The theory of cognitive development is the concept of Piaget. Jeanne Piaget's doctrine of the intellectual development of the child
Jean Piaget(August 9, 1896 , Neuchâtel, Switzerland - September 16, 1980, Geneva, Switzerland) - Swiss psychologist and philosopher, known for his work on the study of the psychology of children, the creator of the theory of cognitive development and the philosophical and psychological schoolgenetic psychology(another name is genetic epistemology). In 1929 Mr. Piaget accepted the invitation to take over as directorInternational Bureau of Education UNESCO , at the head of which he remained until 1968
Piaget noticed that children of the same age make the same mistakes when solving mental problems.As they gain experience from the environment, they stop doing them, and begin to look at the world differently. His idea is that in the child's thinking, qualitative changes occur as they develop, and this is influenced by both genetic factors and environment. Children under two years of age know the world only from their own knowledge, they do not know how to use some objects and interact with them to the best of their knowledge: sucking, touching, throwing, etc. Then they notice how others act with them and better understand the purpose of objects, begin to think more generally and abstractly.
The main concept in Piaget's theory is operation- the mental action of the child, possessing reversibility. This means that the child, when solving a problem, can return to the beginning of the mental process, which allows him to freely think and act in his mind.
Piaget identified three periods in the cognitive theory of development. mental development child. They are connected between yourself and new period follows from the previous one. The next period becomes more complex, it includes it in a more complex structure.
1. Sensorimotor intelligence (from birth to 1.5 years).
2. Specifically - operational (representative) intelligence (from 1.5-2 years to 11 years).
3. Formal operational intelligence (from 11-12 to 14-15 years old).
Piaget characterizes each stage in two ways: positively (as a result of differentiation, complication of the structures of the previous level) and negatively (in terms of shortcomings and features that will be removed at the next stage).
sensorimotor period.
Piaget's study of the development of thinking begins with an analysis of the child's practical, objective activity in the first two years of life. He believes that the origins of even extremely abstract knowledge should be sought in action, knowledge does not come from outside in a finished form, a person must “build” it.
There are two sub-periods of sensorimotor intelligence:
- up to 7-9 months, when the infant is centered on its own body;
- from 9 months, when the objectification of the schemes of practical intelligence in the spatial sphere takes place.
The period of specific (elementary) operations. The mental abilities of the child reach a new level. This is the initial stage of the internalization of actions, the development of symbolic thinking, the formation of semiotic functions, such as language and mental image. Mental visual representations of objects are formed; the child designates them by names, not by direct actions.
Specifically, operational intelligence consists of the following sub-periods:
- preoperative, preparatory (from 2 to 5 years);
- the first level - the formation of specific operations (5 - 7 years);
- the second level - the functioning of specific operations (8-11 years).
Stage of formal (propositional) operations(12-15 years old).
Formal-operational structures are manifested in the child's ability to reason hypothetically and independently of the content. subject area without specific support. Formal mental operations- the basis of the logic of an adult, elementary scientific thinking is based on them, functioning with the help of hypotheses and deductions. Abstract thinking is the ability to build conclusions according to the rules of formal logic and combinatorics, which allows a teenager to put forward hypotheses, come up with their experimental verification, and draw conclusions.
A teenager acquires the ability to understand and build theories, to join the worldview of adults, going beyond the limits of his direct experience. Hypothetical reasoning introduces the adolescent into the realm of the potential; at the same time, idealized ideas are not always verifiable and often contradict real facts. Piaget called the teenage form of cognitive egocentrism "naive idealism" of a teenager, who attributes unlimited power to thinking in striving to create a more perfect world. Only by taking on new social roles adults, a teenager encounters obstacles, begins to take into account external circumstances, the final intellectual decentering takes place in a new sphere.
With regard to the period of transition from adolescence to adulthood, Piaget outlines a number of problems regarding further development intelligence, its specialization. During the period of building a lifeprograms, from 15 to 20 years, we can assume the process of intellectual differentiation: firstly, general cognitive structures are revealed that are used by each individual in a specific way in accordance with their own tasks, and secondly, special structures are formed for different areas of activity.
Piaget's theory is a huge intellectual achievement; it revolutionized the understanding of children's cognitive development and inspired countless researchers for decades. Piaget's observations regarding the sequence of cognitive development are supported by many studies. However, newer and more sophisticated methods of testing the mental performance of infants and preschoolers show that Piaget underestimated their abilities. As we noted above, in order for a child to successfully solve many of the problems created to test the theory of stages, he actually needs to master several basic information processing skills: attention, memory, and knowledge of specific facts. And it may turn out that the child actually has the ability required of him, but cannot solve the problem, because he does not have other skills that are also necessary, but not essential for this task.
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Piaget's theory (Piaget's theory)
Since about 1960, the theory of the development of intellectual competence, put forward by the Swiss biologist and philosopher Jean Piaget, has dominated the concepts of human intelligence development, covering the period from infancy to adulthood. Piaget focuses on the development of the child's thinking, and above all - the development of logical thinking. He proceeds from the fact that, while developing, the child’s thinking undergoes a number of such fundamental changes, on which depends how exactly he will think when he becomes an adult (although the thinking of an adult is qualitatively different from the thinking of a child), and always moves towards greater logic. . Dr. Piaget's theories, supplementing his DOS. theory, are devoted to the development of moral judgments, perceptual development, the development of ideas and memory, and all these lines of development are considered from the v. sp. limitations imposed by the various levels and consequences of our intellectual activity.
Genetic epistemology
Piaget's theory of intellectual development also claims to be a contribution to another discipline, genetic epistemology. This discipline, first named by the American psychologist James Mark Baldwin, would be more correct to consider as an interdisciplinary field based on the achievements of philosophy, psychology, logic, biology, cybernetics and structuralism. It deals with all the problems related to the following questions: what is knowledge? Where does it come from? Under what conditions is it possible? The focus of genetic epistemology is both the development of each individual's knowledge from birth to death, and historical development knowledge within a particular culture, primarily within the scientific tradition of the West, over the course of the existence of a particular race. The task of genetic epistemology in the understanding of Piaget is to explain the development of knowledge and intelligence within the individual and within the framework of culture by the same, mainly biological. age development, mechanisms and principles. Piaget's contribution to the development of genetic epistemology is predominantly methodological, for he proposed a way of solving classical epistemological problems - a careful and prototypical observation of how infants, children, adolescents, and adults construct knowledge. In all his writings on children's thinking, one can discern the desire to solve an epistemological problem through an analysis of how we come to start thinking, and why in different cases our thinking is organized differently. For example, Piaget answered the classic question of epistemology: does a tree falling in a forest make a noise if no one is around to hear it? According to Piaget, in order to acquire the person inherent in every adult. the conviction that objects exist and will exist regardless of whether someone perceives them or not, each of us needs approximately the first 2 years of life. Truly, the assimilation of the idea of the constancy of an object is one of the fundamental achievements of infancy. An equally difficult epistemological problem is the understanding of causality, since we have no reliable way to know which relationships between objects are due to certain causes and which are not. To clarify the question of causality, Piaget proposed first of all to describe at length exactly how we construct our idea of causality.
