讓·皮亞傑

让·威廉·弗里兹·皮亚杰
皮亚杰在于1968年在 密歇根大学
原文名	Jean William Fritz Piaget
出生	(1896-08-09)1896年8月9日 瑞士纳沙泰尔
逝世	1980年9月16日(1980歲—09—16)（84歲） 瑞士日内瓦
母校	纳沙泰尔大学
知名于	建構主義、日内瓦学派、发生认识论、认知发展理论、客体恒常性、自我中心
科学生涯
研究领域	发展心理学、知识论
受影响自	伊曼努尔·康德、 亨利·柏格森、 皮耶·珍尼特、 阿尔弗雷德·比奈、西奥多·西蒙、 莎賓娜·史碧爾埃、 詹姆斯·马克·鲍德温
施影响于	施洛莫·沃尔伯、 巴貝爾·英海爾德、 杰罗姆·布鲁纳, 肯尼斯·凯、 劳伦斯·柯尔伯格 、罗伯特·凯根 、哈沃德·加德納、托马斯·库恩, 、西摩爾·派普特、 利維·維谷斯基、 约翰·弗拉韦、 杨立昆、 乔丹·彼得森、安伯托·艾柯

尚·皮亞傑（法語：Jean Piaget，1896年8月9日—1980年9月16日），全名尚·威廉·弗里茲·皮亞傑（法語：Jean William Fritz Piaget），瑞士人，是近代最有名的發展心理學家，同時也是哲學家。他的认知发展理论成為了這個學科的典範。皮亞傑早年接受生物學的訓練，他在大學讀書時就已經開始對心理學有興趣，并曾涉獵心理學早期發展的各個學派如病理心理學、精神分析學、荣格的潛意識心理學和弗洛伊德的學說。皮亚杰从1929年到1975年在日内瓦大学担任心理学教授。

皮亚杰非常重视儿童教育。在1934年，时任國際教育局局长的皮亚杰宣称：“只有教育才能让我们社会免遭暴力或渐进式崩溃的影响。” 他的儿童发展理论的研究在他入职前便已开始。此时的教育依然是采用基于建构主义的教学策略。

1955年，皮亚杰在日内瓦大学任教时创立了国际发生认识论中心。他担任该中心领导，直到1980年去世。 该中心因自成立后成果丰硕，在学术圈中被称为“ 皮亚杰工厂”（英語：Piaget's factory）。

恩斯特·冯·格拉斯费尔德认为，皮亚杰是“建构主义的先驱”。 但是，直到20世纪60年代后，菲尔德的想法才广为人知。 从此，人的发展成为心理学的一个重要子学科。 到20世纪末，在心理学领域中，皮亚杰的文献引用量仅次于斯金纳 。

生平

皮亚杰于1896年出生在瑞士法语区的纳沙泰尔，是家中的长子，其父亚瑟·皮亚杰是纳沙泰尔大学的中世纪文学教授（瑞士人），母亲名为丽贝卡·杰克逊（法国人）。他在小时候就对生物学和自然世界产生了极大的兴趣。这让他在15岁之前发表了几篇有关软体动物的文章，这几篇的文章让皮亚杰在相关领域有了一定的声誉。 在皮亚杰15岁那年，他的前保姆写信给其父母一封道歉信，向皮亚杰父母承认他曾撒谎说他在皮亚杰是婴儿时与一名抢婴儿车的绑架者作斗争的故事——实际上，这件事在当时并不存在，从来就没有人要抢走皮亚杰。但这个绑架事件的记忆对皮亚杰来说有着某种未知的吸引力，即使在他认为这是假的之后他依然时常回忆起这件事。

由于当时的教父的极力推广哲学和逻辑领域的研究，他对认识论产生了兴趣。 他在纳沙泰尔大学接受教育，并在苏黎世大学进修。在此期间，他发表了两篇哲学论文，这些论文综述了当时的思想方向，但后来因他认为不够成熟被抛弃。 他对精神分析的兴趣，可以追溯到在这一心理学领域迅速发展的时期。皮亚杰毕业后从瑞士搬到法国巴黎，并在格兰奇·奥克斯·贝尔斯（法語：Grange-Aux-Belles）街男校任教。该学校由比奈-西蒙测验（后由刘易斯·特尔曼改名为斯坦福-比奈智力量表）的开发者阿爾弗雷德·比奈运营。皮亚杰在此协助比奈的智力测验计分。在他帮助给其中一些测试计分时，皮亚杰注意到幼儿始终对某些问题给出错误的答案。而皮亚杰并没有过多地关注孩子们的回答是错误这一表面现象，而是将目光放在了年幼的孩子会不断犯错误，但成年人则没有这样的现象。这使他产生了一个理论，即幼儿的认知过程与成年人的认知过程本质上是不同的。最后，他提出了一种有关人的认知发展所有阶段的理论，其中个体在每个发展阶段都表现出某些共同的认知模式。 1921年，皮亚杰返回瑞士，成为日内瓦卢梭学会的所长。在此之前，该研究所是由爱德华·克拉帕雷德担任所长。 皮亚杰熟悉克拉帕雷德的许多思想，如心理学概念“摸索”，这与在人类心理模式中所观察到的“试错”密切相关。

1923年，他和瓦伦丁·查特尼（法語：Valentine Châtenay）（1899年1月7日-1983年7月3日）结婚 ，并生下了三个孩子。这三个孩子都是从婴儿期开始就被皮亚杰作为其研究的对象。从1925年到1929年，皮亚杰在纳沙泰尔大学担任心理学，社会学和科学哲学的教授。 1929年，皮亚杰担任國際教育局局长，并一直担任该国际组织的负责人，直至1968年。在担任负责人期间，每年他都会为国际教育局理事会和国际公共教育会议起草“指导演讲”，并在发言中明确表达了他的教育理念。

皮亚杰曾在1964年在日内瓦大学和巴黎大学的任教期间，应邀担任康奈尔大学（3月11日至13日）和加利福尼亞大學柏克萊分校（3月16日至18日）的两次学术研讨会的首席顾问。这两次会议探讨了认知领域中的研究与课程发展之间的关系，并对在近期的对儿童认知发展对课程的启示的研究成果进行了深入的探讨。

1979年，他被授予巴尔赞社会和政治科学奖。在1980年去世后，应皮亚杰生前的要求，他与其家人一同被安葬在位于日内瓦的国王公墓里的一个无名墓中。

职业生涯

位于日内瓦堡垒公园（法語：Parc des Bastions）的皮亚杰的半身像

哈利·贝林（英語：Harry Beilin）认为皮亚杰的理论的研究纲领 由四个方面组成：

1. 人的发展的社会学模型
2. 智力发展的生物学模型
3. 智力发展的逻辑模型的完善
4. 形象思维的研究

因上述四个部分的理论框架彼此之间有较大的差异，以至它们被视为这是代表了“皮亚杰”的不同人格。而杰里米·布尔曼（英語：Jeremy Burman）认为还应在此之前增加一个“第零位皮亚杰”。

进入心理学研究之前

在皮亚杰成为心理学家之前，他曾接受过自然历史和哲学方面的训练。他于1918年从纳沙泰尔大学获得博士学位。然后，他先后在苏黎世（1918–1919）和巴黎（1919–1921）进行了博士后培训。他在1919年被塞奥多·西蒙聘用，致力于把法国的儿童心理測驗走向标准化。 我们当今所熟知的他的理论家的形象，更多是形成于他移居日内瓦后，在1922年为爱德华·克拉帕雷德工作并成为卢梭学会的研究主任后的研究经历。

