JEAN
WILLIAM
FRITZ
PIAGET
PRESENTER - DR. MEGHNA HIMANI
UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF - DR. PARTH SINGH
(PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHIATRY)
● Jean Piaget was born in 1896 in Neuchâtel, Switzerland
● He was the oldest son of Arthur Piaget(Swiss), a
professor of medieval literature at the University of
Neuchâtel, and Rebecca Jackson (French).
● At age 11, he wrote a paper on an albino sparrow, which
was published and was the start of his famous career.
● After graduating high school, he attended the
University of Zurich, where he became interested in
psychoanalysis.
● Jean Piaget was, at various points in his career,
considered to be a natural scientist, psychologist,
sociologist, and historian of the philosophy of science.
● Piaget studied his children’s intellectual development from
infancy.
● He focused on the most universal and general characteristics of
children’s cognitive development.
● He termed “genetic epistemology,” the study of the
development of logic, reasoning, and higher-level thinking.
GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY
● Piaget’s overarching task was the understanding of how one comes to know
things. He took a developmental approach to this question, inquiring how
knowledge becomes more adequate over time
● He designated himself genetic epistemologist -one who studies the
development of knowledge from infancy to adolescence.
● By genetic he didn’t mean approach based on genes but rather an approach
based on development over time.
ASSIMILATION AND ACCOMMODATION
● Piaget believed that the process of understanding and change involves two basic functions:
Assimilation and accommodation.
● Assimilation describes how humans perceive and adapt to new information. It is the process of taking
one’s environment and new information and fitting it into pre-existing cognitive schemas.
● Accommodation is the process of taking one's environment and new information, and altering
one's pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the new information.
Equilibration
● Piaget believed that all children try to strike a balance between assimilation and accommodation
using a mechanism he called equilibration. Equilibration helps explain how children can move
from one stage of thought to the next.
PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
● Piaget created a broad theoretical system for development of cognitive abilities by
emphasizing the ways children think and acquire knowledge
● Term Piaget used for cognitive structure is scheme (specific way of knowing or
action sequences guided by thought).
It consists of four stages
1. Sensorimotor Stage
2. Preoperational Stage
3. Concrete Operational Stage
4. Formal Operational Stage
SENSORIMOTOR PERIOD
● In this period, the child’s construction of mental schemata depend totally on perceptions and
bodily movements. It is in no way aided by representations, symbols, or thoughts.
● Age- 0 –1.5 (to 2)
● SCHEMA- Defined as an action sequence guided by thought. It is an internal representation of
the world.
● A stimulus is received and a response results accompanied by a sense of awareness which is the
first schema.
● As infants become more mobile one schema is built on another.
● Child begins to learn by sensory observation.
● They gain control of motor functions through activity, exploration, manipulation of environment.
STAGES OF SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
1. Inborn motor and sensory reflexes (0-1
Month)
● Child is born with the abilities of inborn
reflexes like suckling, looking, and hearing.
● It involves responding to certain voices and
looking towards them, opening of the mouth,
looking towards colorful items, and closing the
hand when you touch their palm.
2. Primary circular reaction(1-4Months)
● In this period, the child works on their own actions, which act as stimuli to them, and they
repeatedly respond to these actions.
● For example, when they suck their thumbs, it feels good to them, and they repeat this action again
and again.
3. Secondary circular reaction ( 4-8 Months )
● In this stage, the child starts to focus on their surrounding
world.
● For example, when the child squeezes a toy that makes a
sound, the child feels amused listening to that sound, and
he/she will squeeze the toy repeatedly. Turning the lights on
and off, again and again, is also a secondary circular
reaction. During this period,, the child voluntarily starts
grasping objects.
4. Tertiary circular reaction and discovery through active experimentation (12-24
Months)
● In this period, the child attempts to achieve their objectives, and he tries, again and again, to
achieve it, even after committing mistakes.
● For example, if the child wants his favorite toy that is placed above the table, but he/she can’t
reach it, the child tries to throw some things on that toy so that the toy falls from the table, and
he/she can finally play with that.
