Running Head: Jean Piaget; Child Development

Jean Piaget
Child Development

Mohammad M. Younesi
(1092300122)

MMU University
Jean Piaget; Child Development

Contents
Abstract ............................................................................................................................................. 1
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 2
Biography .......................................................................................................................................... 5
Piaget's theory ................................................................................................................................... 7
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 9
References....................................................................................................................................... 10
Jean Piaget; Child Development 1

Abstract

How do we learn? Cognitive Psychology answers this question and other questions about the
process of understanding in our mind. Jean Piaget, one of the most important psychologists
in the world, who had done a great deal of research about children and the way that the
understand their environment, divides the life of children into different stages and suggests
that children do not understand specific things until they are mature enough. In this text
you will understand the term of Cognitive Psychology and also you will be familiar with
different stages of a child's life. After reading this text you will know who is Jean Piaget as
well as what theories he has got. This article is done by exploring two books of Jean Piaget
("The Growth of Logical Thinking From Childhood to Adolescence" and " The Language and
Thought of the Child") with some other books and articles about cognitive psychology.

Key Word: Cognitive Psychology

Jean Piaget; Child Development 2
Introduction

Learning is one of the most discussed issues in psychology which psychologists in

different period of times have thought about it in different ways. First some of them focused
on the behavior of the learner and the ways that the trainer can change the learner’s
behavior. Today we call them behaviorists. Their three famous theories are Classical
Conditioning, Law of Effect and Operant conditioning. But in the years between 1950 and
1980 some new psychologists came to this idea that we cannot categorize all the learning
cases into what the behaviorist theorists has said. They thought that human being does not
learn things just by what is called conditioning and also this kind of learning is not the best
way. Instead they learn best by observation, taking instruction, and imitating the behavior
of others or in a word by experiencing. These psychologists wanted to know what goes on in
the mind when people process information. Their work, all together, is known as “cognitive
psychology”.

“Cognitive Psychology is part of an interdisciplinary field known as cognitive science.

Other disciplines represented in cognitive science include computer science, linguistics,
philosophy, and cognitive neuroscience.” (Kellogg, 2003) The cognitive psychology is all
about the “main internal psychological processes that are involved in making sense of the
environment and deciding what action might be appropriate. These processes include
attention, perception, learning, memory, language, problem solving, reasoning, and
thinking.” (Eysenck, 2001) Cognitive psychology has become more and more important in
different areas of psychology. For example in order to understand the whole process of
developing from infant to adolescent, it is essential to consider the large number of
cognitive changes that occur during the years of childhood. In order to understand how
individuals communicate with each other in social situations, we need to take account of the
knowledge of themselves and of each other they have stored in memory, their explanation
of the situation, and so on. If we want to understand patients suffering from anxiety
disorders or depression, it is important to focus on their biased interpretations of
themselves and of their current and future prospects. (Eysenck, 2001) “Cognitive
psychology refers to the study of human mental processes and their role in thinking, felling,
and behaving.” (Kellogg, 2003)

Processing problems in human mind is like processing problems in computers. For

example when a digital computer wants to answer to a mathematical problem, such as
21+14, it represents the problem in symbolic code of zeros and each digit is represented by
eight bits of information and each bit takes the value of zero or one. Then a software
Jean Piaget; Child Development 3
program processes those symbols according to the rules of addition, which finally gives the
answer of 35. Similarly as you read this problem and think about the answer, your mind
represented the numbers and processed the information. This comparison between mental
processes and computation has been very useful and provides what is called “information
processing” approach to cognitive psychology. (Kellogg, 2003)

Most cognitive psychologists have accepted the term of to “information processing”

approach. Some of the main assumptions of this approach are as follows.

 Information made available by the environment is processed by series of processing

systems (e.g., attention, perception, short-term memory).
 These processing systems transform or alter the information in various systematic
ways (e.g., three connected lines are presented to our eyes, but we see a triangle)
 The major goal of research is to specify the processes and structures (e.g., long-
term memory) that underlie cognitive performance.
 Information processing in people resembles that in computers.

(Eysenck, 2001)

A version of the information processing approach that was popular about 30 years
ago is shown in diagram below.