人的发展的社会模型

皮亚杰在20世纪20年代决定向心理学家方向发展，他想研究儿童思维中未被发现的方面。皮亚杰提出了儿童的从自我中心主义转向社会中心主义的观点。对于该观点，他使用了心理学和临床心理学相结合的方法的使用来构建他的半临床访谈。这样的测试，是以向儿童提问若干标准化问题为开始，然后根据他们的回答方式，向他们提出一系列非标准问题。皮亚杰一直在寻找他所谓的“自发信念”，因此他经常会问到许多孩子们意料之外的问题。在皮亚杰的研究中，他注意到儿童都会逐步从直观的反应发展到在科学以及社会上可接受的反应。皮亚杰理想化的儿童如此成长，是源于社会互动以及儿童的更高级的思维对年幼孩子的思维的挑战。

这项成果成了埃尔顿·梅奥的著名实验霍桑实验的基础。对于皮来杰而言，它还于1936年获得了哈佛大学的名誉博士学位。

智力发展的生物学模型

皮亚杰认为，人的这一阶段的思维和智力发展的过程可以看作是对物种適應的生物学过程的延伸，该阶段同样也是有两个进行的过程：同化和调节。当孩子以与现有图式相一致的方式响应新事件时，就会同化。 在进行适应时，孩子要么修改现有的图式，要么是创造出一种全新的图式来应对新的对象或事件。

他认为，婴儿在吮吸自己所能触及的一切东西时，正是在进行同化。他认为婴儿会将所有物体都变成能吮吸的物体，儿童正同化该物体以符合他自己的心理结构。皮亚杰随后做出了这样的假设：每当人们改变其周围的环境以满足个人的需求或理念时，人们在某种程度上就将其同化。皮亚杰还观察到他的孩子不仅会同化满足他们需求的物体，还会改变他们的一些心理结构以满足环境的需求。这是适应的第二部分，称为调节。首先，婴儿只进行例如吮吸等的主要的反射动作，但在不久之后，他们就会在抓起物体后放在嘴里。当他们这样做时，他们会改变自己的反射动作，以适应外部物体的反射动作。因两者经常发生冲突，这给它们的智力发展提供了动力，这需要不断地在两者之间取得平衡，智力才会得以增长。

为了检验他的理论，皮亚杰观察了自己孩子的习惯。

智力发展的逻辑模型的完善

在皮亚杰的模型的第三部分中，他认为智力是在与年龄相关的一系列阶段中发展的，并且是渐进的——必须先完成一个阶段，然后才能进行下一个阶段。在每个发育阶段，孩子都会形成一个在该年龄段的对现实世界的看法。在进入下一阶段时，儿童必须基于先前的智力才能重建观念。皮亚杰认为智力发展是向上扩展的螺旋式运动，在这种螺旋式的发展中，儿童必须不断地重构在先前发展水平时形成的思想，才能在下一水平上获得新的，更高级的观念。

在20世纪60年代皮亚杰的思想被“重新发现”时，美国心理学家争论的论点的主要是围绕智力发展的逻辑模型展开（“第三皮亚杰”）。

形象思维的研究

皮亚杰研究的诸如感知和記憶等的智力领域的主题，并非是完全是用逻辑学的方法。逻辑的观念被认为是完全可逆的，它们总是可以回到起点，这意味着，如果从一个给定的前提开始并遵循逻辑步骤得出结论，则从相反的顺序开始执行相同的步骤可以从结论回到前提。皮亚杰所研究的感性观念无法被操纵和影响的。为了描述此形象化思维发展的过程，皮亚杰使用了图片作为例子——因无法把轮廓与主体分开，所以图片也会无法被分离。而记忆也是一样的：它不是完全可逆的；人们不能想起两点之间的所有介入事件。在他最后的工作期间，皮亚杰和他的同事殷海德（法語：Inhelder）还出版了有关知觉、记忆和其他形像思维发展过程（如学习）的书。

由于皮亚杰的理论是基于生物学中的成熟和各个发展阶段的各种概念，因而“心理准备“是非常重要的。准备工作涉及何时应传授某些信息或概念等。根据皮亚杰的理论，在儿童的认知发展到适当阶段之前，不应该教给他们某些概念。 例如，处于前运算阶段的幼儿处于“不可逆”的思维状态，无法理解已经以某种方式转换的对象可能返回其原始状态。

理论

皮亚杰称自己为“发生的”认识论学家，他对知识质性的发展过程很感兴趣。他认为认知结构的发展是生物学规则的差异。当他的这个基于结构主义和认知方法的理论体系首次为人所知时，对当时的心理学界来说，这是一个令人振奋的巨大进步。

皮亚杰的一些有关发展心理学主题的著作中含有他的总共四个部分的研究的内容。特别是在其中一项研究中，有他研究了自己的三个孩子，并仔细观察和解释了他们的认知发展的叙述。 在他的最后一本书《认知结构的平衡：智力发展的中心问题》中，他用他理论中的两个主要概念（同化和调节）将知识发展解释为一种平衡的过程，这不仅是生物学上的相互作用，同时也是认知的作用。

皮亚杰希望，如果有人想能关注认识发生的相关方面，当时的认识论的问题的可以得到解答或者会有新问题的提出，因此他对儿童和青少年进行了实验。正如他在《发生认识论》一书的引言中所说：“发生认识论提出的是发现各种知识的根源，因为包括科学知识在内，其基本形式已经发展到了更高的层次。”

发展阶段

主条目：認知發展論

在皮亚杰理论中，他将儿童的发展分成4个发展阶：

感知运动阶段

从出生到两岁。儿童通过运动和感觉来体验世界。在感觉运动阶段，儿童以自我为中心，这意味着他们无法从他人的角度看待世界。感觉运动阶段分为六个子阶段：

1. 简单反射
2. 第一习惯和最初循环反应
3. 二级循环反应
4. 二级循环反应的协调
5. 三级循环反应
6. 图式的内化

一些追随皮亚杰婴儿研究者，如肯尼斯·凯（Kenneth Kaye） 认为，皮亚杰的贡献体现在他一名观察者，因为在此之前未曾有人描述过如此之多的现象，但亚杰并没有立刻解释导致这些发展的过程，而是将它们比喻为关于生物适应性的空泛概念。凯伊（Kaye）关于认知和社会发展的“学徒理论”驳斥了皮亚杰的假设，认为婴儿的内心发展是内在的，符号推理能力的形成才会使他们学习语言。

前运算阶段

这是皮亚杰理论的第二阶段，它开始于孩子从2岁开始学习说话的时候，持续到7岁。皮亚杰指出，在认知发展的前运算阶段，儿童尚未了解具体的逻辑，也无法在心理的层面上对信息进行操纵。在这个阶段，儿童进行假装游戏及其他形式的玩耍的行为在增加。但是，此时的儿童能从不同的角度看事物依然很难。儿童游戏主要可分为符号游戏和操纵符号游戏。这种假装游戏就是像如棋子是零食，纸片是盘子，盒子是桌子等的方式呈现。儿童如此看待符号的方式解释了在他们的游戏中没有涉及到的实际物体的现象。通过观察游玩的顺序，皮亚杰得以证明，到儿童2岁末期，出现了一种新的心理机能，称为前运算阶段。

前运算阶段在心理运算方面是不成熟且在逻辑上尚未发展完善。儿童此时能够形成稳定的观念以及相信有神的存在。但是，儿童仍然不能进行心理运算，这里所说的心理运算指的是可以在智力上而不是在身体上执行的任务。在这个阶段，思考仍然是自我中心的，这意味着孩子很难理解到他人的观点。前运算阶段分为两个子阶段：符号功能子阶段和直观思维子阶段。符号功能子阶段是指当儿童能够在他们的脑海中理解、表示、记住并描绘对象时，无需在他们面前摆放对象；直观的思维子阶段是指儿童倾向于提出“为什么”和“怎么来？”的问题。处于前运算阶段的儿童渴望了解一切知识。

