that their parents’ absence did not equate to their non-existence. They were as such not as concerned. After the encounter, I set about the exploration of Developmental Psychology. My intent, at this stage, was just to improve my understanding of what to expect when interacting with people of different ages. As my study got deeper, so did my passion.
While my personal history illustrates indulgence in a single psychological theory, it also illustrates what led to the opening of the floodgates that birthed in me the interest in psychology as a field. As is the case with several psychology students, Piaget is still the celebrity researcher to whom I commonly make reference. Arguably, he contributed to the reformation of psychology as a field and in ways that still define contemporary psychology.
References
Gibbons, M., Greer, J. R., Jevons, F. R., Langrish, J., & Watkins, D. S. (2020). Value of curiosity-oriented research. Nature , 225 (5237), 1005-1006. https://doi.org/10.1038/2251005a0
Spielman, R. (2014). Psychology. OpenStax Access Textbooks.
