mount of liquid in each, he will think the tall one contains more liquid because the glass looks full. In the story, Eric is in the preoperational stage of Piaget's cognitive development stages. Eric is probably not moving to a higher level of psychological functioning. He seems to have trouble socializing. He has no friends at school and is constantly getting into fights with his peers. I feel he is unstable, both emotionally and psychologically. When dealing with Mead's theory of development, he says we learn through two stages. These two stages are the play stage and the game stage. In the play stage, usually infancy to age four, we imitate others behaviors and there seem to be no rules. The game stage, commonly age five through twelve, children play games like hide and go seek, tag, and there is a lot of group involvement among peers. Rules and regulations are important in this stage. According to Mead, in order to take on the role of another you need to know the rules to play. This leads to taking on the role of the generalized other, which means children know general morals, values, and rules of his or her particular culture. In the story, Eric seems to have been left in the play stage, when according to Mead, should, be in the game stage due to his age. He does not seem to have any rules to abide by which is part of the description of the play stage. If Eric was in the game stage, he would be playing games like hide and go seek, instead of torturing animals. Another part of Mead's theory was that in the play stage we imitate others behavior. Eric was abused and so I feel that this is where the violent behavior in school and towards animals came from.Albert Bandura and his observational learning theory corresponded with the play stage. It states that children learn by imitating others. He did research on the effects television violence on children. He took groups of children and exposed half of them to viol...