Piaget's position is constructivist, i.e., he proceeds from the fact that the fundamental categories and structures of our consciousness are not given to us a priori, but are constructed by us in the process of our development through the evolution of systems, with the help of which we influence the environment and our own consciousness and transform them. Subsequent levels or stages are always reformulations or reconstructions of previous ways of perceiving the world and confirming knowledge, and the next way always reflects reality more fully and better corresponds to it than the previous one.
Epistemic subject
The theory of intellectual development created by Piaget is a theory of competence (competence theory), which means that its object is an ideal personality, a personality, which, most likely, does not exist in nature, and if it exists, then it logical thinking indistinguishable from the logical thinking of an ordinary individual. This ideal personality is an epistemic subject, i.e., simply a bearer of knowledge who does not have any individual traits- neither personal qualities, no gender, no motives (other than those that induce him to knowledge) - and not belonging to k.-l. a certain nationality or culture, and Piaget's theory is dedicated to it. Although a description of a child's competence in logical problem solving may tell us nothing about what the child will do if problem situation does arise, it tells what the child is able to do if there are no factors that can make his actions less distinct. In his later writings, Piaget wrote about how the child solves real problems and how his approaches, or strategies, use his competence. Although the epistemic subject only understands and knows events, the ordinary person successfully copes with many tasks, often without even knowing that he has succeeded. In fact, the gap between successfully solving a problem and understanding it is a typical phenomenon.
What the epistemic subject knows is ultimately limited to those truths that are immutable. Piaget was interested in how we come to understand many truths as immutable. For example, if A = B, and B = C, then the statement that A = C is not just true, but an indisputable truth, and it cannot be otherwise. Second example: the whole is necessarily greater than any of its parts, and we either know this, or we come to such a conclusion, knowing what exactly is the whole and what is the part, and not on the basis of their measurement or empirical comparison in one way or another . At its core, T.P. is a theory that explains how we construct truths that we consider immutable, that is, truths that must be exactly as they are and - presumably - cannot be otherwise. .
clinical method
In fact, in all research Piaget, the child is studied individually, he manipulates some objects or devices, and he is questioned in a free clinical manner about what he did, and the questions are formulated in a form that is accessible to him. What the child says or what he thinks has been done is important, but great importance it is also attached to the child's actual actions, how he approaches the task, what mistakes he makes, etc. In typical cases, the child is asked to reflect on ordinary childhood with a new perspective, or think about a new approach to completing such a usual children's task, how to arrange the sticks in ascending order of their length, etc.
Tasks or problems that are proposed to be solved by the child are usually selected in such a way that his logical thinking becomes clear, concerning some essential epistemological terms. questions - the nature of causality, (logical) necessity, implication, time or space, etc.
Stages of intellectual development
What Piaget created is a kind of fundamental skeleton, or framework of the theory, the gaps in which had to be filled by others. Even with regard to the total number of stages of intellectual development, he was not completely consistent, and from time to time different answers to this question appeared in his works, but most often he mentioned four main stages: sensorimotor (from birth to 2 years) , which in turn is divided into 6 substages; preoperative (from 2 to 7 years), with two substages; specific operations (from 7 to 12 years), also divided into two sub-stages, and formal operations (from 12 years and older). Within each stage and substage, Piaget often distinguished three levels; failure, partial success and success.
AT latest versions his T.P. considered development not as rectilinear motion from one stage to another, but as a movement in a spiral, characterized by the fact that the various forms and different content of thinking, characteristic of the previous level, are rethought, restructured and integrated, or unified, at the next, higher level. The invariant quantitative aspects of the problem of transforming a clay ball are learned before others.
sensorimotor stage. Six substages of this stage, which lasts the first 2 years of a child's life, indicate that he consistently demonstrates the following features and achievements: a) the child has unconditioned reflexes and is not able to think, set a goal and distinguish himself from the environment; b) reflexes turn into repetitive actions; c) the ability to reproduce random, pleasant and interesting results of one's own actions appears; d) the ability to coordinate actions aimed at prolonging the impression that aroused interest increases; e) discovering new ways to obtain interesting results; f) the emergence of the ability to imagine missing events in symbolic form. The main achievements of this period include the formation of coordinated movements corresponding to such a mat. structure, like grouping, representational construction, and intentionality. A particularly noticeable result of this stage is the construction of a permanent object (the understanding of the existence of objects independent of the subject).
preoperative stage. Characterizing this stage, corresponding to the age from 2 to 7 years, they often list what the child cannot do. At the first substage, the formed new ability to represent is assimilated by sensorimotor structures, and they must adapt to it. In addition, the child establishes a number of functional patterns, truths and associations concerning the environment; for example, the understanding of identity and some dependencies and correlations already mentioned above. Distinctive feature children of this age is the surprising limitation of their thinking. One gets the impression that their thought is focused exclusively on one aspect of the situation, often - on their own t. sp. (egocentrism), and all other points of view or measurements are not taken into account. Pre-operational thought, apart from focusing on the single most visible aspect of an event, does not appear to follow the laws of logic or physicality. causality, but rather limited to associations by contiguity. Thus, children's arguments for their actions are often absurd inventions or are the result of their desire to justify themselves at any cost.
Stage of specific operations. At this stage, mistakes are corrected that the child makes at the preoperational stage, but they are corrected in different ways and not all at once. The meaning of the definition "concrete" operation, which is included in the name of this stage, is that the operational solution of problems (i.e., a solution based on reversible mental actions) is taken separately for each problem and depends on its content. For example, physical concepts are acquired by the child in the following sequence: quantity, length and mass, area, weight, time and volume.
Stage of formal operations. The system of reversible operations, becoming more coordinated, enters the next stage of development, formal operations, which begins at the age of 11-12 years. The previously developed ability to classify objects develops into the ability to combinatorial thinking: analyzing physical. event, the child is able to take into account all possible aspects and change them one by one, like a qualified experimenter, in search of a logically sound answer. The ability to vary - mentally and hypothetically - aspects of a situation in a strictly in due course means that the child can invent objects and situations that do not exist in reality. Thus, possibility takes precedence over reality, and the form is manipulated and considered in isolation from the content, i.e., not in the way a child at the stage of concrete operations does.
The fundamental question of Piaget's theory, to which a convincing answer has never been found, remains the problem of novelty and spontaneity. How, from a cognitive structure, in which any new knowledge is completely absent, does it arise - new knowledge? Moreover, how does one come to understand that new knowledge that has arisen is necessarily connected with other knowledge?