前运算阶段分为两个子阶段，分别是符号功能子阶段和直觉思维子阶段。对于符号功能子阶段，此时儿童处在2至4岁的，他们会意识自己可以使用符号来表示周围世界的物理对象。这个结论是通过儿童绘制他们自己的家庭画来验证的，这时期的画作中的人物并没有按比例绘制或没有给出准确的身体特征。儿童知道他们不准确，但这对他们来说并不是问题。而对于直觉思维子阶段，儿童在大约4到7岁时，他们会开始变得非常好奇，并会提出许多问题，开始进行原初的推理。此时的儿童对推理和想知道事物是为何如此的兴趣大大提升。皮亚杰称其为“直觉的次级阶段”，因为儿童意识到他们拥有大量的知识，但他们不知道如何获得知识。

总之，单维注意、守恒、不可逆、包容性和及逆转推理都是前运算阶段的思维特征 。

具体运算阶段

具体的运算阶段：从7岁到11岁。此时的儿童可以在冷静与逻辑地思考（理解事物具有可逆性），但仅限于他们可在物理层面上操纵的东西。他们此时不再以自我为中心。在此阶段，儿童将对逻辑和守恒有更深的了解，这些都是他们以前不熟悉的。儿童的分类技巧也大大地提高。

形式运算阶段

形式运算阶段：从11岁到16岁及以后，儿童发展出抽象的思维，他们已经可以冷静与逻辑地思考。在这一发展阶段，出现了抽象思维。此时，儿童能够运用元认知并进行抽象思考。处在形式运算阶段的儿童通常会在那些解决问题需要执行许多步骤的场合下表现出更强的解决问题的能力。

Developmental process

Piaget provided no concise description of the development process as a whole. Broadly speaking it consisted of a cycle:

• The child performs an action which has an effect on or organizes objects, and the child is able to note the characteristics of the action and its effects.
• Through repeated actions, perhaps with variations or in different contexts or on different kinds of objects, the child is able to differentiate and integrate its elements and effects. This is the process of "reflecting abstraction" (described in detail in Piaget 2001).
• At the same time, the child is able to identify the properties of objects by the way different kinds of actions affect them. This is the process of "empirical abstraction".
• By repeating this process across a wide range of objects and actions, the child establishes a new level of knowledge and insight. This is the process of forming a new "cognitive stage". This dual process allows the child to construct new ways of dealing with objects and new knowledge about objects themselves.
• However, once the child has constructed these new kinds of knowledge, he or she starts to use them to create still more complex objects and to carry out still more complex actions. As a result, the child starts to recognize still more complex patterns and to construct still more complex objects. Thus a new stage begins, which will only be completed when all the child's activity and experience have been re-organized on this still higher level.

This process may not be wholly gradual, but new evidence shows that the passage into new stages is more gradual than once thought. Once a new level of organization, knowledge and insight proves to be effective, it will quickly be generalized to other areas if they exist. As a result, transitions between stages can seem to be rapid and radical, but oftentimes the child has grasped one aspect of the new stage of cognitive functioning but not addressed others. The bulk of the time spent in a new stage consists of refining this new cognitive level; however it does not always happen quickly. For example, a child may see that two different colors of Play-Doh have been fused together to make one ball, based on the color. However, if sugar is mixed into water or iced tea, then the sugar "disappeared" and therefore does not exist to the child at that stage. These levels of one concept of cognitive development are not realized all at once, giving us a gradual realization of the world around us.

It is because this process takes this dialectical form, in which each new stage is created through the further differentiation, integration, and synthesis of new structures out of the old, that the sequence of cognitive stages are logically necessary rather than simply empirically correct. Each new stage emerges only because the child can take for granted the achievements of its predecessors, and yet there are still more sophisticated forms of knowledge and action that are capable of being developed.

Because it covers both how we gain knowledge about objects and our reflections on our own actions, Piaget's model of development explains a number of features of human knowledge that had never previously been accounted for. For example, by showing how children progressively enrich their understanding of things by acting on and reflecting on the effects of their own previous knowledge, they are able to organize their knowledge in increasingly complex structures. Thus, once a young child can consistently and accurately recognize different kinds of animals, he or she then acquires the ability to organize the different kinds into higher groupings such as "birds", "fish", and so on. This is significant because they are now able to know things about a new animal simply on the basis of the fact that it is a bird – for example, that it will lay eggs.

At the same time, by reflecting on their own actions, children develop an increasingly sophisticated awareness of the "rules" that govern them in various ways. For example, it is by this route that Piaget explains this child's growing awareness of notions such as "right", "valid", "necessary", "proper", and so on. In other words, it is through the process of objectification, reflection and abstraction that the child constructs the principles on which action is not only effective or correct but also justified.

One of Piaget's most famous studies focused purely on the discriminative abilities of children between the ages of two and a half years old, and four and a half years old. He began the study by taking children of different ages and placing two lines of sweets, one with the sweets in a line spread further apart, and one with the same number of sweets in a line placed more closely together. He found that, "Children between 2 years, 6 months old and 3 years, 2 months old correctly discriminate the relative number of objects in two rows; between 3 years, 2 months and 4 years, 6 months they indicate a longer row with fewer objects to have "more"; after 4 years, 6 months they again discriminate correctly" (Cognitive Capacity of Very Young Children, p. 141). Initially younger children were not studied, because if at four years old a child could not conserve quantity, then a younger child presumably could not either. The results show however that children that are younger than three years and two months have quantity conservation, but as they get older they lose this quality, and do not recover it until four and a half years old. This attribute may be lost due to a temporary inability to solve because of an overdependence on perceptual strategies, which correlates more candy with a longer line of candy, or due to the inability for a four-year-old to reverse situations.

By the end of this experiment several results were found. First, younger children have a discriminative ability that shows the logical capacity for cognitive operations exists earlier than acknowledged. This study also reveals that young children can be equipped with certain qualities for cognitive operations, depending on how logical the structure of the task is. Research also shows that children develop explicit understanding at age 5 and as a result, the child will count the sweets to decide which has more. Finally the study found that overall quantity conservation is not a basic characteristic of humans' native inheritance.

Genetic epistemology

According to Jean Piaget, genetic epistemology attempts to "explain knowledge, and in particular scientific knowledge, on the basis of its history, its sociogenesis, and especially the psychological origins of the notions and operations upon which it is based". Piaget believed he could test epistemological questions by studying the development of thought and action in children. As a result, Piaget created a field known as genetic epistemology with its own methods and problems. He defined this field as the study of child development as a means of answering epistemological questions.

Schema

A Schema is a structured cluster of concepts, it can be used to represent objects, scenarios or sequences of events or relations. The original idea was proposed by philosopher Immanuel Kant as innate structures used to help us perceive the world.

A schema (pl. schemata) is the mental framework that is created as children interact with their physical and social environments. For example, many 3-year-olds insist that the sun is alive because it comes up in the morning and goes down at night. According to Piaget, these children are operating based on a simple cognitive schema that things that move are alive. At any age, children rely on their current cognitive structures to understand the world around them. Moreover, younger and older children may often interpret and respond to the same objects and events in very different ways because cognitive structures take different forms at different ages.

Piaget (1953) described three kinds of intellectual structures: behavioural (or sensorimotor) schemata, symbolic schemata, and operational schemata.

• Behavioural schemata: organized patterns of behaviour that are used to represent and respond to objects and experiences.
• Symbolic schemata: internal mental symbols (such as images or verbal codes) that one uses to represent aspects of experience.
• Operational schemata: internal mental activity that one performs on objects of thought.

