The intellectual development of the child and a Jean piaget

Late nineteenth century. Arthur Piaz, a professor of medieval literature at the University of Neuchatel in the French-speaking city of Switzerland, returned home after class. When he returned home, he found his little boy crying. He ran and saw several bandages on the boy’s hand. His wife Rebecca and the baby girl are sitting next to her. He found out that while he was taking the child for a walk in a daily pram (a four-wheeled vehicle carrying a child), suddenly someone went to snatch his child. The man then fled after a scuffle with the girl. Fortunately, the baby did not get hurt much. His name is Jean Piaget. We are talking about intellectual development.

Several years passed. Jean Piaget was then a 15-year-old boy. Due to his keen interest in zoology, he has already written two reports on snail species (mollusks), much to the amazement of local biologists. Anyway, one day a very long letter came to the house, sent by Jean Piaget’s babysitter. The girl wrote in the letter – I am sincerely sorry for lying that day. In fact, no one came to pick up the baby that day because of his carelessness. He had to lie that day for fear of losing his job! Piaget was very surprised because he had always thought that someone had tried to kidnap him as a child.

As he listened to this story, his subconscious mind became convinced that this story had actually happened to him! Even after learning the real story, he still remembers the abduction. From then on, Piaget became interested in human knowledge and psychology.

The beginning of the study

Jean Piaget pursued a career in philosophy and logic. While studying at the University of Newcastle and the University of Zurich, he became interested in psychoanalysis. Freud’s theory was then the focus of interest in European psychologists. After graduation, Piaget moved to France from Switzerland, working with the French psychologist Alfred Bennett. The latter is working on how to measure human intelligence. Bennett was then running a school, teaching as well as measuring students’ intelligence. Piaget joined the school as his assistant. It was Bennett who first developed the IQ test rule, which was later revised by another psychologist, Lewis Terman.

While Bennett’s assistant was there, Piaget noticed that the children were answering some questions incorrectly, which the adults could easily do. After experimenting in different ways, Piaget started getting similar results. Piaget didn’t bother too much about the children’s wrong answers, as much as he did because of the ability to answer at a certain age.

Piaget married in 1923 and joined the University of Newcastle as a professor of psychology, sociology, and philosophy. She already has three children, and Piaget watched them grow from an early age, taking notes on their children’s behavior. Based on this observation, Piaget later published his famous theory: Theory of Cognitive Development.

Intellectual development theory

Jean Piaget has been researching intellectual development for a long time, and his theory has changed over time. First, he explained with the help of sociology, then with the biological model, then with the logical model, and finally with his basic theory. In this theory, he explains how a child gains knowledge and knowledge about the world around him and how the child’s intellectual development takes place. He dismisses the notion that human intelligence is always the same, saying that the development of a person’s intellect is influenced by his age and the influence of the environment.

According to Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory, children go through four stages of mental development. His theory looks at how children acquire knowledge and discusses the types of intelligence. Piaget believed that children played a very active role in the learning process. In the process, they, like many scientists, carry out various experiments, observe the experiments, try to understand, and finally gain an idea of ​​the things around them. When children become acquainted with the conditions around them, they learn about new things and try to match this new knowledge with what they already know. This is how intellectual development takes place in a child. The steps of Piaget’s theory are:

Sensorimotor step (2 years from birth)

Right after birth, babies try to understand the environment through their movements and senses. They try to do it again and again. For example: inserting a finger in the mouth and sucking. At the age of 4-6 months, children gain knowledge about the environment through some simple activities, including listening, watching and catching. They realize there is more to life than just their bodies. Children tend to feel isolated from the environment. At the age of 8-12 months, they realize that their work can change the environment around them. They can act according to their wishes at this time. They do new things by combining a few facts. For example, he can understand that anything can be pulled with a stick. 1-2-year-old children perform various experiments with objects. They can realize that different results come from doing different things.

Pre-operational stage (2-6 years)

After crossing the sensorimotor step, the children put their foot in this step. Intellectual development usually enters the pre-operational stage at the age of 2 years. During this time, children learn to speak, think through signs, and identify objects through words and pictures. For example, he may not have a cow in front of him, but if he sees a picture of a cow, he can recognize it as a cow. After recognizing objects, they try to find out why and how an event happens. They keep asking a lot of questions at this time.

Children are quite self-centered at this stage and do not understand the point of view of others. They think they are the center of the earth, and everything in the world is centered around them. They became quite selfish. Although their thinking abilities develop during this time and they can use language, they can only think about tangible things, not abstract things. They know they know a lot, but they don’t understand how they know so much.

Concrete operational step (8-11 years)

In the concrete operational stage, children can think logically about tangible things. Also gains knowledge about the permanence of matter; Such as a small and thick glass, the equivalent of thin and long glass, can save water. Their thinking becomes more constructive and develops through reasoning, but it is also only tangible. Even then, children do not fully understand the abstract. At this point, they are no longer self-centered or selfish and they realize that others besides them can think differently.

Formal operational steps (11 years and above)

In the last stage of intellectual development, teenagers can think abstractly and think about imaginary things. At this time, they began to think about moral, philosophical, social, and political issues, which required the ability to think theoretically and abstractly. Deductive reasoning also begins to derive a certain amount of information from a common thing. They also learn to solve problems at this stage. And that’s how intelligence develops.

The effect of theory

Before Piaget, psychologists thought that children thought like adults, that they were the smallest forms of adults. But Piaget disproves this notion. Basically, it is through this theory of intellectual development that he shows that childhood is a unique time in human life and one of the most important stages of human intellectual development. If the socialization of childhood is not done properly, later on it can have various negative effects on personal life. With the help of this theory, Piaz proves that children think differently than adults and at the same time shows the different stages of how children developmental intelligence.

Piaget’s theory marks a new milestone in psychology. Not only in psychology but also in sociology, education and genetics. Piaget’s work has also influenced various Rathi-maharishis of psychology. In his book The Science of False Memory, published in 2005, two researchers, Brainard and Reina Piaget wrote:

“He focused the interest of psychologists on intellectual development, excluding long-standing social or emotional  development in the development of the child alone. From the sixties to the eighties, most of the research in psychology focused on Piaget’s work and critique of his work, as was the case with Freud’s theories in the previous decade.”