See also Cognitive learning styles, Theories of learning, Concept acquisition and development, Epistemology
F. B. Murray
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6.1 Stages of scientific biography.
His main theme was the study of the origins of scientific knowledge, the laws of development of the intellect.
Piaget's doctrine is the highest achievement of the psychology of the twentieth century. These are the most reliable facts in child psychology.
Piaget came to the science of psychology because it crossed his biological, philosophical and logical interests. Piaget translated traditional questions theory of knowledge in the field of child psychology and proceeded to their experimental solution.
In 1920 he began his work as a psychologist. He taught at the university and worked in the clinic, conducting experimental studies on children, begun without much enthusiasm. However, Piaget soon found his own field of study.
Philosophical reflections led Piaget to the idea that logic is not innate from the beginning, but develops gradually, and that it is psychology that opens up these possibilities. Already the first facts obtained in experiments with children on the standardization of the so-called "reasoning tests" confirmed the idea. The facts obtained showed the possibility of studying the mental processes underlying logical operations. Since then, Piaget's central task has been to study the psychological mechanisms of logical operations, to establish the gradual emergence of stable logical integral structures of the intellect.
The period 1921-25 is the beginning of Piaget's work on a systematic study of the genesis of intelligence. It was precisely on the basis of this general goal that he first singled out and investigated a particular problem - he studied the hidden mental tendencies that give a qualitative originality to children's thinking and outlined the mechanisms for their emergence and change. With the help of the clinical method, Piaget established new facts in the field of child development. The most important of them:
the discovery of the egocentric nature of children's speech;
qualitative features of children's logic;
a kind of child's view of the world;
Main discovery: the discovery of the child's egocentrism. Egocentrism is the main feature of thinking, the hidden mental position of the child. Five books on child psychology, lack - research is limited to the study of speech and the thought expressed in speech. Although Piaget understood that thought is formed on the basis of action.
In 1925-1929, he began research on the development of the child in the first two years of life, when behavior (action) acts as an indicator of mental development. Now he was trying to free himself from the verbal side of the action (the child only manipulates objects). The results of the study are presented in three volumes. These studies show that intelligence in a child occurs before the acquisition of speech. Higher-level intellectual operations are prepared by sensorimotor action. The task of the psychologist is to trace the transformation of innate reflexes into various forms of complex behavior.
1929-1939 - conducted research into the genesis of number, quantity, space, time, movement, etc. These studies made it possible to study the stage of specific operations and see in them the desired integral logical structures of intelligence.
Introduced the concept of grouping. Before the child establishes logical operations, he performs groupings - combines actions and objects according to their similarity and difference, which in turn generate arithmetic and other groups.
1939-1950 - Piaget continued his research in the field of the psychology of thinking. He studied the formation of the concepts of motion, time, speed, ideas about space and geometry.
The main problem is the ratio of intelligence and perception (difference and similarity). They showed the probabilistic nature of perception.
During the same period, Piaget conducted an experimental study of the transition from child thinking to adolescent thinking, and gave a characteristic of formal operational thinking.
1955 - Piaget developed a hypothesis about the stages of intellectual development of the child and adolescent. According to this hypothesis, three large periods can be distinguished in intellectual development: the sensorimotor period, the period of preparation and the period of implementation of specific operations, the period of formal operations.
6.2 Key concepts of the concept of J. Piaget.
Main result scientific activity Piaget - Geneva School of Genetic Psychology. The object of this science is the study of the origin of the intellect. They explore how functional concepts are formed in a child: object, space, time, causality. She studies the child's ideas about natural phenomena. Piaget is interested in the features of children's logic and, most importantly, the mechanisms of the child's cognitive activity, which are hidden behind the external picture of his behavior. To reveal these mechanisms, hidden, but all determining, Piaget developed a method of clinical conversation.
Tasks of genetic psychology: this science studies how the transition from one form of mental activity to another occurs, from a simple structure of mental activity to a more complex one, and what are the reasons for these structural transformations. It studies the similarities and differences between the mental life of a child and an adult.
Three directions of genetic psychology: 1. problems that make up the subject; 2. research techniques; 3. accumulation of facts;
What is the process of knowing? What is the relationship between thought and the phenomenon of the external world, how do scientific concepts originate?
Basic provisions:
1. The relationship of the whole and the part. The whole is qualitatively different from the part; there are no isolated elements. Their attitude varies depending on the structure they are part of. For example, intellectual development strives for balance, for the development of personality structures; 11-12 years old is difficult.
2. Piaget studied the connections between the child's thought and the reality that he cognizes as a subject. But for cognition, the subject must carry out actions with objects, that is, its transformation.
Thus, the idea of transformation is the central idea of Piaget's theory. In any action, subject and object are mixed. The source of knowledge lies in the interaction of subject and object.
3. The idea of construction - the objective meaning is always subordinated to determined structural actions. These structures are the result of construction.
The subject, according to Piaget, is an organism endowed with the functional activity of an adaptation, which is hereditarily fixed and inherent in any living organism. With the help of this activity, the environment is structured. Functions are biologically inherent ways of interacting with the environment. Two main functions: organization and adaptation - assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation - as a result of external influences, the subject includes a new object in the already existing schemes of action. Accommodation is the restructuring of schemes, their adaptation to a new object.
One of the most important concepts in the concept of J. Piaget is the concept of an action scheme. The scheme of action is the most general thing that is preserved in the action when it is repeated many times in different circumstances; it is a structure at a certain level of mental development. Structures are formed in the process of life, depend on the content of experience, and differ qualitatively at different stages of development. Describing in detail the subject of activity, Piaget practically does not reveal the concept of the object. For in his conception, an object is just a material to be manipulated. The content of children's knowledge is everything that is acquired through experience and observation. The form of cognition is that scheme (more or less general) of the mental activity of the subject, in which external influences are included.
The outer starting principle of research for Piaget is to regard the child as a being who assimilates things, selects and assimilates them according to his own mental structure. Development itself is a change in the dominant mental structures. Cognition is the product of real actions performed by the subject with the object.
6.3. Opening egocentrism of children's thinking.
Piaget's main achievement is the open egocentrism of the child. Egocentrism is a central feature of thinking, a hidden mental position.
Children's manifestations:
1. "realism" - a child at a certain stage of development considers objects as they are given by direct perception, that is, he does not see things in their internal relation. For example, the moon is running after me. "Realism" can be of two types - intellectual and moral. For example, the branches of a tree make the wind – intelligent; moral - the child does not participate in the evaluation of the act, the internal intention and judges the act only by the external effect, by the material result.
At first, in the early stages of development, every idea of the world is true for the child; for him thought and thing are almost indistinguishable. In a child, signs begin to exist, being originally part of things. Gradually, through the activity of the intellect, they separate from them.