According to Piaget, children use the process of assimilation and accommodation to create a schema or mental framework for how they perceive and/or interpret what they are experiencing. As a result, the early concepts of young children tend to be more global or general in nature.

Similarly, Gallagher and Reid (1981) maintained that adults view children's concepts as highly generalized and even inaccurate. With added experience, interactions, and maturity, these concepts become refined and more detailed. Overall, making sense of the world from a child's perspective is a very complex and time-consuming process.

Schemata are:

• Critically important building block of conceptual development
• Constantly in the process of being modified or changed
• Modified by on-going experiences
• A generalized idea, usually based on experience or prior knowledge.

These schemata are constantly being revised and elaborated upon each time the child encounters new experiences. In doing this children create their own unique understanding of the world, interpret their own experiences and knowledge, and subsequently use this knowledge to solve more complex problems. In a neurological sense, the brain/mind is constantly working to build and rebuild itself as it takes in, adapts/modifies new information, and enhances understanding.

Physical microstructure of schemata

In his Biology and Knowledge (1967+ / French 1965), Piaget tentatively hinted at possible physical embodiments for his abstract schema entities. At the time, there was much talk and research about RNA as such an agent of learning, and Piaget considered some of the evidence. However, he did not offer any firm conclusions, and confessed that this was beyond his area of expertise.

One difficulty at that time was that it was generally assumed that nearly all RNA served as mere templates for protein production, and such ideas offered no coherent explanation for Piaget's schema account. However (from 2001 onward), Mattick [1] and others pointed out that, in humans, only about 3% of RNA serves that purpose! – leaving ample stocks of ncRNA available for other tasks (perhaps acting in their own right, rather than as templates). On that new basis, it has now been possible to reverse engineer a seemingly plausible mechanistic framework, based on Piaget's work, accounting for some of the activities of the hippocampus and cerebral cortex etc. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether this will be consistent with new direct experimental evidence (if indeed such experiments are possible).

Research methods

Piaget wanted to revolutionize the way research was conducted. Although he started researching with his colleagues using a traditional method of data collection, he was not fully satisfied with the results and wanted to keep trying to find new ways of researching using a combination of data, which included naturalistic observation, psychometrics, and the psychiatric clinical examination, in order to have a less guided form of research that would produce more empirically valid results. As Piaget developed new research methods, he wrote a book called The Language and Thought of the Child, which aimed to synthesize the methods he was using in order to study the conclusion children drew from situations and how they arrived to such conclusion. The main idea was to observe how children responded and articulated certain situations with their own reasoning, in order to examine their thought processes (Mayer, 2005).

Piaget administered a test in 15 boys with ages ranging from 10 to 14 years in which he asked participants to describe the relationship between a mixed bouquet of flowers and a bouquet with flowers of the same color. The purpose of this study was to analyze the thinking process the boys had and to draw conclusions about the logic processes they had used, which was a psychometric technique of research. Piaget also used the psychoanalytic method initially developed by Sigmund Freud. The purpose of using such method was to examine the unconscious mind, as well as to continue parallel studies using different research methods. Psychoanalysis was later rejected by Piaget, as he thought it was insufficiently empirical (Mayer, 2005).

Piaget argued that children and adults used speech for different purposes. In order to confirm his argument, he experimented analyzing a child's interpretation of a story. In the experiment, the child listened to a story and then told a friend that same story in his/her/their own words. The purpose of this study was to examine how children verbalize and understand each other without adult intervention. Piaget wanted to examine the limits of naturalistic observation, in order to understand a child's reasoning. He realized the difficulty of studying children's thoughts, as it is hard to know if a child is pretending to believe their thoughts or not. Piaget was the pioneer researcher to examine children's conversations in a social context – starting from examining their speech and actions – where children were comfortable and spontaneous (Kose, 1987).

Issues and possible solutions

After conducting many studies, Piaget was able to find significant differences in the way adults and children reason; however, he was still unable to find the path of logic reasoning and the unspoken thoughts children had, which could allow him to study a child's intellectual development over time (Mayer, 2005). In his third book, The Child's Conception of the World, Piaget recognized the difficulties of his prior techniques and the importance of psychiatric clinical examination. The researcher believed that the way clinical examinations were conducted influenced how a child's inner realities surfaced. Children would likely respond according to the way the research is conducted, the questions asked, or the familiarity they have with the environment. The clinical examination conducted for his third book provides a thorough investigation into a child's thinking process. An example of a question used to research such process was: "Can you see a thought?" (Mayer, 2005, p. 372).

Development of new methods

Piaget recognized that psychometric tests had its limitations, as children were not able to provide the researcher with their deepest thoughts and inner intellect. It was also difficult to know if the results of child examination reflected what children believed or if it is just a pretend situation. For example, it is very difficult to know with certainty if a child who has a conversation with a toy believes the toy is alive or if the child is just pretending. Soon after drawing conclusions about psychometric studies, Piaget started developing the clinical method of examination. The clinical method included questioning a child and carefully examining their responses – in order to observe how the child reasoned according to the questions asked – and then examining the child's perception of the world through their responses. Piaget recognized the difficulties of interviewing a child and the importance of recognizing the difference between "liberated" versus "spontaneous" responses (Mayer, 2005, p. 372).

Criticism of Piaget's research methods

"The developmental theory of Jean Piaget has been criticized on the grounds that it is conceptually limited, empirically false, or philosophically and epistemologically untenable." Piaget responded to criticism by contending that the vast majority of critics did not understand the outcomes he wished to obtain from his research.

As Piaget believed development was a universal process, his initial sample sizes were inadequate, particularly in the formulation of his theory of infant development. Piaget's theories of infant development were based on his observations of his own three children. While this clearly presents problems with the sample size, Piaget also probably introduced confounding variables and social desirability into his observations and his conclusions based on his observations. It is entirely possible Piaget conditioned his children to respond in a desirable manner, so, rather than having an understanding of object permanence, his children might have learned to behave in a manner that indicated they understood object permanence. The sample was also very homogenous, as all three children had a similar genetic heritage and environment. Piaget did, however, have larger sample sizes during his later years.

Development of research methods

Piaget wanted to research in environments that would allow children to connect with some existing aspects of the world. The idea was to change the approach described in his book The Child's Conception of the World and move away from the vague questioning interviews. This new approach was described in his book The Child's Conception of Physical Causality, where children were presented with dilemmas and had to think of possible solutions on their own. Later, after carefully analyzing previous methods, Piaget developed a combination of naturalistic observation with clinical interviewing in his book Judgment and Reasoning in the Child, where a child's intellect was tested with questions and close monitoring. Piaget was convinced he had found a way to analyze and access a child's thoughts about the world in a very effective way (Mayer, 2005). Piaget's research provided a combination of theoretical and practical research methods and it has offered a crucial contribution to the field of developmental psychology (Beilin, 1992). "Piaget is often criticized because his method of investigation, though somewhat modified in recent years, is still largely clinical". He observes a child's surroundings and behavior. He then comes up with a hypothesis testing it and focusing on both the surroundings and behavior after changing a little of the surrounding.

Influence

Photo of the Jean Piaget Foundation with Pierre Bovet (1878–1965) first row (with large beard) and Jean Piaget (1896–1980) first row (on the right, with glasses) in front of the Rousseau Institute (Geneva), 1925

Despite his ceasing to be a fashionable psychologist, the magnitude of Piaget's continuing influence can be measured by the global scale and activity of the Jean Piaget Society, which holds annual conferences and attracts around 700 participants. His theory of cognitive development has proved influential in many different areas:

• Developmental psychology
• Education and Morality
• Historical studies of thought and cognition
• Evolution
• Philosophy
• Primatology
• Artificial intelligence (AI)

Developmental psychology

Piaget is the most influential developmental psychologist to date, influencing not only the work of Lev Vygotsky and of Lawrence Kohlberg but whole generations of eminent academics. Although subjecting his ideas to massive scrutiny led to innumerable improvements and qualifications of his original model and the emergence of a plethora of neo-Piagetian and post-Piagetian variants, Piaget's original model has proved to be remarkably robust.

