Introduction
Jean Piaget is one of the greatest psychologists to have ever lived. His thinking has influenced many areas of the study of the human mind, from development, to education and even psychopathology. Through a study of his general theory, many parameters of his thinking will be examined. Then, there will be a brief discussion of his cognitive development stages, which is the contribution he is most known for. Finally, some criticisms to his theory will be addressed, and some possible answers from within Piaget’s theory.
General Theory
According to Carey, Zaitchik and Bascandziev (2015), there are two main components of Piaget’s theory. The first of these is constructivism, a method that is controversially applied to the complete oeuvre of Piaget. The second is stage theory, also known as the cognitive development phases.
Nevertheless, Piaget also developed many other answers about the human experience. Notably, he had a theory with regards to how people reasoned in a moral sense; this aspect of his theory, while less popular, is still very interesting. According to Beilin and Pufall (1992), Piaget conceives a child’s moral development as corresponding to his or her social situations. The function of the cognitive processes that regulate moral understanding adapt to the new context. Therefore, moral reason and moral acting are always connected, and the child actively constructed moral significance from his or her experience, especially from the difference between interacting with adults and their peers.
Here one can see the hallmarks of his theory: the tension between the context and the individual in terms of knowledge, something that he did not resolve in a traditional way. For Piaget, the acquisitions that a person had had before were not lost, but served as the ground for integration with respect to new experiences. These new acquisitions were either assimilated to the schemas the individual had beforehand, or a crisis occurred (Mandler, 2014). In this sense, he was neither an empiricist nor a radical nativist (Beilin & Pufall, 1992).
Matter (2014) emphasizes Piaget’s belief in the homeostatic nature of the mind. For him, there was a natural component of the cognitive function that led it towards of organization. At a first glance, schemas could be thought of as the unit that would allow the mind to organize itself.
Geber states that according to “Piaget the study of the development of knowledge in the individual through his life space is an important method for investigating the more extensive issue of the development of our epistemological system” (2006, p. 2). Therefore, the study of the development of the child not only was to illuminate how each human being developed individually, but the evolution of knowing in humankind as a whole.
Therefore, one could say that this type of process could also be applied to Piaget’s theory itself, making it difficult to establish just one theory. On the other hand, Piaget’s thinking varied wildly, as his system was “very elastic in the sense that he always seemed to be able to introduce new concepts in order to integrate apparently conflicting results within his system” (Kohnstamm, 2013, p. 43). Piaget constantly modified his own theory in light of experiences that seemed to contradict that which he had already postulated, making it a difficult and sometimes heterogeneous read.
This obviously makes it a very unstable theory, implying difficulty to put it to test at all. As Geber writes, “the theory of Piaget is constantly being modified” (Geber, 2006, p. 4), including, when he was alive, by Piaget himself. Nevertheless, its flexibility also allows the integration of new material and discoveries.
Cognitive Stages
According to Louis, Beswick and Featherstone (2013), Piaget did not believe that children merely learnt knowledge that was transmitted to them from another person or entity. On the other hand, that in order to learn something, one had to construct and reconstruct knowledge. These different stages would thus describe different ways one does this during one’s lifetime.
One of the greatest characteristics of Piaget’s thinking is that it attempts to establish the logical functioning of cognitive processes. Referencing the Swiss thinker, Parsons states that “logic may be applied as a theoretical tool in the description of the mental structures that govern ordinary reasoning” (1958, p. viii). Nevertheless, this does not necessarily correlate to actual academic developments of logic, but personal connections between arguments. Therefore, one could also see these different cognitive stages as different logical systems that people go through as they are growing up.
The four stages that Piaget proposes are Sensoriomotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational and Formal Operational (Louis & Clare, 2013). As the nature of these stages has been discussed above, it will not be dealt with extensively here. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that these phases refer to the nature of knowledge itself, implying an evolutionary model of the construction of knowledge in both the individual and society as a whole.
Sensoriomotor Stage
This stage handles children from birth to two years of age. Obviously, there are many profound changes that occur during these twenty-four months, which Piaget describes in six substages. The main characteristic here is that children are egocentric, and can only see what is around them from their own point of view. They repeat motions that satisfy them and learn to understand that objects are still in existence even though they cannot see them. This stage ends with the internalization of the schemata that they have already experimented with in the world.
Nevertheless, what is most interesting about this stage is how Piaget came to these conclusions, as children in this stage can obviously not talk. One of Piaget’s greatest theses is that, when children play, the reveal something important about their cognitive functions. He writes, “in the field of play and imitation is it impossible to trace the transition from sensory-motor assimilation and accommodation to the mental assimilation and accommodation which characterize the beginnings of representation” (Piaget, 1951, p. 2-3). As one can see, he believes that it is possible to trace the changes in cognitive functions through their exteriorizations as play and imitation.
Preoperational Stage
The Preoperational Stage goes from when the child is two until he is seven. Here, the child can speak, but they still have not developed formal logic. For example, they are still very egocentric, and cannot see the world from another point of view. Nevertheless, they develop the ability to work with symbols, something that is obviously important for logical functioning. Here, there is still a lot of magical thinking mixed with the beginning of logical reasoning.
This stage may be divided into two substages. The first of this is Symbolic Function, where children play with objects that represent another object that is absent. The symbol may also be a drawing, for example, yet it does not have to be drawn to scale as the pictures are just a stakeholder for the family members. The other substage is Intuitive Thought, where children finally realize the amount of knowledge that they have and attempt to manipulate it, even though they do not yet count with an actual logical system.
