FREE ESSAY ON JEAN PIAGET

JEAN PIAGET

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Abstract
This paper revolves around developmental psychologist Jean Piaget and his work. While
swaying from the personal to the professional sides of the Swiss psychologist, the
research touches on key influences that inspired young Piaget to become such a driven and
well respected psychologist. However, the most extensive part of this paper is the
explanation of his cognitive development theory and how it evolved. The three main pieces
to Piaget's puzzle of cognitive development that are discussed are schemes, assimilation
and accommodation, and the stages of cognitive growth. In addition to the material on the
man and his theory, there is the most important component of the paper, the ways Piaget
and his work molded the future. 
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Introduction
Now known as one of the trailblazers of developmental psychology, Jean Piaget initially
worked in a wide range of fields. Early in his career Piaget studied the human biological
processes. These processes intrigued Piaget so much that he began to study the realm of
human knowledge. From this study he was determined to uncover the secrets of cognitive
growth in humans. 
Jean Piaget's research on the growth of the human mind eventually lead to the formation
of the cognitive development theory which consists of three main components: schemes,
assimilation and accommodation, and the stage model. The theory is best known for
Piaget's construction of the discontinuous stage model which was based on his study of
children and how the processes and products of their minds develop over time. According
to this stage model, there are four levels of cognitive growth: sensorimotor,
preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. 
While a substantial amount of psychologists presently choose to adhere to the constructs
of the information processing approach, Piaget's ground breaking cognitive development
view is still a valuable asset to the branch of developmental psychology. Whether or not
Piaget uncovered any answers to the mysteries of human knowledge is disputable, but one
belief that few dispute is that Jean Piaget did indeed lay a strong foundation for future
developmental psychologists. 
Table of Contents
Abstract 2
Introduction 3
Historical Background 4
Theoretical Construct 7
Impact on Society 12
Reference List 13
Piaget 4
Historical Background
In 1896 the summer in Switzerland was just an ordinary, uneventful three months. However,
during this ordinary and uneventful span of time, a child was born who would become an
extraordinary developmental psychologist and fulfill the future with ground breaking
events in the field of cognitive psychology. He was the son of an intelligent man and a
stern, smart religious woman, and godchild of respected epistemologist Samuel Cornut.
With such scholarly surroundings, there is little surprise that Jean Piaget developed
into such an intelligent individual.
At age eleven, young Piaget wrote a paper on albino sparrows and got it published. This
publishing provided him with the opportunity to meet a man who would turn out to be very
influential, Paul Godet, the curator at the local museum. Young Piaget also benefited
highly from his prestigious high school in Neuchatel, along with the aforementioned
godfather Samuel Cornut who introduced him to one of the two fields he would grow to
love, epistemology, and most of all Jean Piaget's parents who not only instilled an
academia home environment but also provided a solid religious background.
Another big moment came in the form of a book. Piaget names Henri Bergson's L'Evolution
Creatrice as the most influential piece of writing he has ever read in his adult life. He
had this to say about it, ?reading Bergson was for me a revelation . . . close to
ecstasy,? (Cohen, 1983). 
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From this book Piaget developed a desire for biology to go along with his existing
interest in philosophy, epistemology to be exact.
Piaget stated in his first two books that he had ambitions of constructing a structure
that addressed the basic questions of epistemology. However, according to Cohen (1983),
Piaget's strong initial interest in philosophy declined somewhat when he discovered that
the philosophers did not really know any factual answers to questions that have plagued
humanity. Piaget now became equally interested in biology and epistemology. This dual
interest attracted him to psychology, yet he still was unsure of what direction he should
take in his career.
It was not until Piaget traveled to Paris to hear his favorite writer of the time,
Bergson, that he began to get an idea of what he wanted to do. There Piaget met James M.
Baldwin who would motivate him and teach him, ?the importance of imitation and of
reversible operations,? (Cohen, 1983). Both of these qualities would play a key role in
the formation of Piaget's development theory. However, Piaget's major turning point came
when the co-worker of the late Alfred Binet, Dr. Simon, requested that he standardize an
intelligence test. Piaget flourished in the role of answering complex philosophical
questions. Yet, Piaget did not go along with the traditional epistemologists who simply
laid back and tried to conjure up answers. Piaget opted for the more biological-type of
experiments with epistemology topics. 
