Editing Jean Piaget (section)

==Theory==
{{Main|Piaget's theory of cognitive development}}
Piaget defined himself as a 'genetic' [[Epistemology|epistemologist]], interested in the process of the qualitative development of knowledge. He considered cognitive structures' development as a differentiation of biological regulations. When his entire theory first became known – the theory in itself being based on a structuralist and a cognitivitist approach – it was an outstanding and exciting development in regards to the psychological community at that time.<ref>Gardner, Howard (1981) ''The Quest for Mind: Piaget, Levi-Strauss and the Structuralist Movement'', University of Chicago Press.</ref>

There are a total of four phases in Piaget's research program that included books on certain topics of developmental psychology. In particular, during one period of research, he described himself studying his own three children, and carefully observing and interpreting their cognitive development.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Beilin Harry |title=Piaget's Enduring Contribution to Developmental Psychology|year=1992|journal=Developmental Psychology|volume=28|issue=2|pages=191–204|doi=10.1037/0012-1649.28.2.191}}</ref> In one of his last books, ''Equilibration of Cognitive Structures: The Central Problem of Intellectual Development'', he intends to explain knowledge development as a process of equilibration using two main concepts in his theory, assimilation and accommodation, as belonging not only to biological interactions but also to cognitive ones.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kurt |first=Dr Serhat |date=2022-11-17 |title=Jean Piaget: Biography, Theory and Cognitive Development |url=https://educationlibrary.org/jean-piaget-biography-theory-and-cognitive-development/ |access-date=2022-11-30 |website=Education Library |language=en-US}}</ref>

He stated that children are born with limited capabilities and their cognition ability develops with age.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Cherry |first=Kendra |date=1 May 2024 |title=Piaget's 4 Stages of Cognitive Development Explained. |url=http://www.verywellmind.com |access-date=3 July 2024 |website=www.verywellmind.com}}</ref>

Piaget believed answers for the epistemological questions at his time could be answered, or better proposed, if one looked to the genetic aspect of it, hence his experimentations with children and adolescents. As he says in the introduction of his book ''Genetic Epistemology'': "What the genetic epistemology proposes is discovering the roots of the different varieties of knowledge, since its elementary forms, following to the next levels, including also the scientific knowledge."

===Stages===
The four development stages are described in Piaget's theory as:

{{Ordered list
|<p>''[[Theory of cognitive development#Sensorimotor stage|Sensorimotor stage]]'': from birth to age two. The children experience the world through movement and their senses. During the sensorimotor stage children are extremely egocentric, meaning they cannot perceive the world from others' viewpoints. The sensorimotor stage is divided into six substages:<ref name="Santrock, John W. 1998">Santrock, John W. (1998) Children. 9. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.</ref></p>

{{Ordered list |list_style_type=upper-roman
|Simple reflexes: From birth to one month old. At this time infants use reflexes such as rooting and sucking.
|First habits and primary circular reactions: From one month to four months old. During this time infants learn to coordinate sensation and two types of schema (habit and circular reactions). A primary circular reaction is when the infant tries to reproduce an event that happened by accident (ex.: sucking thumb).
|Secondary circular reactions: From four to eight months old. At this time they become aware of things beyond their own body; they are more object-oriented. At this time they might accidentally shake a rattle and continue to do it for sake of satisfaction.
|Coordination of secondary circular reactions: From eight months to twelve months old. During this stage they can do things intentionally. They can now combine and recombine schemata and try to reach a goal (ex.: use a stick to reach something). They also begin to understand [[object permanence]] in the later months and early into the next stage. That is, they understand that objects continue to exist even when they can't see them.
|Tertiary circular reactions, novelty, and curiosity: From twelve months old to eighteen months old. During this stage infants explore new possibilities of objects; they try different things to get different results.
|Internalization of schemata.
}}

