Question

Madeline is working to teach her 4-year-old daughter, eliza, how to count. she places 10 buttons in one row with very little space between the buttons, and 8 buttons in another row with more space between the buttons; therefore, the second row is longer than the first. then madeline asks her daughter which row has more buttons. inevitably, eliza chooses the second row, even though she knows that 10 is more than 8. what is this an example of?

Answer 1

What Eliza is showing is an example of “centration”.

In psychology, centration is the tendency to focus on one significant characteristic in a situation and neglect those characteristics which are more relevant. In this case, Eliza focuses on the length of the row of buttons rather than the exact amount of buttons in a row.