Which Piagetian concept describes focusing on one aspect of a situation and ignoring others?

• A. Conservation
• B. Decentration
• C. Centration
• D. Object permanence

Answer: (C)

Centration is the tendency to focus on one aspect of a situation while ignoring other relevant features. In Piaget’s preoperational stage, children often zero in on a single dimension and struggle to consider multiple factors at once. A classic example is a conservation task with two glasses of water: the child may insist the taller glass has more water because height stands out, ignoring width and total volume. This shows how attention is centered on one attribute and other aspects are neglected. Decentration, by contrast, is the ability to consider several dimensions, which is why it’s described as the opposite of centration. Object permanence and conservation involve other ideas—knowing objects exist when not seen, and understanding that quantity stays the same despite changes in appearance—but they don’t capture the one-feature focus that centration describes.