Ten-Year-Old Stephanie Knows That She Can Easily Trick Her 4-Year-Old

Multiple Choice

Ten-year-old Stephanie knows that she can easily trick her 4-year-old brother, Aaron, into accepting fewer pieces of candy. To do so, she places the pieces of candy in two rows. The first row contains 10 pieces of candy spaced closely together and the second row contains 8 pieces of candy spaced far apart. Aaron always chooses the row that contains the 8 pieces of candy. Aaron reasons that it looks like it has more, so it must be so. He does this even though he knows that 10 is greater than 8. According to Piaget, Aaron's problem stems from __________.

A) centration
B) operation
C) symbolic function
D) egocentric thinking