<p>Some followers of Piaget's studies of infancy, such as [[Kenneth Kaye]]<ref name="K. Kaye, 1982">Kaye, K. (1982) ''The Mental and Social Life of Babies''. U. Chicago Press.</ref> argue that his contribution was as an observer of countless phenomena not previously described, but that he didn't offer explanation of the processes in real time that cause those developments, beyond analogizing them to broad concepts about biological adaptation generally. Kaye's "apprenticeship theory" of cognitive and social development refuted Piaget's assumption that mind developed endogenously in infants until the capacity for symbolic reasoning allowed them to learn language.</p>

|<p>''[[Theory of cognitive development#Preoperational stage|Preoperational stage]]'': Piaget's second stage, the preoperational stage, starts when the child begins to learn to speak at age two and lasts up until the age of seven. During the preoperational stage of cognitive development, Piaget noted that children do not yet understand concrete logic and cannot mentally manipulate information. Children's increase in playing and pretending takes place in this stage. The child still has trouble seeing things from different points of view. The children's play is mainly categorized by symbolic play and manipulating symbols. Such play is demonstrated by the idea of checkers being snacks, pieces of paper being plates, and a box being a table. Their observations of symbols exemplifies the idea of play with the absence of the actual objects involved. By observing sequences of play, Piaget was able to demonstrate that, toward the end of the second year, a qualitatively new kind of psychological functioning occurs, known as the preoperational stage.<ref name="Santrock, John W. 2004">Santrock, John W. (2004). Life-Span Development (9th Ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill College – Chapter 8</ref></p>

<p>The preoperational stage is sparse and logically inadequate in regard to mental operations. The child is able to form stable concepts as well as magical beliefs, but not perform operations, which are mental tasks, rather than physical. Thinking in this stage is still egocentric, meaning the child has difficulty seeing the viewpoint of others. The preoperational stage is split into two substages: the symbolic function substage, and the intuitive thought substage. The symbolic function substage is when children are able to understand, represent, remember, and picture objects in their mind without having the object in front of them. The intuitive thought substage is when children tend to propose the questions of "why?" and "how come?" This stage is when children want the knowledge of knowing everything.<ref name="Santrock, John W. 2004"/></p>

<p>The Preoperational Stage is divided into two substages:</p>
{{Ordered list |list_style_type=upper-roman
|[[Piaget's theory of cognitive development#Symbolic function substage|Symbolic Function Substage]]. From two to four years of age children find themselves using symbols to represent physical models of the world around them. This is demonstrated through a child's drawing of their family in which people are not drawn to scale or accurate physical traits are given. The child knows they are not accurate but it does not seem to be an issue to them.
|[[Piaget's theory of cognitive development#Intuitive thought substage|Intuitive Thought Substage]]. At between about the ages of four and seven, children tend to become very curious and ask many questions, beginning the use of primitive reasoning. There is an emergence in the interest of reasoning and wanting to know why things are the way they are. Piaget called it the "intuitive substage" because children realize they have a vast amount of knowledge, but they are unaware of how they acquired it. Centration, conservation, irreversibility, class inclusion, and transitive inference are all characteristics of preoperative thought.<ref name="Santrock, John W. 2004"/>
}}

|<p>''[[Theory of cognitive development#Concrete operational stage|Concrete operational stage]]'': from ages seven to eleven. Children can now converse and think logically (they understand reversibility) but are limited to what they can physically manipulate. They are no longer egocentric. During this stage, children become more aware of logic and conservation, topics previously foreign to them. Children also improve drastically with their classification skills.</p>

|<p>''[[Theory of cognitive development#Formal operational stage|Formal operational stage]]'': from age eleven and onward (development of abstract reasoning). Children develop abstract thought and can easily conserve and think logically in their mind. Abstract thought is newly present during this stage of development. Children are now able to think abstractly and use [[metacognition]]. Along with this, the children in the formal operational stage display more skills oriented toward problem solving, often in multiple steps.</p>
}}

