Based on my experience, people born in New Jersey never advance past Piaget's Pre-operational stage of cognitive development. This stage is experienced between the ages of two and seven years in normal children, or the entire lifespan of a New Jersey native, and is characterized by the lack of concrete logical thinking. They are able to understand symbols and language, and develop a vivid imagination, but don't have the capacity to understand the application of logic. Their language skills are diminished, and they can speak in intelligible, but not grammatically correct strings of words. They can use predicates, nominatives, and direct objects, but articles, adverbs, and other more complicated sentence stuctures are lost on them. They also don't have the capacity for delayed gratification, that is to say that they don't understand when something will happen if it isn't happening now. So they can't plan ahead or understand the logic of getting work done now to have the future without that work to do. But I think the most significant characteristic of this stage of development or the person from Jersey is the appearance of egocentric thinking. Erikson's series of psychosocial stages of development places people in this age group in the "autonomy vs. doubt" conflict. They are beginning to develop a sense of self as a seperate intity from their caregiver, and this makes them very egocentric, but still dependent on the caregiver. They don't understand that other people also have needs, and only consider themselves and their needs when making decisions. They expect to do whatever they want, and now, and they expect to have their caregiver or whoever else to cater to that expectation. This behavior isn't a bad thing, in fact it's quite normal in everyone's development, and it stems simply from the toddler's or the Jersey native's limited mental development.
Now I bet you're wondering what any of this has to do specifically with people from Jersey. My only response is "Have you met anybody from Jersey?" If you have I'm sure you'll see the similarities between your friend from Jersey and a two year old.
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