This method of biological experimentation with epistemology gave 
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Piaget the motivation to begin testing children and to do what he felt he was destined to
do, determine how the mind grows. His result was the cognitive development theory.
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Theoretical Constructs
The cognitive development theory is Jean Piaget's attempt to explain how the human mind
develops. A common description of Piaget's view of the mind is that it is, ?an active
biological system that (uses) environmental information to fit with or adjust to its own
existing mental structures,? (Zimbardo & Weber, 1994). Now, to describe how this
biological system develops, Piaget breaks the development process down into three main
components: schemes, assimilation and accommodation, and the stage model of cognitive
growth. Schemes, ?are the structures or organizations of actions as they are transferred
by repetition in similar or analogous circumstances,? (Piaget & Inhelder, 1969). In
simple terms, schemes guide thoughts based on prior experiences, thus, serving as the
building blocks of cognitive growth. Except, with simple schemes, which are the first
schemes to develop in a child's life, the child has very little, if any, past experiences
to guide his or her thoughts. Therefore, early thoughts depend almost entirely on the new
born child's reflexes to senses. These basic schemes later combine with each other in
order to develop more 
complex schemes that are more capable of guiding the child than reflexes. 
However, the complexity of the schemes depend upon how well and how much an individual
either assimilates or accommodates information that is new to the mind. If schemes are
considered building blocks, then 
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the assimilation and accommodation processes can best be described as the construction
crews. These two processes aid in cognitive growth by arranging the new information with
schemes that are already present in the individual's mind. The more new information the
child assimilates or accommodates, the less his or her schemes will have to rely on
physical objects to create cognitive operations. Of course, according to Piaget's stage
model, this reliance on physical objects will not decrease until the latter stages of the
child's cognitive growth.
While both the assimilation and accommodation processes are responsible for establishing
a perfect cognitive fit between the scheme and the information, each completes the
process in different manners, hence the need for two different terms. Assimilation
reconfigures the new data to fit with existing schemes, and the accommodation process
restructures a child's schemes to ?accommodate? the new environmental information. As
Piaget states, ?Accommodation [is] the adjustment of the scheme to the particular
situation.? He goes on to give an example of the two processes: 
?An infant who's just discovered he can grasp what he sees (will then assimilate)
everything he sees . . . to the schemes of prehension, that is, it becomes an object to
grasp as well as an object to look at or an object to suck on. But if it's a large object
for which he needs both hands . . . he will (accommodate) the scheme 
of prehension,? (Bringuier, 1980).
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The main component of Jean Piaget's development theory has been addressed somewhat, but a
factor of this importance requires much more attention. The key component is the stage
model of cognitive growth. Piaget makes it clear that these stages are not determined by
age but cognitive development in this very brief explanation of the model, ?The stages
are an order of succession. (The development) isn't [according to] the average age,?
(Bringuier, 1980). He goes on to describe the model as a, ?sequential order,? (Bringuier,
1980) of cognitive growth. The stage model is made of four stages and as one may infer
from the statements from Piaget, these stages are discontinuous. 
The first stage the child goes through is the sensorimotor. During this stage there is,
?the existence of an intelligence before language,? (Piaget & Inhelder, 1969). While age
does not determine the stage of growth, the average age of children in this stage is
birth to two years old. Zimbardo and Weber (1994) explain Piaget's conclusion on this
stage as one where, ?the child is tied to the immediate environment and motor-action
schemes, lacking the cognitive ability to represent objects symbolically.? The main task
during the sensorimotor stage is for the child to control and coordinate his or her body.
While in the second year, most children begin, ?to form mental representations of absent
objects,? (Zimbardo & Weber, 1994). Finally, at the end of the sensorimotor stage the
child moves rather easily, can identify family members, has developed an understandable
language level, yet the child is still, ?illogical, egocentric, 
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and unaware of his self,? (Cohen, 1983). 
