Showing papers by "Jean Piaget published in 1976"

Piaget’s Theory

Abstract: The following theory of development, which is particularly concerned with the development of cognitive functions, is impossible to understand if one does not begin by analyzing in detail the biologic presuppositions from which it stems and the espistemological consequences in which it ends. Indeed, the fundamental postulate that is the basis of the ideas summarized here is that the same problems and the same types of explanations can be found in the three following processes: a. The adaptation of an organism to its environment during its growth, together with the interactions and autoregulations which characterize the development of the “epigenetic system.” (Epigenesis in its embryologic sense is always determined both internally and externally.) b. The adaptation of intelligence in the course of the construction of its own structures, which depends as much on progressive internal coordinations as on information acquired through experience. c. The establishment of cognitive or, more generally, epistemological relations, which consist neither of a simple copy of external objects nor of a mere unfolding of structures preformed inside the subject, but rather involve a set of structures progressively constructed by continuous interaction between the subject and the external world.

Need and Significance of Cross-Cultural Studies in Genetic Psychology

Abstract: Genetic psychology is the study of the ontogenesis of cognition. The study of child development may provide an explanation, or at least additional information as to the cognitive mechanisms in the adult. In other words, genetic psychology uses developmental psychology to solve general psychologic problems.

Piaget and His School: A Reader in Developmental Psychology

Abstract: One: Theoretical Aspects.- 1. Piaget's Theory.- 2. The Gaps in Empiricism.- 3. Information Processing Tendencies in Recent Experiments in Cognitive Learning-Theoretical Implications.- 4. Biology and Cognition.- 5. The Affective Unconscious and the Cognitive Unconscious.- 6. The Development of the Concepts of Chance and Probability in Children.- Two: Experiments in Cognitive Development.- 7. Identity and Conservation.- 8. Memory and Intelligence in the Child.- 9. Information Processing Tendencies in Recent Experiments in Cognitive Learning-Empirical Studies.- 10. Operational Thought and Symbolic Imagery.- 11. The Sensorimotor Origins of Knowledge.- 12. The Development of Systems of Representation and Treatment in the Child.- Three: Developmental Approach to Language.- 13. Developmental Psycholinguistics.- 14. Epistemology and the Study of Language.- Four: Psychopathology.- 15. Some Pathologic Phenomena Analyzed in the Perspective of Developmental Psychology.- 16. Operatory Thought Processes in Psychotic Children.- 17. The Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying Problem-Solving in Psychotic and Mentally Retarded Children.- Five: Cross-Cultural Research.- 18. Need and Significance of Cross-Cultural Research in Genetic Psychology.- 19. Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development and Individual Differences.- References.- Author Index.

The Gaps in Empiricism

Abstract: Empiricism has engendered many different ideas, from the naive concepts of knowledge as a copy of reality, to the more refined forms of “functional copy” (Hull’s behaviorism) to logical positivism, which aims at reducing scientific knowledge exclusively to physical experience and to language. If we look for common factors in these diverse approaches we find a central idea: the function of cognitive mechanisms is to submit to reality, copying its features as closely as possible, so that they may produce a reproduction which differs as little as possible from external reality. This idea of empiricism implies that reality can be reduced to its observable features and that knowledge must limit itself to transcribing these features.

Identity and Conservation

Abstract: For several years, we have been studying the development of the concept and perception of identity, and the relationship between the concept of identity and notions of conservation. I know that J. Bruner (Bruner et al., 1966) and other psychologists are looking into the same problem. This is an interesting convergence between bodies of research which are in fact independent; but it is a natural convergence, since it is normal to study identity sooner or later if we are concerned with conservation.