Piaget on education

By using Piaget's theory, educators focus on their students as learners. As a result of this focus, education is learner-centered and constructivist-based to an extent. Piaget's theory allows teachers to view students as individual learners who add new concepts to prior knowledge to construct, or build, understanding for themselves. Teachers who use a learner-centered approach as a basis for their professional practices incorporate the several dispositions. They provide experience-based educational opportunities. These teachers also contemplate the learners' individual qualities and attitudes during curriculum planning. Educators allow learners' insights to alter the curriculum. They nourish and support learners' curiosity. They also involve learners' emotions and create a learning environment in which students feel safe.

There are two differences between the preoperational and concrete operational stages that apply to education. These differences are reversibility and decentration. At times, reversibility and decentration occur at the same time. When students think about the steps to complete a task without using a particular logical, sequential order, they are using reversibility. Decentration allows them to concentrate on multiple components of a problematic task at a time. Students use both reversibility and decentration to function throughout the school day, follow directions, and complete assignments.

An example of a student using reversibility is when learning new vocabulary. The student creates a list of unfamiliar words from a literary text. Then, he researches the definition of those words before asking classmate to test him. His teacher has given a set of particular instructions that he must follow in a particular order: he must write the word before defining it, and complete these two steps repeatedly. A child in the preoperational stage gets confused during this process and needs assistance from the teacher to stay on task. The teacher refers him back to his text in order to notate the next word before he can define it. A child in the preoperational stage does not understand the organization required to complete this assignment. However, a child in the concrete operational stage understands the organization, and he can recall the steps in any order while being able to follow the order given. Using decentration, the child has the two activities on his mind: identify words and find them in the dictionary.

A sample of decentration is a preschooler may use a toy banana as a pretend telephone. The child knows the difference between the fruit and a phone. However, in this form of play, he is operating on two levels at once. In an older child at the concrete operational level, decentration allows him to complete subtraction of two-digit numbers and indicate which of the problems also involved borrowing from the other column. The student simultaneously does both. Using reversibility, the student has to move mentally between two subtasks.

Regarding the giving of praise by teachers, praise is a reinforcer for students. Adolescents undergo social-emotional development such that they seek rapport with peers. Thus, teacher praise is not as powerful for students who see teachers as authority figures. They give no value to praise provided by adults, or they have no respect for the individual who is giving praise.

Education

During the 1970s and 1980s, Piaget's works also inspired the transformation of European and American education, including both theory and practice, leading to a more 'child-centered' approach. In Conversations with Jean Piaget, Bringuier says: "Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society ... but for me and no one else, education means making creators... You have to make inventors, innovators—not conformists" (Bringuier, 1980, p. 132).

His theory of cognitive development can be used as a tool in the early childhood classroom. According to Piaget, children developed best in a classroom with interaction.

Piaget defined knowledge as the ability to modify, transform, and "operate on" an object or idea, such that it is understood by the operator through the process of transformation. Learning, then, occurs as a result of experience, both physical and logical, with the objects themselves and how they are acted upon. Thus, knowledge must be assimilated in an active process by a learner with matured mental capacity, so that knowledge can build in complexity by scaffolded understanding. Understanding is scaffolded by the learner through the process of equilibration, whereby the learner balances new knowledge with previous understanding, thereby compensating for "transformation" of knowledge.

Learning, then, can also be supported by instructors in an educational setting. Piaget specified that knowledge cannot truly be formed until the learner has matured the mental structures to which that learning is specific, and thereby development constrains learning. Nevertheless, knowledge can also be "built" by building on simpler operations and structures that have already been formed. Basing operations of an advanced structure on those of simpler structures thus scaffolds learning to build on operational abilities as they develop. Good teaching, then, is built around the operational abilities of the students such that they can excel in their operational stage and build on preexisting structures and abilities and thereby "build" learning.

Evidence of the effectiveness of a contemporary curricular design building on Piaget's theories of developmental progression and the support of maturing mental structures can be seen in Griffin and Case's "Number Worlds" curriculum. The curriculum works toward building a "central conceptual structure" of number sense in young children by building on five instructional processes, including aligning curriculum to the developmental sequencing of acquisition of specific skills. By outlining the developmental sequence of number sense, a conceptual structure is built and aligned to individual children as they develop.

Morality

Piaget believed in two basic principles relating to character education: that children develop moral ideas in stages and that children create their conceptions of the world. According to Piaget, "the child is someone who constructs his own moral world view, who forms ideas about right and wrong, and fair and unfair, that are not the direct product of adult teaching and that are often maintained in the face of adult wishes to the contrary" (Gallagher, 1978, p. 26). Piaget believed that children made moral judgments based on their own observations of the world.

Piaget's theory of morality was radical when his book The Moral Judgment of the Child was published in 1932 for two reasons: his use of philosophical criteria to define morality (as universalizable, generalizable, and obligatory) and his rejection of equating cultural norms with moral norms. Piaget, drawing on Kantian theory, proposed that morality developed out of peer interaction and that it was autonomous from authority mandates. Peers, not parents, were a key source of moral concepts such as equality, reciprocity, and justice.

Piaget attributed different types of psychosocial processes to different forms of social relationships, introducing a fundamental distinction between different types of said relationships. Where there is constraint because one participant holds more power than the other the relationship is asymmetrical, and, importantly, the knowledge that can be acquired by the dominated participant takes on a fixed and inflexible form. Piaget refers to this process as one of social transmission, illustrating it through reference to the way in which the elders of a tribe initiate younger members into the patterns of beliefs and practices of the group. Similarly, where adults exercise a dominating influence over the growing child, it is through social transmission that children can acquire knowledge. By contrast, in cooperative relations, power is more evenly distributed between participants so that a more symmetrical relationship emerges. Under these conditions, authentic forms of intellectual exchange become possible; each partner has the freedom to project his or her own thoughts, consider the positions of others, and defend his or her own point of view. In such circumstances, where children's thinking is not limited by a dominant influence, Piaget believed "the reconstruction of knowledge", or favorable conditions for the emergence of constructive solutions to problems, exists. Here the knowledge that emerges is open, flexible and regulated by the logic of argument rather than being determined by an external authority.

In short, cooperative relations provide the arena for the emergence of operations, which for Piaget requires the absence of any constraining influence, and is most often illustrated by the relations that form between peers (for more on the importance of this distinction see Duveen & Psaltis, 2008; Psaltis & Duveen, 2006, 2007). This is thus how, according to Piaget, children learn moral judgement as opposed to cultural norms (or maybe ideological norms).

Piaget's research on morality was highly influential in subsequent work on moral development, particularly in the case of Lawrence Kohlberg's highly influential stage theory of moral development which dominated moral psychology research until the end of the twentieth century.

Historical studies of thought and cognition

Historical changes of thought have been modeled in Piagetian terms. Broadly speaking these models have mapped changes in morality, intellectual life and cognitive levels against historical changes (typically in the complexity of social systems).

Notable examples include:

• Michael Horace Barnes' study of the co-evolution of religious and scientific thinking
• Peter Damerow's theory of prehistoric and archaic thought
• Kieran Egan's stages of understanding
• James W. Fowler's stages of faith development
• Suzi Gablik's stages of art history
• Christopher Hallpike's studies of changes in cognition and moral judgment in pre-historical, archaic and classical periods ... (Hallpike 1979, 2004)
• Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development
• Don Lepan's theory of the origins of modern thought and drama
• Charles Radding's theory of the medieval intellectual development
• Jürgen Habermas's reworking of historical materialism.