Children's performances develop:
- participation (participation) stage;
- animism (universal animation);
- artificalism (understanding natural phenomena by analogy with human activity);
Piaget believes that in parallel with the evolution of children's ideas about the world, directed from realization to objectivity, there is a development of children's ideas from absoluteness to reciprocity. When a correspondence is established between other points of view and one's own.
AT experimental studies Piaget showed that in the early stages of intellectual development, objects appear heavy or light to the child, according to direct perception (big things are heavy, small things are light). The child's thought also develops in a third direction, from realism to relativism. At first, the child considers, say, that in each moving object there is a special motor that plays the main role in the movement of the object. When a child understands that clouds move under the pressure of the wind, then some words “light”, “heavy” lose their absolute meaning and become relative.
Egocentrism causes such features of children's logic as:
- syncretism (tendency to associate everything with everything);
- juxtaposition (lack of connection between judgments);
- transduction (transition from the particular to the particular, bypassing the general);
A child under 7-8 years old cannot perform the logical operations of addition and multiplication (the concept of strength is when you can carry a lot of things).
Egocentric speech, when the child speaks only from his own point of view and does not try to take the point of view of the interlocutor. The child only cares about the appearance of interest. He does not feel the desire to influence the interlocutor and really tell him something.
Egocentric speech depends on the activity of the child himself and on the type of social relations (between the child and adults, between children of the same age) 3 years - 75% of all speech; From the age of 7 - egocentric speech disappears;
Egocentrism is characteristic not only of a child, but also of an adult where he is guided by his own judgments.
Egocentrism is a spontaneous position that controls the mental activity of the child in its origins; they persist for life in people who remain at a low level mental development. According to Piaget, to get rid of egocentrism means to realize what was perceived subjectively, to find one's place in the system of possible points of view. Egocentrism gives way to a more perfect position: decentration. In order to overcome egocentrism, two conditions are necessary: the first is to realize one's "I" as a subject and separate the subject from the object; the second is to coordinate your own point of view with others.
According to Piaget, the development of self-knowledge in a child arises from social interaction. Coercive relations impose a system of binding rules on the child.
In order to realize one's "I", it is necessary to free oneself from coercion, an interaction of opinions is necessary. This interaction is not possible at first between the child and the adult because the inequality is too great. The child tries to imitate the adult and at the same time protect himself from him, rather than exchange opinions. Only individuals who regard each other as equals can develop mutual control. Such relationships appear from the moment of establishment of cooperation among children.
The concept of socialization. The term social has two different meanings: child and adult (as a source of information); social relations between the children themselves: from 2 to 7 years old - little socialization; does not realize its I, does not coordinate other points of view.
According to Piaget, socialization is a process of adaptation to the social environment, consisting in the fact that the child, having reached a certain level of development, becomes capable of cooperating with other people. 7-8 years - the ability to socialize.
6.4. Stages of the intellectual development of the child.
Stages are stages, levels of development that successively replace each other, and at each level a relatively stable balance is achieved. The process of development of the intellect, according to Piaget, consists of three large periods, during which the emergence and formation of three main structures occurs:
period |
sub-period |
stages |
age |
1. Sensorimotor intelligence |
A-centered on one's own body |
1.reflex control |
0-1 month |
2. first skills |
1-4.5 months |
||
3.coordination of vision and grasping |
4.5-9 months |
||
B-objectification of practical intelligence |
4. the beginning of practical intelligence |
8-12 months |
|
5. differentiation of schemes of action |
12-18 months |
||
6. the beginning of the internalization of circuits and problem solving |
18-24 months |
||
2. Representative intelligence and specific operations |
A - pre-operator intelligence |
1. the appearance of a symbolic function |
2-4 years |
2.intuitive thinking (relies on perception) |
4-6 years old |
||
3.intuitive thinking (relies on more dissected representations) |
6-8 years old |
||
B - specific operations |
4.Easy operation |
8-10 years old |
|
5.system of operations (coordinate system) |
9-12 years old |
||
3. Representative intelligence and formal operations |
A - the formation of formal operations |
1.logic and combinatorics |
12-14 years old |
B – achievement of formal operations |
2. transformation |
From 13-14 years old |
The process of development of the intellect, according to Piaget, consists of three large periods, during which the emergence and formation of three main structures takes place. First, sensorimotor structures are formed), there is a system of reverse actions) performed materially and sequentially, then specific operations arise (a system of actions performed in the mind, but based on external, visual data). After that, the opportunity opens up for the formation of formal operations. This is the period of formation of formal logic, hypothetical-deductive reasoning.
Development, according to Piaget, is the transition from a lower stage to a higher one. The previous stage always prepares the next one. Any action (movement, thinking, feeling) responds to some need that arises when something inside or outside of us has changed, and when it is necessary to restructure behavior depending on this change.
The order of these stages is unchanged. Associated with biological maturation. The age at which balance structures appear is influenced by the activity of the child and his environment.
Thus, the stages of intellectual development, according to J. Piaget, can be considered as stages of mental development in general. For their development is subject to the intellect.
Literature
Bruner J. Psychology of knowledge. M., 1977.
Obukhova L.F. Age-related psychology. – M.: Russia, 2001, 414 p.
Piaget J. Selected psychological works. - M., 1994.
Questions for self-control of knowledge on the topic "The Teaching of Jeanne Piaget on the Intellectual Development of the Child":
1. Name the main stages of the scientific biography of J. Piaget.
2. The main provisions of the concept of J. Piaget.
3. Define the concepts of accommodation, assimilation.
4. Define egocentrism and egocentric speech.
5. Tell us about the main features of the formation of the stages of the child's intellectual development.
Test tasks on the topic "The Teachings of Jeanne Piaget on the Intellectual Development of the Child":
1. Phenomena of mental development discovered by J. Piaget: a) egocentrism, b) syncretism, c) distress.
2. According to the views of J. Piaget, the decisive role in cognitive development belongs to: a) adults who provide training and education, b) the child himself, c) heredity.
The concept of J. Piaget is the most developed and influential of all known theories intellectual development, which consistently combines ideas about the internal nature of the intellect and its external manifestations. In order to better appreciate the contribution of J. Piaget to psychological science in general and to the development of the psychology of thinking, in particular, let us turn to the statements of two well-known experts in this field.
“There is a known paradox,” writes L.F. Obukhova, according to which the authority of a scientist is best determined by how much he slowed down the development of science in his field. Modern foreign psychology childhood is literally blocked by Piaget's ideas. ... No one manages to break out of the limits of the system he has developed,” emphasizes the author.
“The irresistible and attractive power of the works and ideas of J. Piaget, - according to N. I. Chuprikova, is primarily in the breadth of reality captured by his analysis, in the facts described by him, in the level of generalization and interpretation. At this level, through the facts and their interpretation, the action of strict and immutable laws of development visibly shines through” (highlighted by us - V.A.)1. The “strict and immutable laws of development” discovered by Jean Piaget and “slowed down” the development of the science of mechanisms cognitive development child from birth to adolescence inclusive. Let's turn to the theory itself.
