In the first year, the child forms a basic information processing schema. This is the first step in the construction of a general religious belief system which will guide and limit future behavior. Also at this time, the child develops a fundamental sense of trust or mistrust, which is another source of future stupidity: later on, the individual will find himself mistakenly trusting the untrustworthy or suspiciously dismissing honest people with sincere intentions.

A cognitive correlate of trust is the concept of object permanence, which is formed by the age of 18 months. By this age, the child can represent by mental image objects no longer in sight. The underlying, supporting assumption is that objects are consistent—that they remain the same not only when viewed from different angles or distances but even when they cannot be viewed at all. Thus, different perceptions can be associated with a presumably constant object. This has potential for stupidity, in that objects sometimes do change and yet people will cling to their original images rather than adjust to an altered reality.

The age of two years is the age of language, with actions and objects being represented by verbal as well as visual symbols. Classifying and grouping the symbols is accomplished according to the specific language of the social group. This is the process by which information is sorted and organized into categories which may or may not reflect relevant relationships found in the environment.

Along with the development of a child's cognitive world of ideas, a sense of rules and order also develops and undergoes transformation with maturation. For a young child, a rule is reality and is sacred because it is traditional. Even some adults never get beyond this stage, and, indeed, the basic rules of life, whatever they are, do not change. The older child comes to realize that stated rules are expressions of mutual agreement. They are seen to function by promoting social cooperation through individual constraint.

Although the idea of rules may change, the system of assumed world order the young child inherits from his parents is a moral necessity to him. As he matures, he will be forced to resort to reason when the sacred and obligatory rules are challenged by people with other rules or by an amoral environment. He then may be pulled in a number of directions while trying to impose unity on the chaos of this experience.

For all their inventive play, young children are really basically conservative. They hate change, as anyone who has dared change a word in a bedtime story well knows. Their cognitive expectations are very precise, with routine providing a sense of safety in a world which is often strange and unpredictable. Generally, the more uncertain the external world appears, the more tenaciously the schema is held. It is important to note that the schema provides a sense of security beyond its functional capacity to provide accurate predictions of events. Whatever its flaws, it becomes the "Cognitive map" of the individual's reality and contains 1.) the world-view, 2.) the self-concept, 3.) the self-ideal and 4.) ethical convictions. Although it can cause stupid behavior by the way it both functions and malfunctions, its common presence indicates that the schema must also be, to a significant degree, truly adaptive.

stupidity.net

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