The next stage is the pre-operational which has an approximate range of age from two to
seven years old. During this time, unfortunately, the child still can not carry out
logical operations. However, to reach this stage the child must increase the speed of his
or her manipulations, and become involved with more complex tasks. The child also creates
mental symbols for physical objects during this phase. Most importantly, though, are the
three features that preoccupy the mind during this stage as described by Zimbardo and
Weber (1994): egocentrism - focus revolves around themselves and no one else; animistic
thinking - believing inanimate objects have life and that they think; and there is
centration - in which the child is often too focused on one characteristic of the
perception, thus, the child is prevented from understanding the entire perception. Jean
Piaget also notes that by the end of this stage the child develops, ?language, symbolic
play, and mental images . . [which] . . permit the representation of thought, but it is a
preoperational thought,? (Bringuier, 1980).
The approximate age for the third phase of cognitive development is seven to eleven years
of age. The child can not think in abstracts during the concrete operational stage, but
can maintain mental operations which allows them to solve problems that are concrete such
as addition and subtraction. During this stage, the child has a general knowledge of the
requirements and guidelines for a complex task but the child can not 
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complete the task because he or she can not visualize any possibilities. This is because
all possibilities are represented by abstractions and the child can only represent
objects in the concrete form. However, the child does begin to focus on the entire
perception, slowly breaking away from the centration feature that is prevalent during the
preoperational stage. Also, the egocentrism that was so obvious during the preoperational
stage is usually left behind at that stage. One last improvement in the child's cognitive
development is that the child now understands the idea of matter conservation.
The last stage of cognitive growth according to Jean Piaget is the formal operational
which usually consists of individuals on the average of eleven years old. The child's
cognitive formal operations, ?no longer relate directly to objects,? (Bringuier, 1980).
The child can now think in abstracts and he or she realizes that their reality is not the
only one that exists. The child also has, ?all the mental structures needed to go from
being naive thinkers to experts,? (Zimbardo & Weber, 1994). Piaget 
described this stage best when he said that, ?The great novelty of this stage is that . .
. the (adolescent) becomes capable of reasoning correctly,? (Cohen, 1983).
Overall, the schemes, the assimilation and accommodation processes, and the stage model
all are constructs that not only support Piaget's 
brilliant theory, but they themselves are innovative theoretical components. 
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Impact on Society
Jean Piaget was the leading experimental epistemologist, thanks in some part to Simon and
Binet's work, but he set the standard that would not be accepted by the ethnocentric
Americans until they were desperate during the Cold War and decided to open their eyes
and accept his findings. Once they did this, they implemented Piaget's theory into many
American school systems which would have had a much more beneficial outcome had the
powers that be implemented the great man's work more carefully. Yet, Piaget and his
theory have survived and he is labeled as, ?The dominant force in shaping the
cognitive-field and perceptual-field theories . . .? (Adelani, etc. 1990). His theory was
strong because he placed intellectual development over the child's emotional, social, and
moral development because he viewed the intellect as having influence over these other
developing entities. In conclusion, Piaget summarizes the cognitive development theory
best in this 
statement:
?My secret ambition is that the hypotheses one could oppose to my own will finally be
seen not to contradict them but to result from a normal process of differentiation,?
(Bringuier, 1980).
Bibliography
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Reference List
Adelani, L., Behle, J., Leftwich, B., and White, C. (1990). Mathematical Readiness: What
is it? How do you measure it? How is it used? Saint Louis, Missouri: Harris Stowe State
College. 
Bringuier, J. C. (1980). Conversations with Jean Piaget. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Cohen, D. (1983). Piaget: Critique and Reassessment. New York City: St. Martin's Press. 
Piaget, J. (1951). The Child's Conception of the World. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul.
Piaget, J. and Inhelder, B. (1969). The Psychology of the Child. New York City: Basic
Books.
www. piaget.org
Zimbardo, P. and Weber, A. (1994). Psychology and Life. Saint Louis, Missouri:
McGraw-Hill Company.