Non-human development

Neo-Piagetian stages have been applied to the maximum stage attained by various animals. For example, spiders attain the circular sensory motor stage, coordinating actions and perceptions. Pigeons attain the sensory motor stage, forming concepts.

Origins

The origins of human intelligence have also been studied in Piagetian terms. Wynn (1979, 1981) analysed Acheulian and Oldowan tools in terms of the insight into spatial relationships required to create each kind. On a more general level, Robinson's Birth of Reason (2005) suggests a large-scale model for the emergence of a Piagetian intelligence.

Primatology

Piaget's models of cognition have also been applied outside the human sphere, and some primatologists assess the development and abilities of primates in terms of Piaget's model.

Philosophy

Philosophers have used Piaget's work. For example, the philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas has incorporated Piaget into his work, most notably in The Theory of Communicative Action. The philosopher Thomas Kuhn credited Piaget's work with helping him to understand the transition between modes of thought which characterized his theory of paradigm shifts. Yet, that said, it is also noted that the implications of his later work do indeed remain largely unexamined. Shortly before his death (September 1980), Piaget was involved in a debate about the relationships between innate and acquired features of language, at the Centre Royaumont pour une Science de l'Homme, where he discussed his point of view with the linguist Noam Chomsky as well as Hilary Putnam and Stephen Toulmin.

Artificial intelligence

Piaget also had a considerable effect in the field of computer science and artificial intelligence. Seymour Papert used Piaget's work while developing the Logo programming language. Alan Kay used Piaget's theories as the basis for the Dynabook programming system concept, which was first discussed within the confines of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (Xerox PARC). These discussions led to the development of the Alto prototype, which explored for the first time all the elements of the graphical user interface (GUI), and influenced the creation of user interfaces in the 1980s and beyond.

Challenges

Piaget's theory, however vital in understanding child psychology, did not go without scrutiny. A main figure whose ideas contradicted Piaget's ideas was the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky stressed the importance of a child's cultural background as an effect to the stages of development. Because different cultures stress different social interactions, this challenged Piaget's theory that the hierarchy of learning development had to develop in succession. Vygotsky introduced the term Zone of proximal development as an overall task a child would have to develop that would be too difficult to develop alone.

Also, the so-called neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development maintained that Piaget's theory does not do justice either to the underlying mechanisms of information processing that explain transition from stage to stage or individual differences in cognitive development. According to these theories, changes in information processing mechanisms, such as speed of processing and working memory, are responsible for ascension from stage to stage. Moreover, differences between individuals in these processes explain why some individuals develop faster than other individuals (Demetriou, 1998).

Over time, alternative theories of Child Development have been put forward, and empirical findings have done a lot to undermine Piaget's theories. For example, Esther Thelen and colleagues found that babies would not make the A-not-B error if they had small weights added to their arms during the first phase of the experiment that were then removed before the second phase of the experiment. This minor change should not impact babies' understanding of object permanence, so the difference that this makes to babies' performance on the A-not-B task cannot be explained by Piagetian theory. Thelen and colleagues also found that various other factors also influenced performance on the A-not-B task (including strength of memory trace, salience of targets, waiting time and stance), and proposed that this could be better explained using a dynamic systems theory approach than using Piagetian theory. Alison Gopnik and Betty Repacholi found that babies as young as 18 months old can understand that other people have desires, and that these desires could be very different from their own desires. This strongly contradicts Piaget's view that children are very egocentric at this age. In reaction to these challenges, it has been argued that their criticisms depend on a fundamental misreading of Piaget's theory.

See also Brian Rotman's Jean Piaget: Psychologist of the Real, an exposition and critique of Piaget's ideas, and Jonathan Tudge and Barbara Rogoff's "Peer influences on cognitive development: Piagetian and Vygotskian perspectives".

Quotations

• "Intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself."

List of major achievements

Appointments

• 1921–25 Research Director (Chef des travaux), Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Geneva
• 1925–29 Professor of Psychology, Sociology and the Philosophy of Science, University of Neuchatel
• 1929–39 Professeur extraordinaire of the History of Scientific Thought, University of Geneva
• 1929–67 Director, International Bureau of Education, Geneva
• 1932–71 Director, Institute of Educational Sciences, University of Geneva
• 1938–51 Professor of Experimental Psychology and Sociology, University of Lausanne
• 1939–51 Professor of Sociology, University of Geneva
• 1940–71 Professeur ordinaire of Experimental Psychology, University of Geneva
• 1952–64 Professor of Genetic Psychology, Sorbonne, Paris
• 1954–57 President, International Union of Scientific Psychology
• 1955–80 Director, International Centre for Genetic Epistemology, Geneva
• 1971–80 Emeritus Professor, University of Geneva

Honorary doctorates

• 1936 Harvard
• 1946 Sorbonne
• 1949 University of Brazil
• 1949 Bruxelles
• 1953 Chicago
• 1954 McGill
• 1958 Warsaw
• 1959 Manchester
• 1960 Oslo
• 1960 Cambridge
• 1962 Brandeis
• 1964 Montreal
• 1964 Aix-Marseille
• 1966 Pennsylvania
• 1966? Barcelona
• 1970 Yale

List of major works

The following groupings are based on the number of citations in Google Scholar.

Classics

• The Language and Thought of the Child (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1926) [Le Langage et la pensée chez l'enfant (1923)]
• The Child's Conception of the World (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1928) [La Représentation du monde chez l'enfant (1926, orig. pub. as an article, 1925)]
• The Moral Judgment of the Child (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1932) [Le jugement moral chez l'enfant (1932)]
• The Origins of Intelligence in Children (New York: International University Press, 1952) [La naissance de l'intelligence chez l'enfant (1936), also translated as The Origin of Intelligence in the Child (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953)].
• Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood (New York: Norton, 1962) [La formation du symbole chez l'enfant; imitation, jeu et reve, image et représentation (1945)].
• The Psychology of Intelligence (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950) [La psychologie de l'intelligence (1947)].
• The construction of reality in the child (New York: Basic Books, 1954) [La construction du réel chez l'enfant (1950), also translated as The Child's Construction of Reality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955)].
• With Inhelder, B., The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence (New York: Basic Books, 1958) [De la logique de l'enfant à la logique de l'adolescent (1955)].
• With Inhelder, B., The Psychology of the Child (New York: Basic Books, 1962) [La psychologie de l'enfant (1966, orig. pub. as an article, 1950)].

Major works

• The early growth of logic in the child (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964) [La genèse des structures logiques elementaires (1959)].
• With Inhelder, B., The Child's Conception of Space (New York: W.W. Norton, 1967).
• "Piaget's theory" in P. Mussen (ed.), Handbook of Child Psychology, Vol. 1. (4th ed., New York: Wiley, 1983).
• The Child's Conception of Number (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952) [La genèse du nombre chez l'enfant (1941)].
• Structuralism (New York: Harper & Row, 1970) [Le Structuralisme (1968)].
• Genetic epistemology (New York: W.W. Norton, 1971, ISBN 978-0-393-00596-7).

