A four-year-old tells her mother, "The telephone is angry at you because you were preapproved and didn't call back." Attributing emotions to the telephone illustrates ____ in the child's thinking.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The child's attribution of emotions to an inanimate object (the telephone) illustrates animism, which is a common characteristic of preoperational thinking in young children. Egocentrism refers to the tendency to view the world solely from one's own perspective, transitivity refers to the ability to recognize relationships among objects, and decentration refers to the ability to focus on multiple aspects of a situation at once.

A Four-Year-Old Tells Her Mother, "The Telephone Is Angry at You