5. Insight and object permanence(8-12 months)
● Another milestone of cognitive development,
object permanence is achieved in this period, If
you hide the apple from their sight, they won’t
think that their particular apple does not exist,
instead, they may try to find their lost apple.
● This stage lasts for around 8 to 12 month
6. Invention of new means
● Toddlers start to find new ways of doing things.
● Piaget’s own daughter, instead of backing away awkwardly after bumping a toy pram into a wall,
she paused a moment and then walked round the pram in order to push it from the other side. It
appeared that she was able to solve this problem by coordinating her actions implicitly or mentally
without actually having to perform them.
● This first stage comes to an end when the baby develops the ability to think through problems
without actually having to test the solution out physically.
PREOPERATIONAL SUBPERIOD
● Behavioural Characteristics
include:-Deferred imitation,
symbolic play, graphic imagery
(drawing), mental imagery, and
language
● Age: 2-7 years
● OPERATIONS - Flexible mental actions that can be combined with another to solve the
problems.
● Children use symbols and language more extensively than in sensorimotor stage.
● They learn without the use of reasoning, cannot think logically and can name objects but not
classes of the objects.
● Children in this stage cannot deal with moral dilemmas.
➢ The semiotic function has by five
characteristic behavior patterns during the
second year of life:
1. Deferred imitation - imitation that starts after
the disappearance of the model. For example, a
child may put on father’s hat and walk as father
does, even hours after father has gone off to work.
2. Symbolic play - the game of pretending
In imitation, the imbalance between assimilation and
accommodation is weighted in favor of
accommodation; however, the opposite is true in
symbolic play, which is a lessening of the demand of
the adaptive process.
3. Drawing, or the use of graphic imagery
4. Presence of a mental image, which appears as an internalized imitation and not as a function of
perception
5. Verbal evocation of events not occurring at the time. The child can use language to describe and
represent events, people, or objects from their past.
● In this period children do not fully understand the concepts of logic
● For example, if the researcher pours an equal quantity of water in two glasses of the same
capacities, and one glass is taller than the other, and he/she asks the child to choose one glass. The
child is more likely so choose the taller glass.
● In this stage, the child is egocentric. This means they only understand the world from their
perspective and struggle to see other peoples’ points of view.
CONCRETE OPERATIONS
● Children can solve problems in a logical fashion,
they are typically not able to think abstractly or
hypothetically.
● Age : 7-11 years
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CONCRETE
OPERATIONAL PERIOD
● A crucial difference between preoperational and concrete-operational thought is the presence
within operative thinking of concepts of conservation
➢ CONSERVATION :
Ability to recognise that although the shape of objects
may change the objects still maintain or conserve other
characteristics that enable them to be recognised as the
same.
For example, if a ball of clay is rolled into a long, thin
sausage shape, children recognize that each form contains
the same amount of clay.
Some simple tests for conservation, with
approximate ages of attainment. When
the sense of conservation is achieved,
the child answers that B contains the
same quantity as A.
Reversibility
The capacity to understand the relation between
things, to realise that one thing can turn into
another and back again.
For example - The ball of clay has been flattened.
As the child develops the idea of reversibility, they
begin to see that they can mold the flattened clay
back into a ball, all while keeping the same quantity
of clay.
➢Class inclusion
● In this task, a child is shown, for example, an array of
pets (superordinate class) consisting of dogs and cats
(subordinate classes).
● After counting the number of dogs, cats, and pets, the
child is asked whether there are more dogs or more pets.
➢RELATIONS
● The concrete operation that demonstrates an understanding of relations is seriation.
● Arranging items along a quantitative dimension, such as length or weight, in a methodical way
can be done.
● For example, they can methodically arrange a series of
different-sized sticks in order by length, while younger
children approach a similar task in a haphazard way.
● The concrete operation of seriation underlies one’s
ability to think dimensionally.
Putting these rectangles from smallest to
largest is seriation
● Transitivity: Being able to understand how
objects are related to one another is referred
to as transitivity, or transitive inference. This
means that if one understands that a dog is a
mammal, and that a pug is a dog, then a pug
must be a mammal.