Significant works

• The child's conception of physical causality (London: Kegan Paul, 1930) [La causalite physique chez l'enfant (1927)]
• Child's Conception of Geometry (New York, Basic Books, 1960) [La Géométrie spontanée de l'enfant (1948)].
• The Principles of Genetic Epistemology (New York: Basic Books, 1972, ISBN 978-0-393-00596-7) [L'épistémologie génétique (1950)].
• To understand is to invent: The future of education (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973) [tr. of Ou va l'education (1971) and Le droit a l'education dans le monde actuel (1948)].
• Six psychological studies (New York: Random House, 1967) [Six études de psychologie (1964)].
• Biology and Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971) [Biologie et connaissance; essai sur les relations entre les régulations organiques et les processus cognitifs (1967)]
• Science of education and the psychology of the child (New York: Orion Press, 1970) [Psychologie et pédagogie (1969)].
• Intellectual evolution from adolescence to adulthood (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977) [L'evolution intellectuelle entre l'adolescence et l'age adulte (1970)].
• The Equilibration of Cognitive Structures: The Central Problem of Intellectual Development (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) [L'equilibration des structures cognitives (1975), previously translated as The development of thought: Equilibration of cognitive structures (1977)].
• Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (ed.), Language and learning: the debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980) [Theories du language, theories de l'apprentissage (1979)].
• Development and learning.

Notable works

• The Grasp of Consciousness: Action and concept in the young child (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977) [La prise de conscience (1974)].
• The Mechanisms of Perception (New York: Basic Books, 1969) [Les mécanismes perceptifs: modèles probabilistes, analyse génétique, relations avec l'intelligence (1961)].
• Psychology and Epistemology: Towards a Theory of Knowledge (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972) [Psychologie et epistémologie (1970).
• The Child's Conception of Time (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969) [Le développement de la notion de temps chez l'enfant (1946)]
• Logic and Psychology (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953).
• Memory and intelligence (New York: Basic Books, 1973) [Memoire et intelligence (1968)]
• The Origin of the Idea of Chance in Children (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975) [La genèse de l'idée de hasard chez l'enfant (1951)].
• Mental imagery in the child: a study of the development of imaginal representation (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971) [L'image mentale chez l'enfant : études sur le développement des représentations imaginées (1966)].
• Intelligence and Affectivity. Their Relationship during Child Development (Palo Alto: Annual Reviews, 1981) [Les relations entre l'intelligence et l'affectivité dans le développement de l'enfant (1954)].
• With Garcia, R. Psychogenesis and the History of Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989) Psychogenèse et histoire des sciences (1983).
• With Beth, E. W.,Mathematical Epistemology and Psychology (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1966) [Épistémologie mathématique et psychologie: Essai sur les relations entre la logique formelle et la pensée réelle] (1961).

New translations

• Piaget, J. (1995). Sociological Studies. London: Routledge.
• Piaget, J. Commentary on Vygotsky. New Ideas in Psychology. 2000, 18 (2–3): 241–59. doi:10.1016/S0732-118X(00)00012-X. 
• Piaget, J. (2001). Studies in Reflecting Abstraction. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.

See also

• Active learning
• Cognitive acceleration
• Cognitivism (learning theory)
• Constructivist epistemology
• Developmental psychology
• Fluid and crystallized intelligence
• Guðmundur Finnbogason
• Horizontal and vertical décalage
• Inquiry-based learning
• Kohlberg's stages of moral development
• Psychosocial development
• Religious development
• Water-level task

Collaborators

• Edith Ackermann
• Leo Apostel
• Edgar Ascher
• Evert Beth
• Magali Bovet
• Guy Cellérier
• Paul Fraisse
• Rolando García
• Pierre Gréco
• Jean-Blaise Grize
• Gil Henriques
• Bärbel Inhelder
• Benoit Mandelbrot
• Albert Morf
• Pierre Oléron
• Seymour Papert
• Maurice Reuchlin
• Hermina Sinclair de-Zwart
• Alina Szeminska
• Huê Vinh-Bang

Translators

• Eleanor Duckworth
• Wolfe Mays

References

• Aqueci, F. (2003). Ordine e trasformazione: morale, mente, discorso in Piaget. Acireale-Roma: Bonanno. ISBN 88-7796-148-1.
• Amann-Gainotti, M.; Ducret, J.-J. Jean Piaget, disciple of Pierre Janet: Influence of behavior psychology and relations with psychoanalysis. Information Psychiatrique. 1992, 68: 598–606. 
• Beilin, H. Piaget's enduring contribution to developmental psychology. Developmental Psychology. 1992, 28 (2): 191–204. S2CID 14459165. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.28.2.191. 
• Beilin, H. (1994). Jean Piaget's enduring contribution to developmental psychology. A century of developmental psychology (pp. 257–290). Washington, DC US: American Psychological Association.
• Bringuier, J.-C. (1980). Conversations with Jean Piaget (B.M. Gulati, Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1977) ISBN 0-226-07503-6.
• Chapman, M. (1988). Constructive evolution: Origins and development of Piaget's thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-36712-3.
• Demetriou, A. (1998). Cognitive development. In A. Demetriou, W. Doise, K. F. M. van Lieshout (Eds.), Life-span developmental psychology (pp. 179–269). London: Wiley.
• Demetriou, A., Mouyi, A., & Spanoudis, G. (2010). The development of mental processing. Nesselroade, J. R. (2010). Methods in the study of life-span human development: Issues and answers. In W. F. Overton (Ed.), Biology, cognition and methods across the life-span. Volume 1 of the Handbook of life-span development (pp. 36–55), Editor-in-chief: R. M. Lerner. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
• Duveen, G. & Psaltis, C. (2008). The constructive role of asymmetries in social interaction. In U. Mueller, J. I. M. Carpendale, N. Budwig & B. Sokol (Eds.), Social life and social knowledge: Toward a process account of development. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Flavell, J. (1967). The developmental psychology of Jean Piaget. New York: D. Van Nostrand Company. ISBN 0-442-02413-4.
• Fowler, J. W. (1981). Stages of faith: The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. San Francisco: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-062866-9.
• Gattico, E. (2001). Jean Piaget. Milano: Bruno Mondadori. ISBN 88-424-9741-X.
• Hallpike, C.R. (1979). The foundations of primitive thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-823196-2.
• Ivey, A. (1986). Developmental therapy. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ISBN 1-55542-022-2.
• Kamii, C. (1985). Young children reinvent arithmetic: Implications of Piaget's theory. New York: Teachers College Press.
• Kesselring, T. (1999). Jean Piaget. München: Beck. ISBN 3-406-44512-8.
• Kassotakis, M. & Flouris, G. (2006) Μάθηση & Διδασκαλία, Αthens.
• Kitchener, R. (1986). Piaget's theory of knowledge: Genetic epistemology & scientific reason. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-03579-9.
• Kose, G. A philosopher's conception of Piaget: Piagetian theory reconsidered. Theoretical & Philosophical Psychology. 1987, 7 (1): 52–57. doi:10.1037/h0091442. 

CUNY pdf

• Mayer, S. The early evolution of Jean Piaget's clinical method. History of Psychology. 2005, 8 (4): 362–382. PMID 17152748. doi:10.1037/1093-4510.8.4.362. 
• Messerly, J.G. (1992). Piaget's conception of evolution: Beyond Darwin and Lamarck. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-8476-8243-9.
• Psaltis, C.; Duveen, G. Social relations and cognitive development: The influence of conversation type and representations of gender. European Journal of Social Psychology. 2006, 36 (3): 407–430. doi:10.1002/ejsp.308. 
• Psaltis, C.; Duveen, G. Conversation types and conservation: Forms of recognition and cognitive development. British Journal of Developmental Psychology. 2007, 25 (1): 79–102. doi:10.1348/026151005X91415. 
• Robinson, R.J. (2005). The birth of reason. Prometheus Research Group. (Available online at prometheus.org.uk)
• Smith, L. (Ed.) (1992). Jean Piaget: Critical assessments (4 Vols.). London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-04408-1.
• Smith, L. (1993). Necessary knowledge: Piagetian perspectives on constructivism. Hove, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum. ISBN 0-86377-270-6.
• Smith, L. (Ed.) (1996). Critical readings on Piaget. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-13317-3.
• Smith, L. (2001). Jean Piaget. In J. A. Palmer (Ed.), 50 modern thinkers on education: From Piaget to the present. London: Routledge.
• Traill, R.R. (2000) Physics and Philosophy of the Mind. Melbourne: Ondwelle. ISBN 0-9577737-1-4
• Traill, R.R. (2005a) ........ . Melbourne: Ondwelle. ondwelle.com
• Traill, R.R. (2005b / 2008) Thinking by Molecule, Synapse, or both? – From Piaget's Schema, to the Selecting/Editing of ncRNA. Melbourne: Ondwelle. ondwelle.com [Also in French: ondwelle.com
• Vidal, F. (1994). Piaget before Piaget. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-66716-6.
• Vonèche, J.J. (1985). Genetic epistemology: Piaget's theory. In T. Husén & T.N. Postlethwaite (Eds.-in-chief), International encyclopedia of education (Vol. 4). Oxford: Pergamon.
• Wynn, T. The intelligence of later Acheulean hominids. Man. New Series. 1979, 14 (3): 371–391. JSTOR 2801865. doi:10.2307/2801865. 
• Wynn, T. The intelligence of Oldowan hominids. Journal of Human Evolution. 1981, 10 (7): 529–541. doi:10.1016/S0047-2484(81)80046-2. 

