When1: 1923
When2: 1971
Who: Jean Piaget [Piaget, Jean]
What: psychologist
Where: Geneva, Switzerland
works\ Language and Thought of the Child [1923]; Child's Conception of the World [1926]; Child's Conception of Physical Reality [1926]; Origins of Intelligence in Children [1952]; Child's Construction of Reality or The Construction of Reality in the Child [1954 or 1955]; Mechanisms of Perception [1961]; Psychology of the Child [1969]; Insights and Illusions of Philosophy [1971: translated by W. Mays]
Detail: He lived 1896 to 1980 and was constructivist. He studied children's cognitive development and developed cognition tests. He asked children to describe what mountains look like if they are at different locations {mountain test}. He asked what happens to liquid slopes in glass jars as they tilt. He asked what happens to liquid levels if poured into various-diameter jars {conservation test}. He wanted to make epistemology experimental science and so unify biology and logic.
Knowledge is symbolic structure. Existing knowledge structures modify perceptual input {assimilation, Piaget} and change to adapt to perceptual input {accommodation, Piaget}. Mind has cognitive processes. Self-regulating processes compare thesis to anti-thesis and synthesize contradictories {constructivism, Piaget} {dialectical constructivism}, by examining context and premises at each step. Psychological development is not only emergence of innate properties through biological maturation but also requires dialectical constructivism, as personal experience conflicts with its anti-thesis. Psychological development thus depends on active exploration to gain experiences.
In early childhood, experience involves only behaviors. Later, thought can reconstruct behavior. By middle childhood, knowledge is about objects. In early adolescence, verbal knowledge, formal reasoning, and deductive thinking develop.
"Intelligence is what you use when you do not know what to do."
Schemas exist in long-term memory and interact with other schemas {Genevan model} {Piagetian model}. Memory strength depends on schema integration. Memory has three factors: external object or fact, unconscious schema sets {memory significate}, and conscious representations {signifier}. Encoding and recall make memory significate.
Social Sciences>Psychology>History>Cognition
6-Psychology-History-Cognition
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Date Modified: 2022.0224