The concept of J. Piaget is, first of all, a dynamic concept of the development of the intellect, considering the process of its formation in the course of the individual development of the child. This approach is called genetic. The concept of J. Piaget gives answers to the most acute questions of human cognitive development:
Is the subject capable of distinguishing the inner, subjective world from the outer, and what are the limits of such a distinction;
What is the substratum of the ideas (thoughts) of the subject: are they the product of the external world acting on the mind or are they the product of the subject's own mental activity;
What are the relationships between the thought of the subject and the phenomena of the external world;
What is the essence of the laws to which this interaction is subject, in other words, what is the origin and development of the basic scientific concepts used by a thinking person.
The central of the provisions of the concept of J. Piaget is the position of the interaction between the organism and the environment or the position of equilibrium.
The external environment is constantly changing, says Piaget. The organism, i.e. entity that exists independently external environment(object), seeks to establish a balance with it. Equilibrium with the environment can be established in two ways: either by adapting the external environment to itself by the subject by changing it, or by changing the subject itself. Both that and another is possible, only by fulfillment by the subject of certain actions. Performing actions, the subject thereby finds ways or schemes of these actions that allow him to restore the disturbed balance. According to Piaget, the scheme of action is the sensorimotor equivalent of a concept, a cognitive skill. “She, (the scheme of action), - comments L.F. Obukhova, - allows the child to economically and adequately act with objects of the same class or with different states of the same object "". If the child is affected by an object of another class , then in order to restore the disturbed balance, he is forced to perform new actions and thereby find new schemes (concepts) that are adequate to this class of objects. real objects (things, their shape, properties, etc.) Indeed, when a child encounters problems (objects) that are new to him, which violate his already established ideas about the world (disturb the balance), this makes him look for answers to "knocked out of balance" the child tries to balance himself with this changed environment by explaining it, i.e. by developing new schemes or concepts. and all the more complicated ways of explaining are the steps of his knowledge. Thus the need
Restoration of balance by the subject is the driving force of his cognitive (intellectual) development, and the balance itself is an internal regulator of the development of intellect. That is why, according to Piaget, the intellect, according to Piaget, “is the highest and most perfect form of psychological adaptation, the most effective ... tool in the interactions of the subject with the outside world,” and thought itself is “a compressed form of action.” The development of action schemes, in other words, cognitive development occurs “as the child’s experience in practical action with objects grows and becomes more complex” due to “the internalization of objective actions, i.e. their gradual transformation into mental operations (actions performed internally)”2.
From what has been said, it is clear that the very schemes of actions, operations, i.e. the concepts discovered by the subject as a result of his actions are not innate. They are the result of objective actions performed by an active subject when interacting with an object. Therefore, the content of mental concepts is determined by the characteristics of this object. An innate character is the activity of the subject, fixed in him by the genetic program of development. Consequently, the pace of cognitive development of the child is determined, firstly, by the level of his activity, the degree of maturation nervous system, secondly, the experience of his interaction with the objects of the external environment affecting him and, thirdly, language and upbringing. Thus, we do not see anything innate in the level of development of the intellect. It is only innate that the intellect (cognitive development) is able to function. And the way of this functioning and the level of its achievements will be determined by the action of the listed factors. Therefore, all children go through the stages of cognitive development in the same sequence, but the methods of their passage and intellectual achievements will be different for everyone due to different conditions of their development.
So, we found out that the cognitive development of the subject is necessary condition his adaptations. In order to adapt, i.e. To solve new problems, the organism must either modify its existing schemes of activity (concepts) or develop new ones. Thus, there are only two adaptation mechanisms. The first of these is the mechanism of assimilation, when an individual adapts new information (situation, object) to his existing schemes (structures), without changing them in principle, i.e. incorporates a new object into its existing schemes of actions or structures. For example, if a newborn, a few moments after birth, can grab an adult's finger put into his palm, just as he can grab the parent's hair, a cube put into his hand, etc., i.e. each time he adapts the new information to the available schemes of action. And here is an example illustrating the operation of the mechanism of assimilation in the early childhood. At the sight of a fluffy spaniel, the child screams: "Doggy." He will say the same thing when he sees a fluffy setter or collie. But when he first sees a fur coat, he will again say “dog”, because. according to his system of concepts, everything fluffy is a dog. In the future, in addition to the characteristics - fluffy, a whole set of others are built into the concept of "dog": soft, four-legged, lively, friendly, tail, wet nose, etc. Thus, the concept is being improved, which allows us to further differentiate it from the concept of "fur coat".
The other is the mechanism of accommodation, when the individual adapts his previously formed reactions
To new information (situation, object), i.e. he is forced to rebuild (modify) old schemes (structures) in order to adapt them to new information (situation, object). For example, if a child continues to suck on a spoon in order to satisfy hunger, i.e. try to adapt the new situation to the existing sucking pattern (assimilation mechanism), then soon he will be convinced that such behavior is ineffective (he cannot satisfy the feeling of hunger and thereby adapt to the situation) and he needs to change his old pattern (sucking), i.e. . modify the movements of the lips and tongue to pick up food from the spoon (accommodation mechanism). Thus, a new scheme of action (a new concept) appears. Obviously, the functions of these two mechanisms are opposite. Thanks to assimilation, the existing schemes (concepts) are refined and improved, and thus balance with the environment is achieved by adapting the environment to the subject, and thanks to accommodation, restructuring, modification of existing schemes and the emergence of new, learned concepts. The nature of the relationship between them determines the qualitative content of human mental activity. Actually logical thinking as the highest form of cognitive development is the result of a harmonic synthesis between them. In the early stages of development, any mental operation is a compromise between assimilation and accommodation. The development of the intellect is the process of the maturation of operational structures (concepts), which gradually grow out of the child's objective and everyday experience against the background of the manifestation of these two main mechanisms.
According to Piaget, the process of development of the intellect consists of three large periods, within which the emergence and formation of three main structures (types of intellect) takes place. The first of mvn is sensorimotor intelligence, the duration of which is from birth to 2 years.
The goal of J. Piaget as a scientist was to find such structural wholes, distinguished by great abstractness and generality, characterizing the intellect at different levels of its development.
J. Piaget describes the development process as heterogeneous, having its own strengths and weaknesses at every moment of the formation of the stage: this heterogeneity is associated with the manifestation of the stability of a particular structure - from unbalanced (unstable) to balanced (stable).
The most important feature of the staged development of the intellect, described by J. Piaget, is associated with the phenomena of horizontal and vertical decalage. Horizontal decalage is a repetition of a phenomenon at the same stage of development, but since the stage is a heterogeneous stream, the repetition cannot be identical to itself at different points in time, it will contain new elements, but not excluding or distorting the former.
