Three-Year-Old Dominic Calls His Toy Robot Sam and Talks to Him

question 130

Multiple Choice

Three-year-old Dominic calls his toy robot Sam and talks to him as if Sam is another 3-year-old. What explanation do researchers give for Dominic's behavior?

• A) Dominic actually believes that the robot is alive.
• B) Dominic believes that all people and objects think the same thoughts that he thinks.
• C) Dominic cannot distinguish between animate and inanimate objects.
• D) Dominic has incomplete knowledge about certain objects, including his toy robot.

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Definitions:

Marginal Happiness

The additional satisfaction or utility that a person gains from receiving or consuming one more unit of a good or service.

Sequential Stages

Sequential stages are the consecutive phases or steps in a process or system, where each stage follows the previous one in an orderly progression.

Moral Development

A process through which individuals evolve their understanding of what is right and wrong, often described through stages by psychologists.

Lawrence Kohlberg

An American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development.