Jean Piaget is one of the most influential psychologists in the history of psychology (Myers). He was a Swiss biologist (Myers) and he can be considered to be the one who opened the doors the led to childhood psychology and the study of cognitive development. Albert Einstein called Piaget’s discovery something “so simple that only a genius could have thought of it” (Papert). Piaget was a pioneer in the field of psychology. His career spanned across an astonishing 75-year period. He spent his lifetime studying the origin of peoples’ knowledge.
Jean Piaget is best known for his theory of cognitive development, which describes four stages that children go through: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operation stage (Taylor). Piaget is considered to be the father of cognitive and developmental psychology (2000). Piaget often referred to this cognitive and developmental psychology as “genetic epistemology” (2000). He discovered that children understand the world in a very different way than adults do, but that they are not necessarily wrong – their logic is simply different than that of adults.
Jean Piaget was born on August 9, 1896 in Neuchâtel, the French-speaking part of Switzerland, to Arthur and Rachel Piaget (Salem Press). His mother, Rachel Piaget, was a strict Calvinist; and his father, Arthur Piaget, was a professor of medieval literature at the University of Neuchâtel (Papert). Piaget’s career blossomed early – he began writing when he was only seven years old and his first paper was published when he was eleven (Salem Press). He became a well-to-do writer for the Swiss Review of Zoology by the time he turned fifteen years old. So well-known, in fact, that many foreign scholars expressed their desire to meet him in letters they wrote to him – not knowing he was only a young lad. He studied religion and philosophy, and ended up achieving a doctorate degree in natural sciences (Salem Press). He later moved to Paris to work on an assignment that was given to him by Theodore Simon (Salem Press). While conducting the assignment at the Alfred Binet Institute, he discovered the logic develops bit by bit as we grow older.
As Seymour Papert says, “…Piaget was the first to take children’s thinking seriously.” Piaget’s way of thinking and discovery of the way children think and create their own understandable logic and understanding of everyday things such as what makes the wind created the foundation for education today. Jean Piaget’s discovery of how a child’s mind operates opened up an entire new world of psychology. “Our problem,” Piaget said, “from the point of view of psychology and from the point of view of genetic epistemology, is to explain how the transition is made from a lower level of knowledge to a level that is judged to be higher.”
Piaget’s stages, as mentioned earlier, are the foundation of his theory of cognitive development. In order to understand Piaget and his theory, one must first understand the stages themselves. In his own words, Jean Piaget said: “During the earliest stages the child perceives things like a solipsist who is unaware of himself as subject and is familiar only with his own actions.” Piaget believed that “the maturing brain builds concepts, which [he] called schemas” (Myers).
The first stage, “sensorimotor,” roughly takes place from birth through to about two years of age. During this time, infants and young toddlers are simply using their motor skills and senses to absorb the world and function within it. Because children learn so many things during this time, and they develop so quickly, Piaget sub-categorized this stage. The developmental phenomena that occurs during this first stage is the idea of object permanence and the anxiety associated with strangers (Myers).
The second stage, “preoperational,” takes place from about two years of age to around seven years of age. It is at the beginning of this stage, when children are toddlers, that Piaget says they begin to think (Meyerhoff), although one-dimensionally. Piaget referred to this one-dimensional thinking as the child being egocentric (Myers). At the beginning of this stage, children are using their own logic. A great example to illustrate the logic a toddler at this stage uses would be playing the game of “hide and go seek.” Once you, the adult, count to “ten,” the child may still be out in the middle of the yard and completely out in the open, yet they will cover their eyes. This is an example of their logical reasoning: if I can’t see you, then you most certainly cannot see me (Meyerhoff). Children at this stage can only consider one aspect of a problem at a time. A classic example would be the volume of a cup. Show a smart kindergartner two glasses, one short and fat and the other tall and skinny, each with the same amount of liquid in them, and the child will more than likely tell you the taller glass has more in it. They are only considering one aspect of the problem: height (Meyerhoff). At this stage a child cannot consider both the circumference and the height of the glasses at the same time. Children at this stage cannot understand reversibility, such as the concept that addition is the reverse of subtraction (Meyerhoff).
Through the first two stages of cognitive development – the “sensorimotor” and “preoperational” stages – Piaget considers children’s thinking to be illogical (Taylor), but not necessarily wrong. During these two stages, Piaget says that children cannot organize and represent information in a logical manner. The milestone of orderly thinking comes when children enter the third stage of cognitive development: the “concrete operational stage.”
The “concrete operational stage” of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development takes place from about age seven through age eleven or twelve. This is when a child begins to think more along the lines of an adult. A child’s only limitation to thinking entirely as an adult at this point is the fact that he or she can only apply their logic to solid, concrete problems and not abstract ones (Meyerhoff). Hypothetical discussions are beyond the limitations of a child’s mind at this point. During this stage, children understand reversibility. Children at this stage can mentally see things, such as moving liquid from one glass to another (Myers) and approximating what the newly filled glass should look like.
The fourth and last stage of Piaget’s theory is the “formal operational” stage. This stage begins around age twelve and continues through adulthood (Myers). This is when children and young adults are able to understand abstract problems and are able to construct reasoning maturely and by using morals. This is when children are able to solve “hypothetical propositions and deducing consequences…[such as problems that state] if this, then that situations,” says Myers.
Jean Piaget died on September 16, 1980 in Geneva, Switzerland (Salem Press). He was 84 years old. Jean Piaget may not be as commonly known as Sigmund Freud, Ivan Pavlov, or even B.F. Skinner. However, his discoveries and contributions to psychology and the world as a whole will last forever. As William Damon says, “Piaget revolutionized our understanding of children’s minds, much as Copernicus revolutionized our understanding of the solar system.” Lawrence Kohlberg’s “Moral Ladder” is loosely based on Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
Jean Piaget has received at least thirteen honorary doctorates from universities throughout the United States and across the world, including but not limited to: Harvard in 1936, Chicago in 1953, Montreal in 1964, and Pennsylvania in 1966. He has written thirteen major works, including “The Child’s Conception of the World” and “The Child’s Construction of Reality.” Piaget opened the world’s eyes to the minds of our children… something only a genius could ever do.
“Intelligence is what you use when you do not know what to do.” -Jean Piaget
References
Meyerhoff, M. (2007). Perspectives on Parenting. Pediatrics for Parents, 23(12), 8-9.
Myers, D. (2006). Psychology. New York: Worth Publishers.
Papert, S. (1999, March 29). Jean Piaget. Time 100, 153, 104.
Salem Press. (n.d.). Retrieved May 1, 2009, from http://ezproxy.eastcentral.edu:2175/doi/full/10.3331/GL20C_3661076311?prevSearch=[fulltext%3A+jean+piaget]&searchHistoryKey;=
Taylor, L. (2005). Introducing Cognitive Development (Psychology Focus). New York, New York: Psychology Press.
(2000). Concise Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy. New York: Routledge.