For example, a child designates a group of objects with a word, then this group changes, but the word remains unchanged. Changes in the group of objects are associated with the emergence of a new version of the generalization, which does not exclude or clarify the previous generalization, for example, through the introduction of essential features of this entire group. This is a manifestation of horizontal decalage, a repetition of the transfer of the mastered structure of the intellect to solve a large number varied tasks. The concept of horizontal decalage is an attempt by J. Piaget to show the presence in the life of the intellect of stable formations that preserve and refine the picture of the human world throughout its individual history.
What can be considered the main result of Piaget's scientific activity? He created the Geneva School of Genetic Psychology, which studies the mental development of the child. The term "genetic", used in the expression "genetic psychology", was introduced into psychology in the second half of the 19th century, that is, before biologists began to use it in a narrower sense of the word. The term "genetic psychology" refers to individual development, to ontogeny. As Piaget notes, the expression "genetic psychology" cannot be used as a synonym for child psychology, the psychology of child development, since genetic is also called general psychology if it considers mental functions in the process of formation.
What does Piaget's genetic psychology study? The object of this science is the study of the origin of the intellect. It explores how fundamental concepts are formed in a child: object, space, time, causality. She studies the child's ideas about natural phenomena: why the sun, the moon do not fall, why clouds move, why rivers flow, why the wind blows, where does the shadow come from, etc. Piaget is interested in the features of children's logic and, most importantly, the mechanisms of the child's cognitive activity, which are hidden behind the external picture of his behavior.
To reveal these mechanisms, hidden, but all determining, Piaget developed new method psychological research - a method of clinical conversation, when not symptoms are studied ( external signs phenomena), but the processes leading to their occurrence. This method is extremely difficult. It gives the necessary results only in the hands of an experienced psychologist. According to E. Claparede, Piaget's method is mental auscultation and percussion, this art is the art of asking.
Piaget critically analyzed the methods that were used before him, and showed their failure to elucidate the mechanisms of mental activity. And now, when the method of tests is increasingly attracting the attention of psychologists, it is worth remembering Piaget's positions on this issue. Half a century ago, he proved that tests can only serve the purposes of selection, but do not give an idea of the inner essence of the phenomenon. What problems does genetic psychology created by Piaget solve? This science studies how the transition from one form of mental activity to another occurs, from a simple structure of mental activity to a more complex one, and what are the reasons for these structural transformations. It studies the similarities and differences between the mental life of a child and an adult.
The genetic psychology created by Piaget, as recognized by foreign researchers, is developing in three directions:
1. defines the problems that make up its subject;
2. research technique is being developed;
3. there is an accumulation, organization and interpretation of facts.
Piaget's genetic psychology special place in the system of sciences between biology and philosophy. The desire to link biology and the problems of cognition explains Piaget's dual orientation as a psychologist. Therefore, as noted by a student and his closest collaborator B. Inelder, in order to understand Piaget's theory, one must know the biological premises from which it proceeds and the epistemological conclusions to which it leads.
Piaget created genetic psychology in order to build a genetic epistemology on its basis. According to Piaget, genetic epistemology attempts to explain knowledge, and in particular scientific knowledge, on the basis of its history, sociogenesis, and the psychological origins of those concepts and operations on which scientific knowledge is based. Piaget was deeply convinced that in order to study the nature of cognition, it is necessary to use psychological data. In order to solve fundamental epistemological problems (the main one is by what means the human mind passes from the state insufficient knowledge to more high level knowledge), we cannot reconstruct the genesis of human thinking in prehistoric man. We know nothing about the psychology of the Neanderthal or the psychology of the Cro-Magnon. But we can turn to ontogeny, because it is on children that it is best to study the development of logical, mathematical and physical knowledge.
So, proceeding from the perspective of creating genetic epistemology, the science of the origin and development of scientific knowledge, Piaget transferred the traditional questions of the theory of knowledge to the field of child psychology and proceeded to their experimental solution. He was interested in whether the subject distinguishes the external world from the internal, subjective world, and what are the limits of such a distinction. Piaget wanted to find out whether the external world acts directly on the mind of the subject or whether his ideas are products of his own mental activity. And if the subject is active in the process of cognition, then what is the interaction between his thought and the phenomena of the external world, what are the laws that this interaction obeys, what is the origin and development of basic scientific concepts?
Piaget later used the principle of equilibrium to explain the intellectual development of the child. In the future, this principle always strongly influenced his analysis of psychological facts. Piaget's idea that intellectual development tends to a stable equilibrium, that is, to the establishment of logical structures, means that logic is not innate from the outset, but develops gradually. This also means that psychology opens up the possibility of studying ontogenetic development logic.
The first facts from the field of psychology obtained by Piaget showed that the most simple tasks to reasoning that requires the inclusion of a part in a whole, the coordination of relations and the multiplication of classes, that is, finding a part common to two wholes, causes unexpected difficulties in children of 11-12 years old. As already mentioned, these facts showed the possibility of studying the mental processes underlying logical operations. The central task of his research was to study the psychological mechanisms of logical operations, to establish the gradual emergence of stable, integral logical structures of the intellect. He tried to solve this problem very broadly: in the fields of biology, epistemology, sociology and psychology. To solve this problem, Piaget, first of all, analyzed the relationship between the subject and the object in the process of cognition.
Piaget studied the connections between the child's thought and the reality that is known to him as a subject. He recognized that the object exists independently of the subject. But in order to cognize objects, the subject must perform actions with them and therefore transform them: move, connect, combine, delete and return again. At all stages of development, knowledge is constantly associated with actions or operations, that is, transformations, transformations of an object.
The idea of transformation is the first central idea of Piaget's theory. It follows from it that the boundary between subject and object is not established from the very beginning and it is not stable. In every action, subject and object are mixed. To become aware of its own actions, the subject needs objective information, as well as many subjective components. Without long practice and without building refined instruments of analysis, the subject cannot understand what belongs to the objects, what to himself as an active subject, and what belongs to the very act of transforming the object. The source of knowledge, Piaget believed, lies not in objects and not in subjects, but in interactions, initially inseparable, between the subject and these objects.
The problem of cognition (the "epistemological problem") cannot therefore be considered separately from the problem of the development of the intellect. It comes down to an analysis of how the subject is able to cognize objects more and more adequately, that is, how he becomes capable of objectivity. Objectivity is not given to the child from the very beginning, as the empiricists assert, and for its understanding, according to Piaget, a series of successive constructions is needed that is getting closer and closer to it.
The idea of construction is the second central idea of Piaget's theory. Objective knowledge is always subject to certain structures of action. These structures are the result of construction: they are not given either in objects, since they depend on actions, or in the subject, since the subject must learn to coordinate its actions.
