Close to one year of age, a child begins to exhibit gross motor activity. The child learns that he or she can control a cup from which to drink, that he or she can grab a toy. In social settings, the child can play peek-a-boo. This is the beginning of the Adult in the small child.
Adult data grows out of the child’s ability to see what is different from what he or she observed (Parent) or felt (Child). In other words, the Adult allows the young person to evaluate and validate Child and Parental data.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Berne describes the Adult as being “principally concerned with transforming stimuli into pieces of information, and processing and filing that information on the basis of previous experience.” In other words, Harris describes the Adult as “a data-processing computer, which grinds out decisions after computing the information from three sources: the Parent, the Child, and the data which the adult has gathered and is gathering”.
One of the key functions of the Adult is to validate data in the parent. An example is: “Wow. It really is true that pot handles should always be turned into the stove” said Madhavi as she saw her brother burn himself when he grabbed a pot handle sticking out from the stove.
In this example, Madhavi’s Adult reached the conclusion that data in her Parent was valid. Her Parent had been taught, “Always turn pot handles into the stove, and otherwise you could get burned”. With her analysis of her brother’s experience, her Adult concluded that this was indeed correct.