Child and Reality: Problems of Genetic Psychology

by Jean Piaget, Arnold Rosin (Translator)

English, French (translation)

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction

182 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) was a Swiss philosopher, natural scientist and developmental theorist, well known for his work studying children, his theory of cognitive development, and his epistemological view called "genetic epistemology." In 1955, he created the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva and directed it until his death in 1980. According to Ernst von Glasersfeld, Jean Piaget was "the great pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing."

Reviews

[Gaspard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vrai MEEF prem deg a son Piaget sur sa table de chevet.
“L’idéal de l’éducation, ce n’est pas d’apprendre le maximum, de maximiser les résultats, mais c’est avant tout d’apprendre à apprendre ; c’est d’apprendre à se développer et d’apprendre à continuer de se développer après l’école.”

[J.D. Steens · Rating 2 out of 5]

Piaget is not an easy writer to read. As in this book, the reader has to trudge through a lot of text to get the gist of what he is saying.

For Piaget, the child makes sense of the world by constructing cognitive structures (mental maps, not his term), preceding thought and language, that govern its interactions with the world. (1) Phenomena are assimilated to pre-existing structures and, simultaneously, structures accommodate new phenomena when assimilation doesn’t quite work right. (2) This back and forth process enables the child to, cognitively, incorporate more and more of the world. This is a cognitive adaptation, akin to adaptation in biology. This progressive adjustment to the world is equilibration; when mental structures fit the world, they are in an equilibrium state.

Piaget explains structural change (3) by saying that the developing child is driven initially by “praxis,” action vis-à-vis relevant objects that gets mapped out in its cognitive structures. When the child encounters contradictions and inconsistencies, the structures are reorganized to better fit its interactions with the world. Until this occurs, the old ways of interacting have a priority rank. When the world doesn’t quite match up, the older structure is upheld, by default, and protected, Freud-like, by “affective repression.” Pushes and shoves from the outside eventually force a correction, which comes through as an awareness that “consists of a reconstruction on an upper level of what is already organized in another manner on a lower level.” Reorganization, thus, enables conflict to be overcome. In this way, Piaget, quoting Erickson, states that “the past is constantly restructured by the present.” (4)

Disequilibrium – contradiction – supplies the motive, which is the energetic force that results in structural reformation. This is like Schopenhauer’s pain. Piaget suggests the eventual possibility of a wholesale integration of the affective (force) and cognitive capacities in psychological theory. (5) To me, this means something along the following line: Our cognitive structures, as commonly understood, cover one aspect of what is involved with behavior. “Behavioral” structures are integrated entities containing the motive for acting (affectivity), the knowing “how-to-do” component vis-à-vis the relative object (cognition), and the behavior (action) vis-à-vis the relevant object. (6) And, as the relevant object ties back to the affective force, these structures function dialectically with the world. It is a dynamic circle of energy.

Though not clarified sharply in this book, the affective ends of behavior for understanding the world, objectively, are different than the affective ends that drive behavior to satisfy need or to address fear. Both are related, (scientific understanding has practical applications), but they are also somewhat distinct in the sense that objective knowing is void of need and fear. It is centered on the object itself, understanding it more or less “objectively,” without trying it immediately to one’s own bodily interests.

(1) Structures are multiple categorizations of same or similar phenomena (like modules?), and ways to interact with them.

(2) “A scheme of assimilation…is constantly submitted to the pressure of the circumstances and can differentiate in accordance with the objects to which it is applied We will call accommodation this differentiation of response to the action of the objects on the schemes, synchronized with assimilation of the objects to the schemes.”

(3) We act first. We then reflect on our actions, first concretely, then abstractly. Piaget is well known for his stage theory of development but there is some constant confusion how many stages there are and, age wise, there general break points. The terminology is also confusing as, along with stages, he refers to substages and periods. Generally, it might be said that the young child operates strictly at the sensory and motor level, incorporating its interactions with the world in a non-cognitive way. As the child develops, these structures are no longer adequate and it begins to view the world concretely, representing things in the world mainly in a here and now sense. Later, the limitations that are inherent in the world of concrete operations are overcome through conceptual representations which can, for example, be manipulated in thought, by mental actions only.

(4) Awareness is not, Piaget clarifies, a shedding of light on a problem, much as if one turns on a light to see what was in the dark. Rather, awareness involves an active reconstruction of the past.