Transitivity allows children to understand that this pug puppy,
is a dog and a mammal
FORMAL OPERATION
● The stage of formal operations is so named because
young persons' thinking operates in a formal, highly
logical, systematic, and symbolic manner.
● This stage is characterized by the ability to think
abstractly, to reason deductively, and to define
concepts; young persons can grasp the concept of
probabilities.
● Ages: 12 and Over
ABSTRACT THINKING
Three characteristics follow from the
fundamental reorientation in thought:
(1) Adolescent thought is hypothetical-
deductive
(2) It deals in propositions rather than in
concrete events
(3) It can isolate variables and examine all
possible combinations of variables.
➢Hypothetical-deductive thought :
As a hypothetical-deductive form of thought, formal
operational intelligence proceeds from the possible to the
real. In this sense, it mirrors scientific reasoning.
• Deductive reasoning works differently. It uses facts and
lessons to create a conclusion. The child will be
presented with two facts:
“All teachers are strict.”
“Mr. Johnson is a teacher.”
Using deductive reasoning, the child can conclude that
Mr. Johnson is strict.
● As children gain greater awareness and
understanding of their own thought processes, they
develop what is known as metacognition
● Metacogniton is simply “thinking about thinking.” It
is the ability to run through your own thought
process, This can help you “rebuild” your thought
process.
➢Propositional thought.
● The formal operations deal in propositions rather than in concrete events implies increased freedom
from immediate content. At one level, this freedom implies the ability to manipulate abstractions
that have been tied to concrete examples or events.
● The adolescent, for example, can perform a transitive inference (A < B, B < C; therefore, A < C)
without any empirical demonstration of referents for the terms A and B. At another level, this
freedom implies that having performed a concrete operation, the adolescent can abstract the results
of that operation and can perform further operations on them.
➢One of the ways that Piaget tested for this skill were to
ask the children questions. Here’s an example of a
question that Piaget asked children:
● “If you had a third eye, where would you put it?”
● Children in the Concrete Operational Stage were limited to
answering that they would put the eye on their forehead or
on their face. They were typically only exposed to animals
and humans that had eyes on their face. But children in the
Formal Operational Stage were more likely to branch out
and think of more useful and more abstract answers. They
thought of putting the eye on their hand, back, or
somewhere else where it would serve a greater purpose.
Extensions of Piaget’s Theory
Few of the important extensions were proposed by -
1) Lawrence Kohlberg
2) James Youniss
3) Gerard Duveen
Lawerence Kohlberg
● Studied the moral reasoning of children and described three major stages of moral reasoning
1. Preschool period: avoiding punishment and striving for reward.
2. Conventional Morality: based on notion of authority benefit.
3. Principal morality: based on feral internalised moral principles
● Kohlberg investigated by presenting the subjects with moral dilemmas and then observing their
thinking as they attempted to resolve the dilemmas.
James Youniss
● Proposed two major categories of social cognition by integrating
Piagetian psychology with Interpersonal psychiatric theory.
1. Schemas about peers
2. Schemas about authority figures
● Each of these develops as a function of repeated interactions with peers
or elders.
Gerard Duveen
● Purposed 2 methods by which child acquired of social knowledge.
● Social transmission which is based on learning from authority figure.
● Process of argumentation and debate with peers.
● Perret - Clemont pointed out that Piaget emphasis on process of argumentation with peers more
than social transmission.
Post Piagetian Era
GOPNIK
● Referred to post Piagentian era, pointing out that cognitive development
appears to be specific to certain domains rather than integrated across
vast stages.
● She discussed two major theories
1. Theory theory
2. Script theory
Theory theory
● Emphasises active construction of intelligence and role of evidence in leading to modification.
● Found that capacities for induction and casual thinking are present earlier than Piaget proposed.
Script theory
● Is a empirical approach to learning of complex ideas and skills.
● Scripts are explanatory in a subjective sense and they represent child’s theory about what
happened in a given instance.
