Jean PiagetBy: Maria Renee Simon

Psychology10th grade

Personal Life

• Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland on August 9, 1896.

• He was the oldest child of Arthur Piaget and of Rebecca Jackson.

• He died in Geneva on September 16, 1980.• He was quite independent and took an early

interest in nature.

Married Life

• In 1923, he married one of his student coworkers, Valentine Châtenay.

• In 1925, their first daughter was born.• In 1927, their second daughter was born.• In 1931, their only son was born.• They immediately became the focus of

intense observation by Piaget and his wife.

Professional Information

• Swiss biologist, philosopher, and psychologist best known for his work in the area of developmental psychology.

• Successively, Piaget occupied the psychology, sociology and history of science department chair at Neuchâtel from 1925 to 1929.

1st Stage of Cognitive Development

• Stage Characterized by Sensory-motor (Birth-2 yrs) Differentiates self from objects. Recognizes self as agent of action and begins to act intentionally: – Pulls a string to set mobile in motion or shakes a

rattle to make a noise.• Achieves object permanence: In this stage

the kid realizes that things continue to exist even when no longer present.

2nd Stage of Cognitive Development

• Pre-operational Stage:(2-7 years) The kid learns to use language and to represent objects by images and words. Kid thinks egocentrically: has difficulty taking the viewpoint of others

• Classifies objects by a single feature: – Groups together all the red blocks regardless of

shape or all the square blocks regardless of color

3rd Stage of Cognitive Development

• Concrete operational Stage: (7-11 years) The kid can think logically about objects and events.

• Achieves conservation of number (at age 6), mass (at age 7), and weight (at age 9)

• Classifies objects according to several features and can order them in series along a single dimension such as size.

4th Stage of Cognitive Development

• Formal operational (11 years and up) The kid can think logically about abstract propositions and tests hypotheses systematically.

• Becomes concerned with the hypothetical, the future, and ideological problems.

Piaget’s key Ideas

• Egocentrism: The belief that you are the center of the universe and everything revolves around you. Not moral "selfishness", just an early stage of psychological development.

• Conservation: The realization that objects or sets of objects stay the same even when they are changed about or made to look different.

Exceptions to the Theory

• The problem is that this scheme is too rigid. Many children manage to develop earlier than Piaget thought, and some people never attain or develop at an older age.

Influence

• Piaget’s theory of cognitive development has had great influence in other studies such as:

• Developmental psychology• Education and Morality• Historical studies of thought and cognition • Evolution• Philosophy• Primatology• Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The developmental process

The process consisted of a cycle: • The child performs an action which has an

effect on or organizes objects, and the child is able to note the characteristics of the action and its effects.

• Through repeated actions, the child is able to differentiate and integrate its elements and effects.

The developmental process

• At the same time, the child is able to identify the properties of objects by the way different kinds of action affects them.

• By repeating this process across a wide range of objects and actions, the child establishes a new level of knowledge and insight. This dual process allows the child to construct new ways of dealing with objects.

The developmental process

• Once the child has constructed these new kinds of knowledge, he or she starts to use them to create still more complex objects and actions. As a result, the child starts to recognize still more complex patterns. A new stage begins, which will only be completed when all the child's activity and experience have been re-organized on this still higher level.

Videos

Jean Piaget’s experiment

Piaget’s stage2- Lack of conservation

Piaget’s stage 4- deductive reasoning

Bibliography:

• http://www.piaget.org/aboutPiaget.html

• http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/piaget.html

• http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/piaget.html