===Psychology of functions and correspondences===
Piaget had sometimes been criticized for characterizing preoperational children in terms of the cognitive capacities they lacked, rather than their cognitive accomplishments. A ''late turn'' in the development of Piaget's theory saw the emergence of work on the accomplishments of those children within the framework of his psychology of functions and correspondences.<ref name = "correspondences">Piaget, J. (1976). On correspondences and morphisms. ''Jean Piaget Society Newsletter, 5''. (unpaged)</ref><ref name = "Piaget, Grize">Piaget, J. Grize, J.-B., Szeminska, A., & Vinh Bang. (1977). ''Epistemology and psychology of functions. Studies in genetic epistemology. Vol. 23''. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reldel, 1977.</ref><ref name = "Groupings, 1977, recent">Piaget, J. (1977). Some recent research and its link with a new theory  of groupings and conservation based on commutability. In R. W. Rieber and K. Salzinger (Eds.), ''Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,  291'', 350-358.</ref> This new phase in Piaget's work was less stage-dependent and reflected greater continuity in human development than would be expected in a stage-bound theory.<ref name = "Schonfeld, 1986">Schonfeld, I. S. (1986). The Genevan and Cattell-Horn conceptions of intelligence compared: The early implementation of numerical solution aids. ''Developmental Psychology, 22'', 204-212. doi.org/10.10'37/0012-1649.22.2.204</ref> This advance in his work took place toward the end of his very productive life and is sometimes absent from developmental psychology textbooks.

An example of a function can involve sets X and Y and ordered pairs of elements (x,y), in which x is an element of X and y, Y. In a function, an element of X is mapped onto exactly one element of Y (the reverse need not be true). A function therefore involves a unique mapping in one direction, or, as Piaget and his colleagues have written, functions are "univocal to the right" (Piaget et al., 1977, p.&nbsp;14).<ref name = "Piaget, Grize"/> When each element of X maps onto exactly one element of Y ''and'' each element of Y maps onto exactly one element of X, Piaget and colleagues indicated that the uniqueness condition holds in either direction and called the relationship between the elements of X and Y "biunivocal" or "one-to-one".<ref name = "Piaget, Grize"/> They advanced the idea that the preoperational child manifests some understanding of one-way order functions.

According to Piaget's Genevan colleagues,<ref name = "Inhelder  1974">Inhelder, B., Sinclair, H., & Bovet, M. ''Learning and the development of cognition''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974</ref> the "semilogic" of these order functions sustains the preoperational child's ability to use of spatial extent to index and compare quantities. The child, for example, could use the length of an array to index the number of objects in the array. Thus, the child would judge the longer of two arrays as having the greater number of objects. Although imperfect, such comparisons are often fair ("semilogical") substitutes for exact quantification. Furthermore, these order functions underlie the child's rudimentary knowledge of environmental regularities.<ref name = "Inhelder  1974"/> Young children are capable of constructing—this reflects the constructivist bent of Piaget's work—sequences of objects of alternating color. They also have an understanding of the pairwise exchanges of cards having pictures of different flowers.

Piaget and colleagues have examined morphisms, which to them differ from the operative transformations observed on concrete operational children.<ref name = "correspondences"/> Piaget (1977) wrote that "correspondences and morphisms are essentially comparisons that do not transform objects to be compared but that extract common forms from them or analogies between them" (p.&nbsp;351).<ref name = "Groupings, 1977, recent"/> He advanced the idea that this type of knowledge emerges from "primitive applications" of action schemes to objects in the environment.<ref name = "Piaget, Grize"/> In one study of morphisms, Piaget and colleagues asked children to identify items in a series of movable red cutouts that could cover a pre-specified section of each of four base cards—each card had a red area and a white area.<ref name = "Piaget, Grize"/> The task, in effect, asked the child to superimpose the cut-outs on a base card to make the entire card appear to be red. Although there were 12 cutouts in all, only three, which differed slightly from each other, could make an entire base card look red. The youngest children studied—they were age 5—could match, using trial and error, one cut-out to one base card. Piaget et al. called this type of morphism bijection, a term-by-term correspondence. Older children were able to do more by figuring out how to make entire card appear to be red by using three cutouts. In other words, they could perform three to one matching. Piaget et al. (1977) called a many-to-one match surjection.