Concrete Operational Stage
In this phase, which goes from seven to eleven years of age, children have integrated conservation and reversibility, but only with regards to physical objects. Nevertheless, they escape their egocentrism and are able to sustain other people’s positions even if they know they are untrue. Although children at this stage may be able to use inductive logic, as a whole, their abstraction is not completely developed, so they cannot establish formal relationships between objects that they cannot touch.
Finally, from adolescence to adulthood, the formal operational stage takes over, in which humans may logically manipulate abstract notions. This includes thinking about situations that have not happened, as evidenced in counterfactual thinking. Furthermore, they become able to reason in a deductive manner.
Criticism
Obviously, as with any popular theory, Piaget also had many detractors. As a whole, Beilin sums ups the critiques against Piaget by saying, “the dissatisfaction with Piaget’s theory is with its structuralism and his neglect of processes and functions in development” (1983, p. 30). In other words, they can be reduced to attacks against his line of thinking, from people that espoused other theories with respect to reality. Therefore, even though it is important to take this criticism into account, it seems to not hold too much water as a whole, as it is basically criticizing a method he established and executed purposely.
In other words, many people raise issues related to his methods, especially with regards to the concepts that he used. It is true that he did not stick to the traditional scientific method as popular culture knows it, yet it would be ridiculous to suggest that he did not know this himself. As Parsons states, “the bulk of the research is neither experimental nor clinical in these two polar senses” (1958, p. x). Piaget employed a different methodology because he was attempting to grasp a dimension of the human experience that cannot be apprehended through experimental psychology, which would never have the observational appearance of mental structures and schemas that they could examine.
For example, one common critique is that he paid too much attention to the action of children and not enough to their language (Kohnstamm, 2013). Even though his cognitive theory may be correct, there is nothing to account for concepts and problem solving of the verbal variety. This is mainly due to the fact that Piaget attempted to grasp the logic behind the children’s words, instead of their own expressions of their thoughts. Therefore, it is a limitation of his own, established way of approaching reality, instead of a criticism within his own theory.
Scholnick (1983) describes two common complaints detractors have with respect to Piaget’s theory and research. The first of these is that he “uses formal logic as a basis for describing what the child must acquire, but formal logic does not describe natural thought processes” (p. 79). This is obviously another strike against his project as a whole.
Nevertheless, there are also critiques that hold a negative light with respect to their relationship to reality. Furthermore, she cites various examples of research that have demonstrated Piaget’s underestimation of young children’s cognitive capacities. This is echoed by Beilin (1983), who adds that he also both overestimated and underestimated the mental abilities of the adult. This is obviously more important, as it separates his theory from what actually happens in reality.
However, saying that he underestimated the thinking abilities of young children has to be one of the most ironic criticisms. This is due to the fact that he was one of the people that did the most to popularize the notion that cognitive development began at birth (Beilin, 1983). Furthermore, he was the first one to observe and describe the changes in mental capacity during the first years of development.
Conclusion
Jean Piaget is one of the most significant psychologists of all times, and many aspects of his theory are still used today. This is in part due to the flexible nature of his system of thought, which allows for the introduction of new concepts when the theory cannot account for the experiences. This process, known as assimilation, is thought to happen to everybody through their lifetime, according to Piaget. Therefore, there would be a correlation between how people develop their thinking and how humankind develops epistemologically as well.
One of his most famous theories is the four stages of cognitive development. These are Sensoriomotor, Preoperational, Concrete Operational and Formal Operational, and they describe the modifications in cognitive systems of people from when they are born to around young adulthood. From being an egocentric perceiver of concrete objects, one develops the ability for abstract logical thought.
Finally, even though this theory has received many criticisms, most of them fall outside of the possible theoretical lines, as they attempt to make him work in a way that he did not want to. Nevertheless, it is important to note that there are discrepancies between reality and his theory, and this should not be disregarded. As a whole, his theory is very interesting and worth studying due to its complexity and understanding of the human experience.
Reference List
Parsons, A. (1958). Translator’s Introduction: A Guide for Psychologists. In I. Barbel & J. Piaget (vii-xx), The growth of logical thinking from childhood to adolescence. Oxon: Routledge.
Beilin, H. & Pufall, P.B. (1992). Piaget's Theory: Prospects and Possibilities. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers.
Carey, S., Zaitchik, D. & Bacandziev, I. ( 2015). Theories of development: In dialog with Jean Piaget. Developmental Review, 38, 35-54.
Gerber, B.A. (2006). Piaget and Knowing: Studies in genetic epistemology. London: Routledge.
Kohnstamm, G.A. (2013). Jean Piaget: Children and the inclusion problem. Chicago: Transaction Publishers.
Scholnick, E.K. The Implications Of A Semantic Theory For the Development of Class Logic. In L.S. Liben (79-96), Piaget and the Foundations of Knowledge. New York: Psychology Press.
Louis, S. & Clare, S. (2013). Understanding schemas in young children: Again! again!. London: Bloomsbury publishing plc.
Mandler, J.M. (2014). Stories, Scripts, and Scenes: Aspects of Schema Theory. New York: Psychology Press.
Piaget, J. (1951). Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. Oxon: Routledge.
Beilin, H. (1983). The New Functionalism and Piaget’s Program. In E.K. Scholnick (3-40), New trends in conceptual representation: Challenges to Piaget's theory. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