(5) Piaget refers to cognitive structures and sees affectivity as distinct from them (“What characterizes the cognitive aspects of behavior is their structure.”). He sees the energetic component as one of necessity – classification of like and unlike phenomena, seriation, causal and logical relations, etc. It is built into the cognitive structure itself – first unconsciously and then consciously. But this begs the question. Why does the developing child or the adult deal with such necessities if it, the child, doesn’t care about them, either at all, or to a sufficient degree? In the absence of an affective component, does anything happen? Do structures just function autonomously or are they tied to our biological need to makes sense out of and adapt to the world? “Contradictions” are a problem, and “a problem” has an affective aspect that motivates the person to find a solution (an equilibrium state) vis-à-vis a particular object or a class of phenomena. Whereas Piaget references affectivity as a model of cognitive repression, I see it as, along with behavior, built into the structure itself. Cognitive structures, in other words, are more aptly referenced as structures with affective (motive), cognitive (what objects and how to act in relation to them), and behavior (the action itself that, in Piaget’s case, are mental operations) components.

(6) Typically, beingness-in-the-world is broken down into affectivity, cognitive and behavior components, which steps over the notion of structure as an integration of these three components.. “Behavior” itself is also used to described our interactions with the world. But this is a misnomer because all behavior contains affective and cognitive elements. Behavior is good as a shorthand term, especially because it emphasizes, in Piaget’s scheme, the “praxis” element, as long as it’s understood that affectivity and cognition are integral to all behavior.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

PIAGET LOOKS AT VARIOUS ‘STAGES’ OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a Swiss developmental psychologist known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are known as "genetic epistemology."

He wrote in the first chapter of this 1972 book, “Child development is a temporal operation par excellence… I will focus on two points. The first is the necessary role of time in the life cycle. Any development---psychological as well as biological---supposes duration, and the childhood lasts longer as the species becomes more advanced… The second point is formulated in the questions: Does the life cycle express a basic biological rhythm, an ineluctable law? Does civilization modify this rhythm and to what extent? In other words, is it possible to increase or decrease this temporal development?” (Pg. 1-2)

He continues, “Actually we can distinguish two aspects in the child’s intellectual development. On the one hand, we have what can be called the psychosocial aspect, that is, everything the child receives from without and learns in general by family, school, educative transmission. On the other there is the development which can be called spontaneous… I will call it psychological, the development of the intelligence itself---what the child learns by himself, what none can teach him and he must discover alone; and it is essentially this development which takes time.” (Pg. 2)

He explains, "This brings us to the theory of the stages of development. Development is achieved by successive levels and stages. In this development … we distinguish four important stages. First, we have a stage, before about age eighteen months, which precedes speech and which we will call that of sensorimotor intelligence. Secondly we have a stage which begins with speech and lasts for about seven or eight years. We will call this the period of representation… Then, between about seven and twelve, we will distinguish a third period which we will call that of concrete operations. And finally, after twelve years, there is the stage of propositional or formal operations.” (Pg 10)

Later, he adds, “these three important periods with their particular stages form operations of successive equilibrium, steps toward equilibrium. The moment the equilibrium is reached on a point, the structure is integrated into a new system being formed, until there is a new equilibrium ever more stable and of an ever more extending field… In this privileged field of intellectual operations, we thus arrive at a simple and regular system of stages, but it is perhaps characteristic of such a field of perception that I am unable to furnish its stages.” (Pg. 60-61)

He suggests, “the hypotheses we propose to prove state (a) that on every level (including perception and learning), the acquisition of knowledge supposes the beginning of the subject’s activities in forms which, at various degrees, prepare the logical structures; and (b) therefore that the logical structures already are due to the coordination of the actions themselves and hence are outlined the moment the functioning of the elementary instruments are used to form knowledge.’ (Pg. 94)

He recounts, “Some forty years ago, during my first studies, at a time when I believed in the close relation between language and thought, I scarcely studied anything but verbal thought. Since then, there has been the study of sensorimotor intelligence before language… All this had taught me that there exists a logic of coordinations of actions far deeper than the logic related to language and much prior to that of propositions in the strict sense.” (Pg. 109-110)

He states, “Two principles of gestalt psychology remain fundamental in the fields which interest us in this study. The first is that any operation stemming from perception or intelligence is characterized by a step toward equilibrium… The second essential principle is that the forms of equilibrium forming at the close of these equilibrium operations, consist of total structures characterized by organization laws stemming from the totality as such and not by association among previously isolated elements.” (Pg. 125-126)

He explains, “Genetic psychology is the study of the development of mental functions insofar as this development can offer an explanation or at least a complement of information concerning their mechanisms at the finished state. In other words, genetic psychology consists of using child psychology to find the solution to general psychological problems.” (Pg. 143)

This book will be of interest to those studying Piaget.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jean Piaget was a major figure in the study of intellectual development in children. This book, brief as it is, outlines some of his major ideas. To get a sense of Piaget's work, this is a useful resource.