=== Developmental process ===
Piaget provided no concise description of the development process as a whole. Broadly speaking it consisted of a cycle:

*The child performs an action which has an effect on or organizes objects, and the child is able to note the characteristics of the action and its effects.
*Through repeated actions, perhaps with variations or in different contexts or on different kinds of objects, the child is able to differentiate and integrate its elements and effects. This is the process of "reflecting abstraction" (described in detail in Piaget 2001).
*At the same time, the child is able to identify the properties of objects by the way different kinds of actions affect them. This is the process of "empirical abstraction".
*By repeating this process across a wide range of objects and actions, the child establishes a new level of knowledge and insight. This is the process of forming a new "[[cognitive]] stage". This dual process allows the child to construct new ways of dealing with objects and new knowledge about objects themselves.
*Once the child has constructed these new kinds of knowledge, he or she starts to use them to create still more complex objects and to carry out still more complex actions. As a result, the child starts to recognize still more complex patterns and to construct still more complex objects. Thus a new stage begins, which will only be completed when all the child's activity and experience have been re-organized on this still higher level.

This process may not be wholly gradual, but new evidence shows that the passage into new stages is more gradual than once thought. Once a new level of organization, knowledge and insight proves to be effective, it will quickly be generalized to other areas ''if they exist''. As a result, transitions between stages can seem to be rapid and radical, but oftentimes the child has grasped one aspect of the new stage of cognitive functioning but not addressed others. The bulk of the time spent in a new stage consists of refining this new cognitive level; it does not always happen quickly. For example, a child may see that two different colors of Play-Doh have been fused together to make one ball, based on the color. If sugar is mixed into water or iced tea, then the sugar "disappeared" and therefore does not exist to the child at that stage. These levels of one concept of cognitive development are not realized all at once, giving us a gradual realization of the world around us.<ref>Miller, Patrica H. (2009) ''Theories of Developmental Psychology'' 5th Edition, Worth Publishers.</ref>

It is because this process takes this [[dialectic]]al form, in which each new stage is created through the further differentiation, integration, and synthesis of new structures out of the old, that the sequence of cognitive stages are logically necessary rather than simply empirically correct. Each new stage emerges only because the child can take for granted the achievements of its predecessors, and yet there are still more sophisticated forms of knowledge and action that are capable of being developed.

Because it covers both how we gain knowledge about objects and our reflections on our own actions, Piaget's model of development explains a number of features of human knowledge that had never previously been accounted for. For example, by showing how children progressively enrich their understanding of things by acting on and reflecting on the effects of their own previous knowledge, they are able to organize their knowledge in increasingly complex structures. Thus, once a young child can consistently and accurately recognize different kinds of animals, he or she then acquires the ability to organize the different kinds into higher groupings such as "birds", "fish", and so on. This is significant because they are now able to know things about a new animal simply on the basis of the fact that it is a bird – for example, that it will lay eggs.

At the same time, by reflecting on their own actions, children develop an increasingly sophisticated awareness of the "rules" that govern them in various ways. For example, it is by this route that Piaget explains this child's growing awareness of notions such as "right", "valid", "necessary", "proper", and so on. In other words, it is through the process of [[objectification]], [[Introspection|reflection]] and [[abstraction]] that the child constructs the principles on which action is not only effective or correct but also ''justified''.

One of Piaget's most famous studies focused purely on the discriminative abilities of children between the ages of two and a half years old, and four and a half years old. He began the study by taking children of different ages and placing two lines of sweets, one with the sweets in a line spread further apart, and one with the same number of sweets in a line placed more closely together. He found that, "Children between 2 years, 6 months old and 3 years, 2 months old correctly discriminate the relative number of objects in two rows; between 3 years, 2 months and 4 years, 6 months they indicate a longer row with fewer objects to have "more"; after 4 years, 6 months they again discriminate correctly" (''Cognitive Capacity of Very Young Children'', p.&nbsp;141). Initially younger children were not studied, because if at four years old a child could not [[Conservation of quantity|conserve quantity]], then a younger child presumably could not either. The results show that children that are younger than three years and two months have quantity conservation, but as they get older they lose this quality, and do not recover it until four and a half years old. This attribute may be lost due to a temporary inability to solve because of an overdependence on perceptual strategies, which correlates more candy with a longer line of candy, or due to the inability for a four-year-old to reverse situations.