The subject, according to Piaget, is an organism endowed with the functional activity of an adaptation, which is hereditarily fixed and inherent in any living organism. With the help of this activity, the environment is structured. Intelligence is special case structures - the structure of mental activity. Characterizing the subject of activity, one can single out its structural and functional properties.
Functions are biologically inherent ways of interacting with the environment. The subject has two main functions: organization and adaptation. Each act of behavior is organized or, in other words, represents a certain structure, and its dynamic aspect is adaptation, which, in turn, consists of a balance of the processes of assimilation and accommodation.
As a result of external influences, the subject includes a new object in the already existing schemes of action. This process is called assimilation. If the new impact is not fully covered by the existing schemes, then these schemes are restructured and adapted to the new object. This process of fitting the schemas of the subject to the object is called accommodation.
One of the most important concepts in Piaget's conception is the concept of action schema. In the narrow sense of the word, a schema is the sensorimotor equivalent of a concept. It allows the child to act economically and adequately with different objects of the same class or with different states of the same object. From the very beginning, the child acquires his experience on the basis of action: he follows with his eyes, turns his head, explores with his hands, drags, feels, grasps, explores with his mouth, moves his legs, and so on. All the experience gained is formalized in action schemes. The scheme of action, according to Piaget, is the most general thing that is preserved in the action when it is repeated many times in different circumstances. The scheme of action, in the broad sense of the word, is a structure at a certain level of mental development. The structure, according to Piaget, is a mental system or integrity, the principles of activity of which are different from the principles of activity of the parts that make up this structure. Structure is a self-regulating system. New mental structures are formed on the basis of action.
During the entire ontogenetic development, Piaget believes, the main functions (adaptation, assimilation, accommodation) as dynamic processes are unchanged, hereditarily fixed, independent of content and experience. Unlike functions, structures are formed in the process of life, depend on the content of experience, and differ qualitatively at different stages of development. Such a relationship between function and structure ensures the continuity, succession of development and its qualitative originality at each age level.
Describing in detail the subject of activity, Piaget practically does not reveal the concept of the object. In Piaget's concept, an object is just a material for manipulation, it is just "food" for action.
According to Piaget, the formula S → R is not sufficient to characterize behavior, since there is no one-sided effect of the object on the subject, but there is an interaction between them: S Δ R. In order for a stimulus to cause a reaction, the subject must be sensitive, sensitive to this stimulus . There is an intermediate link between the subject and the object:
S → (Ods) → R,
where Ods is the organizing activity of the subject
Back in the 30s. Piaget noted that any behavioral act, even a new one for an organism, is not an absolute novelty, since it is always based on previous schemes of action. "In the beginning was the answer!" - they say in the Geneva school.
Piaget introduced the epistemological distinction between the form and content of cognition into the field of child psychology. The content of children's knowledge is everything that is acquired through experience and observation. The form of cognition is that scheme (more or less general) of the mental activity of the subject, in which external influences are included.
From a biological point of view, cognizable content corresponds to a certain amount of influences that the environment has on the body. The form of cognition, from this point of view, is a special structure attached to the content by the organism. The influence of the environment can never be perceived in its "pure form", since for every external stimulus there is always a response, an internal reaction. When cognition begins to develop, the subject is already ready, has formed certain motor schemes, which in relation to cognition play the role of form. As Piaget says, a person assimilates what surrounds him, but he assimilates it according to his "mental chemistry". Cognition of reality always depends on the dominant mental structures. This is an immutable law. One and the same knowledge can be of different value depending on what mental structures it relies on. This is very important to know "to distinguish mere coaching from true development and never be satisfied with the former."
The most important starting principle of research for Piaget is to consider the child as a being who assimilates things, selects and assimilates them according to his own mental structure. In cognition, from Piaget's point of view, the decisive role is played not by the object itself, which is chosen by the subject, but, first of all, by the dominant mental structures of the subject. The knowledge of the world depends decisively on them. The wealth of experience that a person can have depends on the quantity and quality of the intellectual structures at his disposal. Development itself is a change in the dominant mental structures.
The activity of the subject in the process of cognition is determined not only by the presence of dominant mental structures, but also by the fact that they (as determining cognition) are built on the basis of the subject's action. According to Piaget, thought is a compressed form of action. He came to this even when he was conducting his early psychological research, but a detailed analysis of the role of action in the formation of thinking was carried out by him later. In a number of publications of the 40s. Piaget emphasized that knowledge at all genetic levels is the product of real actions performed by the subject with objects.
Piaget identifies three main periods of development:
I. Sensorimotor intelligence (from birth to 1.5 years).
P. Specific operational (representative) intelligence (from 1.5-2 years to 11 years).
III. Formal operational intelligence (from 11-12 to 14-15 years old).
Piaget characterizes each stage in two ways: positively (as a result of differentiation, complication of the structures of the previous level) and negatively (in terms of shortcomings and features that will be removed at the next stage).
I. Sensorimotor period. Piaget's study of the development of thinking begins with an analysis of the child's practical, objective activity in the first two years of life. He believes that the origins of even extremely abstract knowledge should be sought in action, knowledge does not come from outside in a finished form, a person must “build” it.
Observing the development of his own three children (daughters Jacqueline and Lucienne and son Laurent), Piaget identified 6 stages of sensorimotor development. These are the stages of transition from innate mechanisms and sensory processes (like the sucking reflex) to forms of organized behavior used arbitrarily, intentionally. A child from birth to 1.5-2 years is characterized by the development of feelings and motor structures: he looks, listens, touches, smells, manipulates, and does this out of innate curiosity for the world around him.
There are two sub-periods of sensorimotor intelligence:
Up to 7-9 months, when the infant is centered on its own body;
From 9 months, when the objectification of the schemes of practical intelligence in the spatial sphere takes place. The criterion for the emergence of intelligence is the use by the child of certain actions as a means to achieve the goal.
So, by the end of the first sub-period, children discover connections between their own action and the result - by pulling up the diaper, you can get a toy lying on it. They also develop an idea of the independent and permanent existence of other objects. The "constancy" of the object consists in the fact that now the thing for the child is not only a perceptual picture, it has its own existence independent of perception. The previously disappeared object, as it were, "ceased to exist", now the baby is active in searching for the object hidden before his eyes.
Another important change is the overcoming of absolute egocentrism, "total unconsciousness. The child begins to distinguish himself (the subject) from the rest of the world of objects. Piaget recognizes a certain role of maturation processes, which creates opportunities for cognitive development. But for intellectual progress, the infant needs to independently interact with the environment, manipulate objects , which leads to the transformation and gradual improvement of its intellectual structures.
II. The period of specific (elementary) operations. The mental abilities of the child reach a new level. This is the initial stage of the internalization of actions, the development of symbolic thinking, the formation of semiotic functions, such as language and mental image. Mental visual representations of objects are formed; the child designates them by names, not by direct actions.