Further reading

Piaget inspired innumerable studies and even new areas of inquiry. The following is a list of critiques and commentaries, organized using the same citation-based method as the list of his own major works (above). These represent the significant and influential post-Piagetian writings in their respective sub-disciplines.

Exemplars

• Vygotsky, L. (1963). Thought and language. [12630 citations]

Classics

• Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. [4089]
• Minsky, M. (1988). The society of mind. [3950]
• Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage And Sequence: The Cognitive-Developmental Approach To Socialization. [3118]
• Flavell, J. (1963). The developmental psychology of Jean Piaget. [2333] [The development of the project that became this book, and its impact, is discussed in detail by Müller, U.; Burman, J. T.; Hutchison, S. M. The developmental psychology of Jean Piaget: A quinquagenary retrospective. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology. 2013, 34 (1): 52–55. ISSN 0193-3973. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2012.10.001. ]
• Gibson, E. J. (1973). Principles of perceptual learning and development. [1903]
• Hunt, J. McV. (1961). Intelligence and Experience. [617+395+384+111+167+32=1706]
• Meltzoff, A. N. & Moore, M. K. (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. [1497]
• Case, R. (1985). Intellectual development: Birth to adulthood. [1456]
• Fischer, K. W. (1980). A theory of cognitive development: The control and construction of hierarchies of skills. [1001]

Major works

• Bates, E. (1976). Language and context: The acquisition of pragmatics. [959]
• Ginsburg, H. P. & Opper, S. (1969). Piaget's theory of intellectual development. [931]
• Singley, M. K. & Anderson, J. R. (1989). The transfer of cognitive skill. [836]
• Duckworth, E. (1973). The having of wonderful ideas. [775]
• Youniss, J. (1982). Parents and peers in social development: A Sullivan-Piaget perspective. [763]
• Pascual-Leone, J. (1970). A mathematical model for the transition rule in Piaget's developmental stages. [563]
• Schaffer, H. R. & Emerson, P. E. (1964). The development of social attachments in infancy. [535]

Works of significance

• Shatz, M.; Gelman, R. The Development of Communication Skills: Modifications in the Speech of Young Children as a Function of Listener. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. 1973, 38 (5): 1–37. JSTOR 1165783. PMID 4764473. doi:10.2307/1165783.  [470]
• Broke, H. Interpersonal perception of young children: Egocentrism or Empathy?. Developmental Psychology. 1971, 5 (2): 263–269. doi:10.1037/h0031267.  [469]
• Wadsworth, B. J. (1989). Piaget's theory of cognitive and affective development [421]
• Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1992). Beyond Modularity. [419]
• Bodner, G. M. (1986). Constructivism: A theory of knowledge. [403]
• Shantz, C. U. (1975). The Development of Social Cognition. [387]
• Diamond, A.; Goldman-Rakic, P. S. Comparison of human infants and rhesus monkeys on Piaget's AB task: evidence for dependence on dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Experimental Brain Research. 1989, 74 (1): 24–40. PMID 2924839. S2CID 2310409. doi:10.1007/bf00248277.  [370]
• Gruber, H. & Voneche, H. (1982). The Essential Piaget. [348]
• Walkerdine, V. (1984). Developmental psychology and the child-centred pedagogy: The insertion of Piaget into early education. [338]
• Kamii, C. & DeClark, G. (1985). Young children reinvent arithmetic: Implications of Piaget's theory [335]
• Riegel, K. F. (1973). Dialectic operations: The final period of cognitive development [316]
• Bandura, A.; McDonald, F. J. Influence of social reinforcement and the behavior of models in shaping children's moral judgment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. 1963, 67 (3): 274–281. PMID 14054361. doi:10.1037/h0044714.  [314]
• Karplus, R. (1980). Teaching for the development of reasoning. [312]
• Brainerd, C. (1978). The stage question in cognitive-developmental theory. [311]
• Brainerd, C. (1978). Piaget's theory of intelligence. [292]
• Gilligan, C. (1997). Moral orientation and moral development [285]
• Diamond, A. (1991). Neuropsychological insights into the meaning of object concept development [284]
• Braine, M. D. S., & Rumain, B. (1983). Logical reasoning. [276]
• John-Steiner, V. (2000). Creative collaboration. [266]
• Pascual-Leone, J. (1987). Organismic processes for neo-Piagetian theories: A dialectical causal account of cognitive development. [261]
• Hallpike, C. R. (1979). The foundations of primitive thought [261]
• Furth, H. (1969). Piaget and Knowledge [261]
• Gelman, R. & Baillargeon, R. (1983). A review of some Piagetian concepts. [260]
• O'Loughlin, M. (1992). Rethinking science education: Beyond piagetian constructivism. Toward a sociocultural model of teaching and learning. [252]
• Messerly, John G. (1996). "Psychogenesis and the History of Science: Piaget and the Problem of Scientific Change", The Modern Schoolman LXXIII, 295–307.

External links

• Template:Helveticat

• Jean Piaget Society, society for the study of knowledge and development.
• The Jean Piaget Archives, with full bibliography.
• Interview with Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder by Elizabeth Hall (1970).
• Jean Piaget @ Teaching & Learning Developmental Psychology, Piaget as a scientist with resources for classes.
• Jean Piaget's Genetic Epistemology: Appreciation and Critique by Robert Campbell (2002), extensive summary of work and biography.
• Piaget's The Language and Thought of the Child (1926) – a brief introduction
• The Moral Judgment of the Child by Jean Piaget (1932)
• The Construction of Reality in the Child by Jean Piaget (1955)
• Piaget's role in the International Bureau of Education and the International Conference on Education
• Genetic Epistemology by Jean Piaget (1968)
• Comments on Vygotsky by Jean Piaget (1962)
• YouTube上的Piaget's Developmental Theory: An Overview – Part 1, a 27-minute documentary film used primarily in higher education.
• YouTube上的Piaget's Developmental Theory: An Overview – Part 2, a 27-minute documentary film used primarily in higher education.
• Foundation Jean Piaget for research in psychology and epistemology – French version only – diffuse to the world community writings and talks of the Swiss scientist.
• Human Nervous System model in accordance with Piaget's Learning Theory – French version only
• Jean Piaget and Neuchâtel The site is maintained by the Institute of Psychology and Education, Neuchâtel University
• Jean Piaget's 1931 essay "The Spirit of Solidarity in Children and International Cooperation" (re-published in the Spring 2011 issue of Schools: Studies in Education)
• Jean Piaget: A Most Outrageous Deception by Webster R. Callaway

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