Common Sense: Nature v Nurture

I've always thought of common sense as something that some people were just born with. Some people were just born with this innate intuition/common sense and some people aren't as lucky. Basically, I always assumed common sense was from nature, not nurture. However, after learning about Piaget's 4 stages of cognitive development, I've been rethinking the whole thing. I hadn't really considered all of the cognitive development that occurs throughout the different stages of our lives. In each stage of our life, we see the world in a totally different way.

In the sensorimotor stage (0-2), everything we know we are learning through our experiences and our senses. You would think it is common sense that when you put your hands on front of your face, you haven't actually disappeared, but until 6 months, you haven't exactly figured that out. After about 6 months, you develop object permanence and then you can finally figure out that when you can't see something anymore, that doesn't mean it no longer exists.

During the pre operational stage (2-7), you are finally able to express yourself in words. What we know to be common sense is not really there yet because the kid in this stage cannot think logically yet. Common sense to him is whatever makes sense from his point of view. He is not able  to consider anything from anyone else's point of view--this called egocentrism.

Finally the kid hits the concrete operational stage and he is able to understand conservation and see the big picture. Although he is still a bit slow, he is learning how to think logically and is beginning to really get that whole common sense thing.

Now the kid is at the formal operational stage and he is really living it up. He can think abstractly and moral development is occurring.

We even know that when you age, your crystallized intelligence goes up, meaning your ability to apply your knowledge and experiences gets better and better as you age. This is when you at your peak of "common sense."

Basically, what I'm getting at is that common sense is not innate. There aren't some infants who look at the guy playing peak-a-boo and are like "well that's dumb. Obviously he's still there." It takes time and growth for children to develop their ability to think logically and abstractly. We still aren't done, even if we think we have it all figured out. We still have quite a bit of cognitive development to go...try to contain your excitement!