Specific operational intelligence consists of the following sub-periods:
Preoperative, preparatory (from 2 to 5 years);
The first level is the formation of specific operations (5-7 years);
The second level is the functioning of specific operations (8-1 1 years).
Initially, thinking has a subjective, illogical character. Actually, the features of this type of thinking were discovered and described by J. Piaget already at an early stage of creativity as characteristics of egocentric thinking.
To trace how they develop in ontogeny logical systems, Piaget offered children (4 years and older) tasks of a scientific nature, which were called "Piaget's problems". These experiments are often also called "tests for the preservation of equality" (weight, length, volume, number, etc.).
III. Stage of formal (propositional) operations (12-15 years).
Formal-operational structures are manifested in the child's ability to reason hypothetically and independently of the content of the subject area, without a specific support. Formal mental operations are the basis of the logic of an adult; elementary scientific thinking is based on them, functioning with the help of hypotheses and deductions. Abstract thinking is the ability to build conclusions according to the rules of formal logic and combinatorics, which allows a teenager to put forward hypotheses, come up with their experimental verification, and draw conclusions.
Particularly noticeable are the new achievements of adolescents in experiments on the breeding of some protozoa. physical laws(laws of pendulum swing; ways of connecting colorless liquids to get liquid yellow color; factors affecting the flexibility of some materials; on the increase in acceleration when sliding on an inclined plane).
In this situation, the child of the preoperational level acts chaotically, “for good luck”; a child of a particular intelligence level is more organized, tries some options, but only some, and then refuses to try. A teenager of the formal level, after several trials, stops direct experimentation with the material and starts compiling a list of all possible hypotheses. Only then does he begin to test them one by one, trying to isolate the operating variables and examine the particular impact of each.
This type of behavior - the systematic testing of all possible combinations - is based on new logical structures, which Piaget uses the language of propositional logic to characterize.
A teenager acquires the ability to understand and build theories, to join the worldview of adults, going beyond the limits of his direct experience. Hypothetical reasoning introduces the adolescent into the realm of the potential; at the same time, idealized ideas are not always verifiable and often contradict real facts. Piaget called the teenage form of cognitive egocentrism "naive idealism" of a teenager, who attributes unlimited power to thinking in striving to create a more perfect world. It is only by assuming new social roles of adults that the adolescent encounters obstacles, begins to take into account external circumstances, and the final intellectual decentration in the new sphere takes place.
As for the period of transition from youth to adulthood, Piaget outlines a number of problems regarding the further development of the intellect, its specialization. During the period of building a life program, from 15 to 20 years, we can assume the process of intellectual differentiation: firstly, general cognitive structures are revealed that are used by each individual in a specific way in accordance with their own tasks, and secondly, special structures are formed for different areas of activity .
Criticism of Piaget's theory is presented very widely both in modern foreign and domestic psychological science.
If Piaget believed that an infant becomes representative only by the age of one and a half to two years, due to the gradual connection of disparate sensations in actions with objects, then all world literature, starting from the 70s of the last century, provided evidence of the presence of representations in infants of several months. Moreover, the formation of representations did not occur due to the gradual integration of disparate sensations, as in Piaget, but, on the contrary, the gradual differentiation of a diffuse whole representation to a more detailed and differentiated one.
Numerous criticisms of Piaget indicate, in my opinion, the depth and grandiose significance for the psychology of Piaget's work. The theory of the development of thinking proposed by him has enduring scientific values. Here is some of them. Firstly, the concept of J. Piaget is an example of a truly evolutionary approach to the problems of the formation of thinking. The main idea of describing the staging of the development of thinking is the continuity, continuum of the development of a complex rational thinking by a gradual transition from the irrational at birth through the formation of the originality of children's pre-operational, intuitive conclusions to the logic of adult judgments. At the same time, we recall that Piaget did not insist on chronological age criteria, but emphasized precisely the continuity and consistency in the development of thinking. Many models of consciousness, mental phenomena of consciousness are described as if they arise suddenly (like when a light is turned on). Note that this is typical not only for the field of cognitive psychology, but also for the psychology of personality, individuality, and subjectivity.
The second feature of Piaget's theory, which certainly remains modern, is the depth of the psychological interpretation of facts and their causes. Piaget's work is distinguished by unsurpassed logic and the ingenuity of experimentation. Moreover, it is in his works that an interdisciplinary approach is implemented (psychology, biology, logic, mathematics). The existing myth about Piaget's three subjects is invented for self-justification. Thus, in a book devoted to the mental operations of classification and seriation, written jointly with B. Inelder, 2159 subjects are indicated, whose data are generalized only on this problem. Above all, Piaget valued the depth of psychological interpretation, a versatile analysis of the psychology of decision, inference, and judgment. In 1918, he wrote that psychologists, by overgeneralizing their methods, had achieved remarkable trivialities along the way, especially when a whole army of scientists was busy translating their results into the language mathematical methods. With the help of complex mathematical apparatus, graphs and calculations, these psychologists demonstrated the simplest and most obvious results ... but no more.
Finally, Piaget believed in the future of psychology, which should be the center not only of the human sciences, but of all sciences. He saw the future of psychology in its own development and fertilization by its interdisciplinary connections, which in turn would open up new horizons for other sciences. At a congress in Moscow, he said: “The future of psychology is, first of all, its own development ... Its future is also determined by the totality of interdisciplinary connections, through which it will be enriched by the achievements of other sciences and, in turn, contribute to their enrichment.”
Thus, proceeding from the perspective of creating genetic epistemology, the science of the origin and development of scientific knowledge, Piaget transferred the traditional questions of the theory of knowledge to the field of child psychology and proceeded to their experimental solution. He was interested in whether the subject distinguishes the external world from the internal, subjective world, and what are the limits of such a distinction? Piaget wanted to find out whether the external world acts directly on the mind of the subject or whether his ideas are products of his own mental activity? And if the subject is active in the process of cognition, then what is the interaction between his thought and the phenomena of the external world, what are the laws that this interaction obeys, what is the origin and development of basic scientific concepts?
In addressing these questions, Piaget proceeded from several basic propositions. First of all - about the relationship of the whole and the part. The problem of the connection between the whole and the part exists, according to Piaget, everywhere, in all areas of being. Everywhere the whole is qualitatively different from the part; there are no isolated elements. The relationship between the whole and the parts always varies according to the structure in which they are included, and in overall structure their relationship is balanced. The state of equilibrium is changing, moving from less stable to more stable. AT social life stable equilibrium has the form of cooperation, and in logic it corresponds to logical necessity.
Piaget's idea that intellectual development tends to a stable equilibrium, that is, to the establishment of logical structures, means that logic is not innate from the beginning, but gradually develops. This also means that psychology opens up the possibility of studying the ontogenetic development of logic.
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