By the end of this experiment several results were found. First, younger children have a discriminative ability that shows the logical capacity for cognitive operations exists earlier than acknowledged. This study also reveals that young children can be equipped with certain qualities for cognitive operations, depending on how logical the structure of the task is. Research also shows that children develop explicit understanding at age 5 and as a result, the child will count the sweets to decide which has more. Finally the study found that overall quantity conservation is not a basic characteristic of humans' native inheritance.

=== Genetic epistemology ===
According to Piaget, [[genetic epistemology]] attempts to "explain knowledge, and in particular [[scientific]] knowledge, on the basis of its history, its sociogenesis, and especially the psychological origins of the notions and operations upon which it is based". Piaget believed he could test [[epistemology|epistemological]] questions by studying the development of thought and action in children. As a result, Piaget created a field known as genetic epistemology with its own methods and problems. He defined this field as the study of [[child development]] as a means of answering epistemological questions.

===Schema===
A schema (plural form: ''schemata'') is a structured cluster of concepts, it can be used to represent objects, scenarios or sequences of events or relations. The philosopher [[Immanuel Kant]] first proposed the concept of schemata as innate structures used to help us perceive the world.<ref>Eysenck, Michael W. and Keane, Mark. T. (2010). ''Cognitive Psychology: A Student's Handbook'', (6th.). East Sussex: Psychology Press..
</ref>

A schema is a mental framework that is created as children interact with their physical and social environments.<ref>Naested, I., Potvin, B., & Waldron, P. (2004). Understanding the landscape of teaching. Toronto, Ontario: Pearson Education Canada.</ref> For example, many 3-year-olds insist that the sun is alive because it comes up in the morning and goes down at night. According to Piaget, these children are operating based on a simple cognitive schema that things that move are alive. At any age, children rely on their current cognitive structures to understand the world around them. Moreover, younger and older children may often interpret and respond to the same objects and events in very different ways because cognitive structures take different forms at different ages.<ref>Shaffer, D. R., Wood, E., & Willoughby, T. (2005). Developmental psychology: Childhood and adolescence. Toronto, Ontario: Nelson Education Canada.</ref>

Piaget (1953) described three kinds of intellectual structures: behavioural (or sensorimotor) schemata, symbolic schemata, and operational schemata.

*''Behavioural schemata'': organized patterns of behaviour that are used to represent and respond to objects and experiences.
*''Symbolic schemata'': internal mental symbols (such as images or verbal codes) that one uses to represent aspects of experience.
*''Operational schemata'': internal mental activity that one performs on objects of thought.<ref>Piaget, J. (1953). The origin of intelligence in the child. New Fetter Lane, New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.</ref>

According to Piaget, children use the process of [[Constructivist theory|assimilation and accommodation]] to create a schema or mental framework for how they perceive and/or interpret what they are experiencing. As a result, the early concepts of young children tend to be more global or general in nature.<ref name="Auger, W. F. 2007">Auger, W. F., & Rich, S. J. (2007). Curriculum theory and methods: Perspectives on learning and teaching. Mississauga, Ontario: John Wiley & Sons Canada.</ref>

Similarly, Gallagher and Reid (1981) maintained that adults view children's concepts as highly generalized and even inaccurate. With added experience, interactions, and maturity, these concepts become refined and more detailed. Overall, making sense of the world from a child's perspective is a very complex and time-consuming process.<ref>Gallagher, J. M., & Reid, D. K. (1981). The learning theory of Piaget and Inhelder. Austin, Texas: Pro-Ed.</ref>

A schema is:
*A critically important building block of conceptual development
*Constantly in the process of being modified or changed
*Modified by on-going experiences
*A generalized idea, usually based on experience or prior knowledge.<ref name="Auger, W. F. 2007"/>

These schemata are constantly being revised and elaborated upon each time the child encounters new experiences. In doing this children create their own unique understanding of the world, interpret their own experiences and knowledge, and subsequently use this knowledge to solve more complex problems. In a neurological sense, the brain/mind is constantly working to build and rebuild itself as it takes in, adapts/modifies new information, and enhances understanding.<ref name="Auger, W. F. 2007"/>