STIMULUS Attention Perception Thought Decision RESPONSE

processe OR ACTION
s

According to this version, a stimulus (an environmental event such as a problem or

task) is presented to the participant, and this stimulus causes certain internal cognitive
processes to occur. These processes finally produce the required response or answer.
Processing directly affected by the stimulus input is usually described as bottom-up
processing. In addition, it was assumed within this version of information-processing theory
that only one process occurs at any moment in time. This is known as serial processing and
means that one process is completed before the next begins.
Jean Piaget; Child Development 4
For the type of information-processing theory, there are numerous situations in
which processing is neither exclusively bottom-up nor serial. There is also top-down
processing, which is processing that influenced by the individual’s expectation and
knowledge rather than simply by the stimulus itself. Look at the triangle below, and read
what it says.

PARIS

IN THE

THE SPRING

You will probably have read it as “Paris in the spring”. Look again and you will see
that the word “the” is repeated. Your expectation that it is the well known phrase (i.e., top-
down processing) dominated the information actually available in the stimulus (i.e., bottom-
up processing).

It is now widely accepted that most cognition involves a mixture of bottom up and top down
processing. (Eysenck, 2001)

Among the famous cognitive psychologists, Jean Piaget is perhaps the most
important one.
Jean Piaget; Child Development 5
Biography

Jean Piaget was born in 1896 in Switzerland. He “idolized his father, an academic,
and came to fear his mother, who he experienced as emotionally unstable.”(Mayer, 2005)
Before entering to the field of psychology, he had already made his name in a special
branch of zoology of mollusks. (Piaget, 1926) “Having acquired early taste of the writing ...
Piaget write between 1907, when the first writing, and 1980, the date of his death, an
impressive number of articles, books, book chapters collective, prefaces and other
conference papers. ” (Ducret, 2006) By 1912, Piaget published a series of research on
mollusks and in 1918 he graduated in zoology from the Univ. of Neuchâtel. In 1918 Piaget
started an eight year research which took him to [C. G. Jung] and Eugen Bleuler’s
psychiatric clinic in Zürich and later [in Paris] he worked with Théodore Simon and
Alfred Binet [in the administration of intelligence tests to children]. (Mayer, 2005) Jean
Piaget settled jn1921 in Geneva, where he continued most of his academic career, and
where he married Valentine Châtenay 1923. “From this marriage had three children,
Jacqueline, in 1925, Lucienne, 1927, and 1931, Laurent, who will be the central figures in
three of the most important books of scientific psychology of the 20th century (The Origins
of Intelligence, 1936 , The Construction of Reality, 1937, and the symbol formation in
children, 1945). ” ” (Ducret, 2006)

He passed away in 16 September 1980 at the age of 84 in Geneva.

Today, the major discoveries made by Piaget and his many collaborators in the field
of developmental psychology are the intellectual source of most current research on the
practical and conceptual understanding of the child. It is in many respects desirable that the
Jean Piaget; Child Development 6
originality and depth of multi-and interdisciplinary approaches developed from these
discoveries by the person who started it.

Appointments

 1921-25 Research Director (Chef des travaux), Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Geneva
 1925-29 Professor of Psychology, Sociology and the Philosophy of Science, University of
Neuchatel
 1929-39 Professeur extraordinaire of the History of Scientific Thought, University of
Geneva
 1929-67 Director, International Bureau of Education, Geneva
 1932-71 Director, Institute of Educational Sciences, University of Geneva
 1938-51 Professor of Experimental Psychology and Sociology, University of Lausanne
 1939-51 Professor of Sociology, University of Geneva
 1940-71 Professeur ordinaire of Experimental Psychology, University of Geneva
 1952-64 Professor of Genetic Psychology, Sorbonne, Paris
 1954-57 President, International Union of Scientific Psychology
 1955-80 Director, International Centre for Genetic Epistemology, Geneva
 1971-80 Emeritus Professor, University of Geneva
Jean Piaget; Child Development 7
Piaget’s theory

Jean Piaget’s theory has two components, “Stages of Child Development” and
“Cognitive Development Theory”. In “Cognitive Development” Piaget’s work tells us that
“minds learn best when they are actively constructing meaning relative to their existing
mental (or conceptual) structures ... This can involve modification of those structures
(accommodation) or the use of those structures to incorporate previously unknown parts of
the world (assimilation). ” (Mayer, 2005)

In “Stages of Child Development” part, he proposed that children do not learn

specific things until they are mature enough to do. In this part of his job Piaget “analyzed
the intelligent behavior with respect to the growth continuum. His overall aim has been to
trace the development of intelligence as it comes to deal with increasingly complex
problems or as it deals with simple problems in more efficient ways. The following are the
four major stages of growth which have been delineated.” (Piaget, 1958)

