GLB299 Global Experience: Pioneers and Paradigms of Psychology in Europe: Jean Piaget

JEAN PIAGET—best known as developmental psychologist but also philosopher, logician, and educator—is one of the most remarkable figures in contemporary behavioral science. For more than forty years he and his associates have been constructing, in bits and pieces across an enormous bibliography, a broad and highly original theory of intellectual and perceptual development. Like Freudian theory, with which one is tempted to compare it in certain respects, Piaget’s theoretical system is a detailed and complicated one, not renderable in a few mathematical or verbal statements. Unlike Freudian theory, however, the system in its totality has not been widely assimilated by others. The major purpose of this book is to present an integrated overview of Piaget’s achievements, an overview sufficiently detailed to do justice to the complexity of his theory and the variety of his experimental contributions. This introductory chapter is intended to explain why a book on Piaget is desirable—or at least why it was written—and to summarize the plan or organization which the book will follow. In order to put these matters in context and to set the stage for a detailed description of Piaget’s system, it may be useful to examine briefly the man himself—the chronology of his life and achievements.

This book is for anyone who has ever wondered how a child develops language, thought, and knowledge. Before this classic appeared, little was known of the way children think. In 1923, however, Jean Piaget, the most important developmental psychologist of the twentieth century, took the psychological world by storm with The Language and Thought of the Child. Applying for the first time the insights of social psychology and psychoanalysis to the observation of children, he uncovered the ways in which a child actively constructs his or her understanding of the world through language. The book has since been a source of inspiration and guidance to generations of parents and teachers. While its conclusions remain contentious to this very day, few can deny the huge debt we owe to this pioneering work in our continuing attempts to understand the minds of the child.

An examination of the ways in which the reasoning powers of young children differ from those of adults. The author explores the child's notion of reality and causality.

Piaget's work is a cornerstone in development. His writing is long and laborious. He takes six pages to tell us that a 2 month old exhibits imitation behaviors. He was not an expert in parsimony. In his defense the translation from French is a bit awkward. What French I can read, of his work it is smoother than this translation. Case study gold, quoted as fact as if he had done something more significant than watch his own children and write down their behavior. No experimentally designed trials here. It's funny the same people and institutions who tout his great methods of research criticize Freud for his exact same research method: the case study. Many devout Piaget loyalists have never even read his original work. They've only been exposed to his work by text books in class. For this reason alone, I urge everyone to read as much source material as possible. Piaget is no exception. Get it, read it, make your own interpretation. Love it or hate it, you'll be wiser for the effort.

Studies infant behavior which precedes and forms the basis for intelligence, including elementory sensorimotor adaptations, reflexes, and elementary habits.

Think of developmental psychology, and the name of Jean Piaget immediately springs to mind. His theory of learning lies at the very heart of the modern understanding of the human learning process, and he is celebrated as the founding father of child psychology. A prolific writer, is the author of more than fifty books and several hundred articles. The Psychology of Intelligence is one of his most important works. Containing a complete synthesis of his thoughts on the mechanisms of intellectual development, it is an extraordinary volume by an extraordinary writer. Given his significance, it is hardly surprising that Psychology Today pronounced Piaget the Best Psychologist of the twentieth century.

Over a period of six decades, Jean Piaget conducted a program of naturalistic research that has profoundly affected our understanding of child development.

Piaget's influence on psychology has been profound. His pathbreaking investigations and theories of cognitive development have set child psychology moving in entirely new directions. His bold speculat

The seminal book by this century's most important developmental psychologist chronicles the evolution of children's moral thinking. The Moral Judgement of the Child traces children's moral thinking from preschool to adolescence, tracing their concepts of lying, cheating, adult authority, punishment, and responsibility and offering important insights into how they learn -- or fail to learn -- the difference between right and wrong.

Here is an overall, unified approach to Piaget's psychological theory of intelligence that includes his most recent research and concepts. No other book covers the main sources from which Piaget's work stems or offers such complete understanding. The concise summation provides a general introduction at a time when the growing popularity of Piaget's theories is not always proportionate with the understanding of some of his chief theoretical notions. His theory of biological intelligence, for example, is not referred to in other books in English dealing with theoretical aspects of learning or intelligence. This book examines and interprets all of Piaget and includes reading material, mostly from Piaget's writings, available in English for the first time. Diagrams of basic concepts are used by way of illustrations. Besides introductory and summary sections, the text focuses on the five major themes of operative, symbolic, and figurative knowing, biology, and equilibration. It is a challenging book which both informs and opens up new vistas. It encourages the reader to fit familiar notions about Piaget into an overall understanding of Piaget's system. A leading interpreter whose qualifications include a year at Piaget's International Center of Genetic Epistemology in Geneva, Dr. Furth explains Piaget's key concepts and theoretical notions of psychological intelligence. His analysis interprets Piaget's theory of intelligence and clarifies how superior levels of intelligence and scientific thinking evolve from elementary forms of behavior.

The book examines how action is controlled by thought. Looks at how children solve physical and mental puzzles.