PSYCHIATRIC APPLICATIONS
● Hospitalized children who are in the sensorimotor
stage have not achieved object permanence and,
therefore, have separation anxiety.
● Children at the preoperational stage, who are
unable to deal with concepts and abstractions,
benefit more from role-playing proposed medical
procedures and situations than by having them
verbally described in detail.
● Because children at the preoperational stage do not understand cause and effect, they may
interpret physical illness as punishment for bad thoughts or deeds; and because they have not yet
mastered the capacity to conserve and do not understand the concept of reversibility (which
normally occurs during the concrete operational stage), they cannot understand that a broken bone
mends or that blood lost in an accident is replaced.
● Adolescents' thinking, during the stage of formal
operations, may appear overly abstract when it is, in
fact, a normal developmental stage. Adolescent
turmoil may not herald a psychotic process but may
well result from a normal adolescent's coming to
grips with newly acquired abilities to deal with the
unlimited possibilities of the surrounding world.
● Adults under stress may regress cognitively as well
as emotionally. Their thinking can become
preoperational, egocentric, and sometimes animistic.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PSYCHOTHERAPY
● Increased emphasis on the cognitive components of the therapeutic endeavor, cognitive
approaches to therapy focused on thoughts, including automatic assumptions, beliefs, plans, and
intentions.
● Child interventions - Susan Harter discussed techniques for helping young children become
aware of divergent or contradictory emotions and to integrate these complex emotions within a
more abstract or higher class of emotions.
● This technique represents an application of the concrete operation of class inclusion to the realm
of the emotions.
● Treatment models - Aaron Beck developed an entire school of cognitive therapy that focuses on
the role of cognitions in causing or maintaining psychopathology.
● Cognitive therapy has been shown to be an effective treatment for problems as diverse as
depression, anxiety disorders and substance abuse.
● A core idea in cognitive therapy is that the patient has developed certain core beliefs, aspects of
the self-schema, and conditional probability beliefs as a result of developmental experiences, and
these contribute to emotional or behavioral problems.
● The person can be assisted to identify the negative
automatic thoughts and underlying dysfunctional
attitudes or beliefs that contribute to emotional
distress or addictive behavior, help the patient
view these thoughts more objectively, not take
them in an unquestioning manner as veridical
● By helping the individual see that previous
cognitive structures are in some ways , this leads
to the search for more-adequate structures. The
compensation for external disturbance is what
Piaget termed equilibration.
CRITICISM
● For all of his seminal experiments is has been shown that infants and children can solve them
earlier than Piaget thought (object permanence, A-not-B-task, etc.)
● Lack of clear explanation of how children move from one cognitive stage to the next.
● He used his own children for the study
● The subject's were not studied across the entire lifespan
● His theory does not discern between competency and performance
● Piaget describes the children's development but never fully explains it.
● Cognitive development does not continue throughout the adulthood
● A child in the study may have been completely competent but could not perform the task well due
to motivational or emotional circumstances
● Piaget interpreted the rise of formal operational thought in the context of his equilibrium model of
cognitive development. Thus, he considered neurological maturation and experience of the object
and interpersonal world as necessary but not sufficient to explain this qualitative improvement in
thinking.
Final Years
● In 1972 Jean Piaget was awarded Erasmus Prize.
● In 1979 he was honored with the Balzan Prize for Social and Political Sciences.
● He died on September 16, 1980 at the age of 84years
REFERENCES
● Sadock BJ, Sadock VA, Ruiz P. Kaplan & Sadock's comprehensive textbook of
psychiatry.Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer; 2017.
● Kaplan & Sadock's synopsis of psychiatry.
● McLeod, S. A. (2018, June 06). Jean piaget's theory of cognitive development. Simply
Psychology. www.simplypsychology.org/piaget.html
● Hugar SM, Kukreja P, Assudani HG, Gokhale N.
Evaluation of the relevance of Piaget's cognitive principles among parented and orphan childre
n in Belagavi City, Karnataka, India: A comparative study
. Int J Clin Pediatr Dent. 2017;10(4):346-350. doi:10.5005/jp-journals-10005-1463
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