 Sensori-Motor

The first, covering the period from birth to about two years, is the sensori-motor
stage. This is when the child learns to coordinate perceptual and Moto functions and to use
certain elementary schemata (in this context, a type of generalized behavior pattern or
disposition) for dealing with external objects. He comes to know that objects exist even
when outside his perceptual field and coordinates their parts into a whole recognizable from
different perspectives. Elementary forms of symbolic behavior appear, as “for example in
the child who opens and shut his own mouth while thinking about how he might extract a
watch chain from a half-open matchbox. Expressive symbolism is also seen, as when
Piaget’s daughter at one year and three month lies down and pretends to go to sleep,
laughing as she takes a corner of the tablecloth as a symbolic representation of pillow.”
(Piaget, 1958)

 Preoperational or Representational

The preoperational or representational stage extends from the beginnings of

organized symbolic behavior – language in particular – until about six years. The child
comes to represent the external world through the medium of symbols, but he does so
primarily by generalization from a motivational model – e.g., he believes that the sun
moves because “God pushes it” and that the stars, like himself, have to go to bed. he is
much less able to separate his own goals from the means for achieving them than the
Jean Piaget; Child Development 8
operational level child, and when he has to make correction after his attempts to manipulate
reality are met with frustration he does so by intuitive regulations rather than operations –
roughly , regulation are after the fact correction analogous to feedback mechanism . In the
balance scale problem, for example, we see that the preoperational subjects sometimes
expect the scale to stay in proportion when they correct a disequilibrium by hand. They
may, form an intuitive feeling for symmetry, add weight on the side where it lacks but may
equally well add more on the overloaded side from a belief that more action leads
automatically to success . (Piaget, 1958)

 Concrete Operation

“Between seven and eleven years, the child acquires the ability to carry out concrete
operations. These greatly enlarge his ability to organize means independently of the direct
impetus toward goal of the immediately present object world.” (Piaget, 1958)

During this stage, the thought process becomes more rational, mature and adult like,
(or more operational). The process is divided by Piaget into two stages, the Concrete
Operations, and the Formal Operations stage, which is normally undergone by adolescents.

In the Concrete Operational stage, the child has the ability to develop logical thought
about an object, if they are able to manipulate it. By comparison, however, in the Formal
Operations stage, the thoughts are able to be manipulated and the presence of the object is
not necessary for the thought to take place.

 Preparatory to Adult Thinking

The fourth and final phase, preparatory to adult thinking, takes place between twelve
and fifteen years and involves the appearance of formal as opposed to concrete operations.
Its most important features are the development of the ability to use hypothetical reasoning
based on a logic of all possible combinations and to perform controlled experimentation.
(Piaget, 1958)

Both the third and the fourth stages are operational as distinguished from the first
two. An operation is a type of action: it can be carried out either directly, in the
manipulation of objects, or internally, when it is categories or (in the case of formal logic)
propositions which are manipulated. Roughly, an operation is a means for mentally
transforming data about the real world so that they can be organized and used selectively in
Jean Piaget; Child Development 9
the solution of problems. An operation differs from simple action or goal-directed behavior
in that it is internalized and reversible. (Piaget, 1958)

Conclusion

Jean Piaget's work about children's intelligence today is used in different fields
including education and psychology. Understanding how children understand things and how
they deal with different things in different periods of their life helps both parents and
educators to act more efficiently toward children. Today the Cognitive Psychology is used in
many different fields like computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive
neuroscience. It is all about understanding how people Understand. Knowing cognitive
psychology and the theories about learning would have a great deal effect on manager's job
to maintain organization's knowledge in hand as a strategic asset.
Jean Piaget; Child Development 10

References

Ducret, J. J. (1990 and 2006) Brief Biography. Retrieved April 8, 2010, from
http://www.fondationjeanpiaget.ch/fjp/site/biographie/index_biographie.php

Eysenck, M. W. (2001) Principles of Cognitive Psychology(2nd ed.), Approaches to cognitive

psychology, introduction (pp. 1-3) Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press, Ltd.

Kellogg, R. T. (2003) Cognitive Psychology (2nd ed.), Scope And Methods, Chapter 1 (pp. 3-
5) California, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publication, Inc.

Mayer, S. (2005, October 21) A Brief Biography of Jean Piaget. Harvard Graduate School of
Education

Piaget, J. (1958) The Growth of Logical Thinking From Childhood to Adolescence (pp. xi-
xiii). Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.

Piaget, J (1926) The Language and Thought of the Child, Preface (by Prof. Claparede, E.)
(pp. xiv-xv). New York: HARCOURT, BRACE & COMPANY, INC.